Dead Kennedys: Getting too drunk is BAD

Kronenbourg 1664 has been getting bands to record slowed-down version of thrashy, punky songs. Unfortunately, nobody thought through getting the current iteration of the Dead Kennedys to record Too Drunk To Fuck. For a beer advertising campaign.

Drinks industry marketing watchdog the Portman Group, which operates a self-regulatory code of practice, received a complaint about the promotion and the use of the track.

The Portman Group's independent complaints panel said that while Kronenbourg had not "set out to promote irresponsible drinking", nevertheless the "track name and lyrics referenced drinking to excess, thereby associating the brand with immoderate consumption".

It added that this represented a breach of its industry code, which bans alcohol promotions from "encouraging irresponsible or immoderate drinking".

No word yet from the group which regulates the Punk Industry on charges that working for an expensive lager company brings The Dead Kennedys into disrepute.

Kennedys remove Flouride

The never-been-the-same-since-Jello-quit Dead Kennedys are another member down - Klaus Fluoride has decided that thirty years is enough:

Over the past thirty years, I have had the great fortune to have been a founding member of Dead Kennedys, It’s been tough at times but particularly rewarding working and collaborating with men like Biafra, 6025, D.H., Brandon, Jeff, Ted, Dave, Steve, Skip and especially Ray. However a recurring medical condition called Angioedema has caused me to make the difficult decision to begin withdraw from the road and as a touring member of Dead Kennedys. Thus I have taken my leave as a performing member of the band for the foreseeable future.

It's not the end of Fluoride playing live, as - like most punk musicians - he also plays in another seventeen thousand bands.

Not-Jello quits Kennedys

The never-quite-satisfying post-Biafra Dead Kennedys have got a problem this morning, with Jeff Penalty quitting the band.

Although we've never really thought much of his attempts to be mimic Jello, we have to be honest: his departure is every bit as bitter and noisy as Biafra's original split with the group:

It's likely that, if asked, the band will attribute my departure to scheduling conflicts brought about by my documentary work, but in reality it's a tediously long story involving personality conflicts, creative differences, arguments about splitting money equally, arguments about how the band should be run, arguments about the wisdom of hiring a band manager whose other star client was a Christian folk artist, arguments about whether we should or shouldn't go on MTV, and arguments about many other wretched things.

"I thought about quitting numerous times over the past year, but I officially did so on Thanksgiving when I found out that the band had been recruiting a new singer behind my back and had even played a secret show with one at a bar in my neighborhood.”

It's that last little detail - not just playing a show with a replacement, but doing it round the corner from his house - that we think really shows the Kennedys in their warmest, truest light.