Review

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.