Project Description
. Dead Kennedys, The Tivoli, Brisbane, Queensland. Photo: Alec Smart, 20 Sept 2025 . . Dead Kennedys, The Tivoli, Brisbane, Queensland. Photo: Alec Smart, 20 Sept 2025 . . Hippo, The Tivoli, Brisbane, Queensland. Photo: Alec Smart, 20 Sept 2025 . . Hippo, The Tivoli, Brisbane, Queensland. Photo: Alec Smart, 20 Sept 2025 . . Dead Kennedys, The Tivoli, Brisbane, Queensland. Photo: Alec Smart, 20 Sept 2025 . . Dead Kennedys, The Tivoli, Brisbane, Queensland. Photo: Alec Smart, 20 Sept 2025 . . Dead Kennedys, The Tivoli, Brisbane, Queensland. Photo: Alec Smart, 20 Sept 2025 . . Dead Kennedys, The Tivoli, Brisbane, Queensland. Photo: Alec Smart, 20 Sept 2025 . . Dead Kennedys, The Tivoli, Brisbane, Queensland. Photo: Alec Smart, 20 Sept 2025 . . Dead Kennedys, The Tivoli, Brisbane, Queensland. Photo: Alec Smart, 20 Sept 2025 . . Dead Kennedys, The Tivoli, Brisbane, Queensland. Photo: Alec Smart, 20 Sept 2025 . . CLICK THE PIC TO VIEW THE NEWS
DEAD KENNEDYS
+ Hippo
@ The Tivoli, Brisbane,
20th September 2025
(Live Review)Review and photos by Alec Smart (@alecsmart_fotos)
Dead Kennedys, the highly influential veteran Californian punk band, performed at The Tivoli Theatre in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, on their Give Me Dystopia or Give Me Death Australasian tour.
The tour title, Give Me Dystopia or Give Me Death, is derived from the Dead Kennedys’ 1987 compilation album, Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death, a mockery of American consumerism. That, in turn, was a reworking of the historic March 1775 declaration “Give me liberty or give me death!” by American politician Patrick Henry, which spurred the American Revolutionary War of Independence from Britain.
The DKs were supported in Brisbane by local trio Hippo, who describe themselves as a “Meanjin/Brisbane based queer heavy doompunk band.”
Loki, the Hippo bassist-vocalist-synth player, has a huge piece of wood mounted below his bass guitar, encircled by a fluorescent strip, upon which at least 13 effects pedals are attached. He uses these with a synthesiser to create a variety of sound effects that both distort and add to the band’s kaleidoscopic, grungy music.
Strobe lighting above flashed frequently, contributing to a somewhat discomforting visual experience that enhanced the aural assault of the discordant music.
Hippo launched their set with Hail Satan, their most recent composition, released in October 2024. Since 2017 they’ve released five albums and four EPs, with amusing titles such as Forgiveness Is Divine (But Never Pay Full Price For Late Pizza), Out With The Old And In With The Nucleus, and Learning To Fail Efficiently.
Their songs generally consist of a sentence that’s repeated, like a chant, over a basic heavy riff, but interspersed with fuzzy guitar solos and frequent effects consisting of beeps and roars, like a child let loose on a science fiction film soundtrack. The latter sounded like Star Wars’ R2D2 robot arguing in code with Hal the rogue onboard computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, about whether to eject their human astronauts into space.
The Dead Kennedys originally formed in San Francisco in 1978, then went on hiatus in 1986 after releasing four studio albums and an EP on their own label, Alternative Tentacles, often inciting controversies with provocative lyrics and artwork.
The band’s core trio – Klaus Fluoride, East Bay Ray and D.H. Peligro – reformed in 2001 without the original vocalist, Jello Biafra, the principal lyricist and designer of the band’s iconic montage artwork. (Biafra currently performs with The Guantanamo School of Medicine.)
This estrangement eventually led to an acrimonious court case over financial royalties from their recordings, and the hostility between Biafra and his bandmates continues to this day. (Alternative Tentacles no longer releases the band’s historic albums and no new DKs’ recordings have been released since their reformation.)
Sadly, since the DKs’ last Australian tour, long-term drummer Darren Peligro died in October 2022.
During the band’s first Australian tour in Aug-Sept 1983, Darren endured racial harassment from Nazi skinheads in several Australian cities, furious that a dark-skinned man was playing in a punk band.
New drummer Steve ‘Boomstick’ Wilson accompanied the band in Brisbane; he was also percussionist with the late Darren Peligro’s thrash-metal band Peligro.
The latest tour was the Dead Kennedys’ first series of concerts in Australia since 2018, during which singer Ron ‘Skip’ Greer (who joined the reformed band in 2008) was nearly lynched at Sydney’s Metro Theatre on Halloween, after cynically mocking the crowd. They retaliated by hurling objects back at him.
On that occasion he left the stage after two songs, but was encouraged back by his bandmates, no doubt mindful that they would never be welcome in Australia again if he stormed off permanently.
