Iguana Studios Rehearsal Tape – San Francisco 1978 is out on Manifesto as of yesterday. A brutal, basic offering, the collection reveals the earliest recordings of the soon-to-be-legendary West Coast punk band as they bashed a bunch of cuts into shape. Featuring the original DK line-up of singer Jello Biafra, guitarists East Bay Ray and 6025, bassist Klaus Flouride, and drummer Ted, this release reveals the effort that went into making tunes that sounded like they were being screamed as the world ended.
Some of what's here, like "Man with Dogs", reveals a debt owed as much to Iggy and the Stooges as the Sex Pistols. And for all the numbers on Iguana Studios Rehearsal Tape – San Francisco 1978 which show a band painfully finding its way, others, like "Forward to Death" and "Kill the Poor", are brash, brilliant slabs of a uniquely American form of punk rock made at a time when there was barely any scene in this country outside of NYC, and maybe a few kids in D.C. If "I Kill Children" amps up to the kind of speed the members of Dead Kennedys likely heard in U.K. singles of the era, "Holiday in Cambodia" in its demo-form is more varied in tone, revealing flashes of the musical wit and bravado the DK's always brought to the whole endeavor of making hardcore. And while the cover of the TV theme "Rawhide" is silly and glorious, the angular and disjointed "Mutations of Today" is every bit as skewed and arch as anything Devo was hatching in this era. Iguana Studios Rehearsal Tape – San Francisco 1978 isn't entirely essential for the uninitiated, but it is fairly easy to sink into, with the rough demos here more fully formed than one might have expected.
Iguana Studios Rehearsal Tape – San Francisco 1978 is out on Manifesto now.
More details on Dead Kennedys via the band's official website.