1973 - when I started asking questions, like, "Why are we all dressed so funny?"

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Infinite Jello?

One doesn't generally think of ineffable sadness and longing with punk rock, but Dead Kennedys manage to pull it off with "Moon Over Marin." Told in the first person, the song is a lamentation over a toxified California coast and the protagonist's desire to find meaning through routine and the hope of a stable cosmic order.

In this dystopian future, our narrator is privileged enough to own some beach front property amid a "crowded future" and "still find[s] time to exercise" "on my beach at night." The beach itself seems to be the coast of the Valdez oil spill gone mad and global:

Another tanker's hit the rocks
Abandoned to spill out its guts
The sand is laced with sticky glops

Despite the horror, he concludes, "There will always be a moon over Marin."

Jello Biafra -- longing for the Infinite. Who woulda thunk?


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