At the time, many in the audience were sceptical Greer could fill Jello Biafra’s shoes – Biafra, an articulate and assertive leader, was the primary creative force in the original band – so to insult the fans shortly after going onstage was a potentially suicidal move.
At the 20 September 2025 Brisbane concert, however, Greer wisely engaged, instead of enraged, the appreciative audience (many of whom were old punk rockers from the late 1970s). He was witty and chatty, encouraged singalongs and even waded into the lively dance floor several times – despite some risqué sledging about how Australian football is played so differently to American.
Several of the band’s original songs had re-worked lyrics to take into account the political changes in the 40+ years since they were written.
The main example, MP3 Get Off the Web, appeared on the band’s 1985 album Frankenchrist as MTV Get Off the Air. The original composition mocked the commercialism of MTV music videos, suggesting they were “sugar-coated mindless garbage” performed by musicians who “wag their tits and their dicks as they lip-synch on screen.”
The revised version criticises the sharing of digital music online without paying financial royalties to performers. It’s the band’s only newly-written song since their reformation.
Commenting on the sarcastic, often deliberately shocking themes prevalent in Biafra’s historic lyrics, Greer said, “I know you don’t really want to kill the poor, or see the star quarterback break his neck!”
He added, “because of you I have to go to Dunkin’ Donuts instead of Starbucks!” He was referring to Biafra’s left-leaning politics in which he urged the boycott of corporate chains that are exploitative or invest in oppressive political regimes.
After the fan-favourite Too Drunk to Fuck, which pokes fun at people who enjoy getting hopelessly intoxicated, Greer announced, “As tired as I look, I could do this all night, perform the entire back catalogue over five hours. However, I just spoke to management and there’s a disco dance party coming up next and there’s a line around the block queueing to get in, so we have to vacate the premises!”
The band then started leaving the stage, but Greer returned to the microphone and declared, “I just spoke to management again. They said we can continue playing – if we start the disco dance party!”
Guitarist East Bay Ray then strummed some poppy chords before the band began the catchy, melodic Moon Over Marin. The environmental-themed song tells of a wealthy resident of San Francisco who still enjoys jogging along the foreshore despite the ecological degradation caused by another oil tanker crashing on the rocks and “spilling out its guts.”
The band segued into the spoken rap from the Blondie song Rapture, about the man from Mars who’s through with eating cars and bars and is now eating guitars. When the audience (many of who were young and probably unfamiliar with the 1980 hit) didn’t call out “guitars” when Greer held out the microphone, he berated them. “Now I can see why your football is played like it is,” he declared, which elicited a loud chorus of “boo!”
The band finished their main set on the hardcore thrasher, Nazi Punks Fuck Off, which celebrates AntiFa, the international anti-fascist resistance that USA President Donald Trump stupidly thinks is an actual rebel group with leaders and a manifesto.
The band returned for a four-song encore, which included their re-worked mockery of the hedonist hit Viva Las Vegas, written by Pomus & Shuman for the 1964 Elvis Presley movie of the same name. The DKs’ version included the additional lyrics “Lady Luck’s with me; the dice stay hot. Got coke up my nose to dry away the snot…”
When the song finished, Greer lay down and curled up on the stage floor, pretending to sleep, until the familiar bass riff intro to crowd favourite Holiday in Cambodia stirred him back onto his feet. Greer then climbed over the pit barrier into the audience and crowd-surfed.
The band finished the night on a rousing version of Chemical Warfare, a prime example of Biafra’s satirical, provocative lyrics. Essentially humorising a terrorist incident, it details the mass-murder of posh country club golf players by a psychopath who has stolen a mustard gas cannister from a laboratory. After releasing it in the wind on the golf fairway, he then laughs at the chaos and carnage.
In this era of mass-casualty tragic events, few people write lyrics that risqué any more… and more’s the pity.
The song segued into Lynard Skynyrd’s international hit Sweet Home Alabama. It was a curious finale, considering original vocalist Jello Biafra loathed that band and its endorsement of Alabama Governor George Wallace, who opposed the integration of negroes in white society.
In June 1963, Governor Wallace famously stood in front of the entrance doorway of the University of Alabama to prevent the enrolment of black people.
After the concert, Greer folded a set list into a paper aeroplane, and another he tore into small pieces like confetti, both of which he flung into the crowd. He then mingled with fans at the front, posing for group photographs.
Set List
Forward to Death
Winnebago Warrior
Police Truck
Buzzbomb
Let’s Lynch the Landlord
Jock-O-Rama
Kill the Poor
MP3 get off the Web
Too Drunk to Fuck
Moon over Marin
Nazi Punks Fuck Off!
California Uber AllesEncore
Bleed for Me
Viva Las Vegas
Holiday in Cambodia
Chemical Warfare
Follow DEAD KENNEDYS
Website – Instagram – Facebook – YouTubeFollow HIPPO
Bandcamp – Instagram – Facebook
Press Release 15th April 2025 (below) HERE
SBM PRESENTS
DEAD KENNEDYS
announce
‘Give Me Dystopia or
Give Me Death’
Australia & New Zealand Tour
– September 2025
.AMNPLIFY – DB
