Alternative Tentacles

Alternative Tentacles Records, based in Emeryville, California, is an independent record label owned by Eric Reed Boucher, better known by his stage name, Jello Biafra, former front man for the seminal punk band Dead Kennedys. Although primarily known for releasing albums by the Dead Kennedys and other punk bands--such as Butthole Surfers, D.O.A., 7 Seconds, Winston Smith, NoMeansNo, Neurosis, and Voice Farm--Alternative Tentacles has also released rock and roll, Brazilian hardcore, bent pop, faux-country, and spoken word records from such anti-establishment writers as Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Since the breakup of Dead Kennedys, Biafra has also recorded a number of spoken word records issued by his record company. All told, the label has released about 250 albums, of which more than 150 are still in print. In addition, through its Web site Alternative Tentacles sells books, magazines, videos that reflect the tastes of underground culture, as well as such mundane merchandise as coffee mugs and T-shirts. Biafra was born in Boulder, Colorado, in 1959. His father was a psychiatric social worker and his mother was a librarian. Biafra was a precocious child, early on displaying a fascination with language. According to his father, when Biafra was only three years old, "he would startle visitors at the door saying he looked like a Pithecanthroprus erectus." He also became interested in music at an early age, delving into his father's large ethnic record collection. However, relations between the two grew contentious, with Biafra enraging his father by comparing him to Stalin and Nixon. The youngster also became an outcast among his peers. Years later, he recalled, "My heroes in those days were Batman villains. My other friends wanted to be nurses and firemen, but I thought the Riddler and Penguin were much better role models." In high school, Biafra rebelled against the country-rock music that ruled the local radio waves, often visiting used record shops where for pocket change he bought records based on interesting covers and liner notes. Many of these records turned out to be seminal influences on the rising punk music scene: the Stooges, MC5, 13th Floor Elevators, Nazz, and Les Baxter. As a teenager, Biafra began using his gift for language to write song lyrics. In 1978, Biafra enrolled at University of California-Santa Cruz but quit after just two months. He told the San Francisco Chronicle in a 1986 profile, "I was going through the usual teenage anguish stuff. I couldn't see going to college and picking a career out of a hat and hating my own guts, because what I really wanted to do was perform. I've always loved loud, raw music." After attending a Ramones concert, Biafra, at the age of 20, decided to form his own band. His band mates shared his taste for unusual names: guitarist East Bay Ray, bass player Klaus Flouride, and drummer D.R. Peligro. Biafra turned in part to the news in the coining of his own stage name. He latched onto "Biafra," the African nation which had become the face of international poverty and starvation, and combined it with Jello, which he believed epitomized U.S. corporate culture. He explained to the Chronicle , "I thought that the two images of Jello and Biafra colliding in the mind were exactly the sort of confrontational question I wanted to raise. Plastic America and its overseas results." Moreover, he liked the sound of it. For the name of the band, Biafra turned to a notebook where he jotted down ideas and considered such possibilities as Smegma Pigvomit, Mucus Melanoma, and Calvin Colostomy before settling on Dead Kennedys. Referring to assassinated politicians was offensive to some, but to Biafra the reference was to a self-absorbed, cynical society that resulted from the murder of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Vietnam war, and the Watergate scandal. After a week's worth of rehearsal, Dead Kennedys made its first appearance in 1978 at San Francisco's Mabuhay Gardens. The