Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables - The 2022 Mix
- The Joker
- Jun 9
- 3 min read
CD Edition - Cherry Red
Release date: 31/07/26
Words by : The Joker
Score: 6/10
A Grammy-winner polished the corpse until it gleamed — unfortunately the corpse was alive before he started. The original was offensive enough to matter; this is just expensive enough to disappoint.
It didn’t have to be done. Not really. East Bay Ray wanted it. So did Klaus Flouride. And some Grammy-winning engineer who couldn't find anything else to do by way of reworking James Brown's b-sides anymore. But no consultation was required from Jello Biafra, the actual mouth and brain of one of the most influential hardcore albums ever recorded, because there's no point in going to Jello when you’re re-mixing a Dead Kennedys album; it’s the same as consulting the builder after you’ve knocked down the house.
The original Fresh Fruit was, in 1980, like a fun-fair attraction gone up in flames and directed towards Ronald Reagan. Thin, untamed, Ray's surf twang dipped in politically inspired bile – the audio version of opening your breakfast and discovering a severed limb inside. It wasn’t broken. But Chris Lord-Alge fixes it in the spirit of a well-meaning relative attempting to restore a Van Gogh masterpiece with a B&Q magnolia.
He adds dimension to the guitar parts, more punch to the drum beats and manages to quietly kill off a good portion of Klaus Flouride’s bass – a part which, in the original, carries almost as much melodic weight as the vocals. Modern mixing philosophy insists that the bass plays a supporting role in any track; it should be there, like an uninvited guest at a dinner party – you know it's there if you listen carefully while other people aren’t talking. This is progress.
The proof comes in the form of the Chemical Warfare track, whose ironic title was used to convince Ray and Lord-Alge that remastering the album was a good idea in the first place. Chemical Warfare ends with a scream choir shouting underneath the total sound meltdown before the last refrain punches into life like a boot to the guts. In the 2022 mix, instruments drown the screams. The boot is replaced with a firm handshake. The point of the song is rendered obsolete in the name of audio clarity. They've renovated Guernica.
But the album cover is quite beautiful. Live shots of the band in action, good liner notes and various celebrities assuring us that the Dead Kennedys were actually important to the music world – Duff McKagan, Billie Joe Armstrong and even Dave Grohl, now legally bound to feature in the liner notes of every subsequent rock release. The CDs come packaged in master tapes, which is a really great idea. It almost redeems the remastered album.
Almost.
Got the original? Then you're done reading this. Don't have it? Go buy the original, its tinny sound is an essential part of the experience. Ray and Flouride were within their rights to rework their old songs.
They just weren't obliged to.
TRACK LISTING
1. Kill The Poor
2. Forward To Death
3. When Ya Get Drafted
4. Let's Lynch The Landlord
5. Drug Me
6. Your Emotions
7. Chemical Warfare
8. California Über Alles
9. I Kill Children
10. Stealing Peoples' Mail
11. Funland At The Beach
12. Ill In The Head
13. Holiday In Cambodia
14. Viva Las Vegas
