As frontman with The Dead Kennedys, Jello Biafra was American punk rock’s provocateur-in-chief. The fiercely leftwing band’s 1979 debut single, California Über Alles, was a sneering, satirical Molotov cocktail aimed squarely at the politicians in The Golden State.
Within months Biafra was putting his money where his mouth was and running for Mayor in his home town of San Francisco, a city where the hippie dream had been replaced by poverty, bribery, corruption and, following the assassination of then-Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk the previous year, even murder.
