Beyond the Valley of the Gift Police

They Say...

Review by Jack Rabid, All Music Guide

Live spoken word album number four is just as riveting as the first three, even for three solid hours! (Got an afternoon to blow in a productive way?) Someday someone is going to crank open Biafra's cranium with a can-opener, and we can all have a look at this atomic brain that pulses and throbs so endlessly therein. Can you think of anyone who can talk as long, over such a variety of social issues/problems/outrages/lampoons, with such an overload of anecdotes, data, statistics, and information, presented with at least one belly-laugh a minute at the absurdity of it all? Sample: Biafra suggests Madonna as his choice for Bill Clinton's Secretary of Education (would her tome, Sex, become a required textbook? Just wondering!). Yes that means that he still finds ways to entertain throughout a blizzard of rants/observations/roasts, which has always been his saving grace while hammering us so silly. The topics/targets are the same as in the past, but that's because they are so exhaust-less: politicians, the military-industrial complex, so-called experts, would-be censors, polluters and anti-environmentalists, big-business (and third world exploitation), organized and disorganized religion (and tele-evangelists), parental paranoia, etc. Whether singing lyrics -- in his older bands/projects Dead Kennedys, Tumor Circus, Lard, etc. -- or just slinging it talk-style with his collection of sardonic voices, Biafra's social criticism goes down smoother than strict, dry politicos, and scores more often than a line of Bure, Lindros, and Hull.