Jello Biafra nitpicks about Dead Kennedys’ song licensing in Tarantino’s Grindhouse

Posted March 15th, 2007 by eric

Jello Biafra makes a living complaining. And when he rails against the system he sounds like the dad from that shitty sitcom from the late 80’s, Just the Ten of Us. I know this is absurd, but, in high school, I thought this fat, bald middle-aged sitcom star was an underground political subversive because my local college station always played Biafra’s spoken-word rants. They really do sound just alike. It’s uncanny.

Anyway, I understand it’s lame that Biafra’s former bandmates in the Dead Kennedys reformed with a different lead singer, so there’s clearly some animosity there. But to complain about licensing a song called “Too Drunk To Fuck” to Robert Rodriguez because its context is a rape scene seems like a pretty silly battle to pick, even for Biafra (plot spoiler follows):

The scene is actually in the “Planet Terror” film directed by Rodriguez. Tarantino himself is pointing a gun at a disabled amputee woman’s head yelling “Dance, Bitch!” as the Nouvelle Vague cover of “Too Drunk to Fuck” plays from a boombox. The terrified woman later “wins” by killing Tarantino, but that excuse does not rescue this at all. I wrote every note of that song and this is not what it was meant for.

The Grindhouse movies are deliberately, cartoonishly exploitative. This just reeks of sourgrapes about not being involved in the decision or not being able to overpower it.

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