Jello Biafra
b. Eric Boucher, 17 June 1958, Denver, Colorado, USA. It took a little time for Biafra to launch his solo career after being emotionally and financially sapped by the demise of his former band, the Dead Kennedys. The drain was primarily due to the torturous legal process after the group were charged with 'distributing harmful matter to minors' over H.R. Giger's painting Landscape #20—aka 'Penis Landscape'. When Biafra did resume recording it was initially in the field of spoken word lectures. Both NO MORE COCOONS and the ironically titled HIGH PRIEST OF HARMFUL MATTER took this course, the latter explaining in great detail, and no little humour, the forces lined up against him in his trial. Always an articulate songwriter and frontman, Biafra worked well in the environment, with much of the material culled from his live lectures throughout the US (centred on the theme of artistic censorship by bodies such as the PMRC, who had made Biafra something of a target). Since then Biafra has returned to music, working with a host of artists, generally drawn from the Alternative Tentacles Records roster, a label he set up in the early '80s to house Dead Kennedys' product. These have seen Biafra provide the lyrics and distinctive vocals to the musical muscle of No Means No and D.O.A. The latter teaming fostered the seismic, extended rampage of Full Metal Jackoff, one of the artist's finest moments. Biafra also appeared with members of D.O.A. in the Terminal City Ricochet film. The recordings conducted with Lard saw him join with Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of Ministry, with Biafra as acerbic as ever on a cover of They're Coming To Take Me Away (conducted with the same sort of religiose fervour as the Kennedy's versions of Rawhide and Viva Las Vegas). The artist then returned to the spoken word format with I BLOW MINDS FOR A LIVING, before another collaboration, this time with renowned anti-redneck country artist Mojo Nixon. Sadly, in 1994 Biafra was hospitalised with badly broken legs after being assaulted at a show by punks who accused him of 'selling out'. A crime even the PMRC would not have been hysterical enough to pursue.