Dead Kennedys - Milking The Sacred Cow… The Very Best of

Where you going this year? I’m gonna Holiday in Cambodia

Significantly the only American band to make Peel’s Festive 50 from 1979 to 1981, this is proof, if needed, that Dead Kennedys took over from the Pistols as being the band best loved by UK punks. The Kennedys offered singalongs with lashings of great surf-punk/spy-theme guitar and a vocalist that sounded like a cartoon Tasmanian devil. Despite being split into anarcho, street-punk and art school factions, everybody loved DK’s singles. With a title bringing “flogging a dead horse” to mind, this is an unnecessary compilation, if truth be told. Perennially Cherry Red’s best sellers, everyone will surely have this material in their preferred format. A multi-disc boxed set would have perhaps been preferable. But once you hear those classic singles, California Über Alles, Holiday In Cambodia… they still sound unbeatable. There are two so-so, previously unreleased live tracks to tempt the completist (Soup Is Good Fun and Jock-O-Rama). While the battle of writs between Jello Biafra and the others continues to detract from their legacy, remember them this way: as the band that combined irony, politics and dynamic music to make punk rock that was both serious and a lot of fun.

Cherry Red | CDMRED 340

Reviewed by Ged Babey
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