Jello Biafra

Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), known professionally as Jello Biafra, is an American singer, spoken word artist and political activist.

He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.

Boucher became a fan of rock music after first hearing it in 1965 when his parents accidentally tuned in to a rock radio station.

As a teenager, his high school guidance counselor advised him to spend his adolescence preparing to become a dental hygienist.

In 1977, he worked as a roadie for a local band called The Ravers (who later changed their name to The Nails), helping set up their equipment at shows, including as an opener for the Ramones.

The job ended shortly after the Ramones show, when The Ravers were offered a record contract and left Colorado.

Boucher credits seeing Joey Ramone as inspiration to become a singer, and the Ramones lyrics for inspiring the use of humor in his own songs.

Shortly after graduating high school, he formed a band called The Healers, with John Greenway and an unknown third member.

Boucher has described The Healers' music as "banging on instruments we didn't know how to play when our parents weren't home".

While never playing a show, the band made recordings, including an early version of "California Über Alles", but did not want any of it to be released to the public.

In June 1978, Boucher responded to an advertisement placed in a store by guitarist East Bay Ray, stating "guitarist wants to form punk band", and together they formed the Dead Kennedys.

He began performing with the band under the stage name Occupant, but soon began to use the stage name Jello Biafra, a combination of the brand name Jell-O and the short-lived African state of Biafra.

Biafra initially attempted to compose music on guitar, but his lack of experience on the instrument and his own admission of being "a fumbler with my hands" led Dead Kennedys bassist Klaus Flouride to suggest that Biafra simply sing the parts he envisioned to the band.

Biafra sang his riffs and melodies into a tape recorder, which he brought to the band's rehearsal and/or recording sessions.

This later became a problem when the other members of the Dead Kennedys sued Biafra over royalties and publishing rights.

By all accounts, including his own, Biafra is not a conventionally skilled musician, though he and his collaborators (Joey Shithead of D.O.A. in particular) attest that he is a skilled composer and his work, particularly with the Dead Kennedys, is highly respected by punk-oriented critics and fans.

The first single by Dead Kennedys was their version of "California über alles".

The song, which spoofed California governor Jerry Brown, was the first of many political songs by the group and Biafra.

Its popularity resulted in being covered by other musicians, such as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy (who rewrote the lyrics to parody Pete Wilson), John Linnell of They Might Be Giants and Six Feet Under on their Graveyard Classics album of cover versions.

Not long after, the Dead Kennedys had a second and bigger hit with "Holiday in Cambodia" from their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.

AllMusic cites this song as "possibly the most successful single of the American hardcore scene" and Biafra counts it as his personal favorite Dead Kennedy's song.

Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his "unique quiver of a voice".

In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California.

He is a supporter of a free society and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes.

Biafra uses absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice.

Eric Reed Boucher was born in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Virginia (née Parker), a librarian, and Stanley Wayne Boucher, a psychiatric social worker and poet.

The Dead Kennedys received some controversy in the spring of 1981 over the single "Too Drunk to Fuck".

When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray.

His sister, Julie J. Boucher, was Associate Director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State Library; she died in a mountain-climbing accident on October 12, 1996.

He has a Jewish great-grandparent, but was unaware of this until he was in his mid-40s.

Due to his secular upbringing and lack of knowledge of his distant Jewish ancestry until adulthood, he does not consider himself Jewish.

As a child, Boucher developed an interest in international politics that was encouraged by his parents.

An avid news watcher, one of his earliest memories was of the John F. Kennedy assassination.

In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud, and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra.

Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations.

He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films.

Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes.

He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader.

Some of their music was made available on a 2009 compilation of late 1970s Colorado punk bands titled Rocky Mountain Low, including the original version of "California Über Alles", which Maximum Rocknroll described as experimental improv in their review.

Boucher left Boulder to attend the University of California, Santa Cruz but dropped out after the first quarter of the school year.