TS: Holidays in the Sun vs. Holiday in Cambodia

Two punk colossi from both sides of the Atlantic. I have to confess, I initially regarded the DKs song as a bit of a rip-off of a startlingly original concept, only 3 years late. “Cheap holidays at other people's misery,” is one of the great anti-advertising slogans. To me, Lydon's satire is a little sharper than Jello's, which struck me as indistinguishable from a right-wing critique of middle class liberal kids - “Why don't you just go live in Russia/Cambodia?” ” That said, the music knocked me dead, and to sing about Indo-China at all was tantamount to treason in the US in the years after its humiliating withdrawal from Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge was as much the bastard son of that war as Islamic State is of the Iraq conflict. The music is a different matter. Holidays is the Pistols' finest hour imo, from the jackboot drumbeat intro to that soaring key change on “they're staring all night...”, and the tension just keeps building over Rotten's desperate, confused voice. Cambodia (single version), similarly, is the greatest thing the DKs ever recorded. So many stunning surf-punk guitar riffs, and those frantic drum fills around 2:45 make this some of the most thrilling music of the punk era. I'd give this to the DK's for the sounds and the Pistols for the lyrics. What do you think?

they're both really cool.

Pistols are such a slog to listen to. DKs

i like both songs a lot but i still find the pistols song kind of scary and unsettling in a way that the DKs' more cartoony/obvious take on the same subject could never be. the half-buried backing vocals of "reason! reason!" are especially creepy to me for some reason.

Yes, those backing vocals, totalitarian thugs in full chant!

'Holidays In The Sun', even though I can't listen to it without thinking of 'In The City' by The Jam (which is a superior song).

the way lydon says "PLEASE don't be waiting for me!" at the end is one of my favorite line-deliveries ever. considering it was more or less their last real song, seems like a beautiful note to end on.

I listened to "Holiday in Cambodia" just a couple of days ago. I'm content to leave most of the DKs' catalogue in my teenage years but this song is still thrilling. "Holidays in the Sun" is one of my favourite Sex Pistols songs but the DKs might take this one.

God, I hated the Dead Kennedys. "Holidays in the Sun" by light years.

the music from "Cambodia" holds up better for me but "Holidays in the Sun" had a much heavier impact on me overall, over time. like, it doesn't really reach me any more, I played it too much back when, but that's one of the great rock vocal performances ever, it's just so focused and pure. whereas Jello...sure man why not, but the point of that song is the riff imo

i'm with clemenza

"Holiday in Cambodia." I don't really care for the Sex Pistols.

Cambodia because East Bay Ray

The playing on Cambodia, the vocals on Sun.

I'm content to leave most of the DKs' catalogue in my teenage years but [Holiday in Cambodia] is still thrilling.

yeah, it's riveting. jello bugs me something awful, but everything else is magnificent. riff that kicks in at 3:00 still gives me goosebumps. nothing against the sex pistols, but they're a distant second here.

interesting that both narratives imagine going to places that were communist hellholes and impossible to reach for a westerner when the songs were written - both would be considered pretty cool vacation spots now

Holidays ITS is about being in West Berlin ("I'm looking over the wall and they're looking at me") though? Isn't it? Actually I'm not sure what it's about, tbh.

DK by miles and miles.

yeah i think its about the wall. they say wall a lot.

the intro to the pistols song as far as shot heard round the world first moments on an album go is pretty hard to beat.

so funny that when i heard the pistols 8-track for the first time when i was a kid it really did sound like noise to me. i couldn't process it. and its really just distorted rockabilly. roots rockers. rockabilly -vs- surf rock. i thought these punks were supposed to be futuristic.

I remember buying that well after the fact and not knowing was the Sex Pistols would sound like. I had heard Black Flag and the Ramones and D.R.I., but that was basically it for punk. Put on the tape and heard the marching and figured, okay, this will probably sound more like D.R.I. then. Well the first guitar chord gets strummed and it's like, uh, this is Girls, Girls, Girls by Motley Crue.

he says he wants to go over the wall, under the wall, he doesn't understand this bit at all etc.

they just both seem like interesting examples of how the cold war informed punk rock world view (see also Rocket To Russia and the Ramones' hard-on for Cuba, Viet Nam and East Germany)

i had two of those huge double albums of jello spoken word at the store and they were there for so long and finally i made them a dollar and they just sat there FOREVER and finally i think i had to take them to the thrift store with other stuff cuz i couldn't look at them anymore. who on earth can sit through that stuff. "featuring jello biafra" is kinda like the "featuring talib kweli" of punk.

les claypool and jello biafra should make a record together. produced by danny elfman. featuring mc 900 foot jesus.

I had a jello spoken word triple album when I was a teen. Used to sit there listening to them things all day.

I had originally wrote "the jello spoken work triple album" before wisely checking his discography on wikipedia and learning that he released several subsequent triple albums.

amen clemenza

I met him once and he literally would not stop talking. We finally had to walk away from him fast after trying to say goodbye four or five times. I still love Fresh Fruit though.

Released September 9, 1994
Recorded April 15, 1994 - April 22, 1994
Genre Spoken word
Length 162:12
Label Alternative Tentacles
Producer Jello Biafra

Released October 27, 1998
Recorded April 27, 1996 - July 16, 1998
Genre Spoken word
Length 196:00
Label Alternative Tentacles
Producer Jello Biafra

Released October 17, 2000
Recorded January 27, 2000 - September 23, 2000
Genre Spoken word
Length 161:10
Label Alternative Tentacles
Producer Jello Biafra

Released October 15, 2002
Recorded August 3, 2002
Genre Spoken word
Length 3:11:07
Label Alternative Tentacles
Producer Jello Biafra

Released October 24, 2006
Recorded April 16, 2004 - July 23, 2006
Genre Spoken word
Length 3:54:09
Label Alternative Tentacles
Producer Jello Biafra

xp: not at all surprised.

one time I was chatting w a friend of mine at the local co-op grocery and somehow the topic of DKs came up and we both reminisced on times we had seen Jello around town. Apparently he comes into the co-op and hits on the young female employees. to which we both went "ew gross"

The playing on Cambodia, the vocals on Sun.

― Three Word Username, Tuesday, February 10, 2015 4:11 AM

I cosign this sentiment

"greeting, young cashier unit, did you know you are sheep that is being lied to, blah, blah, wanna go see a movie....???"

http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/content/images/Jello-Biafra.jpg

works every time.

Holiday in Cambodia

I want to explain why, but I can't. Also I've gotta give Jello some credit vs all of you, I think his vocals must hit me differently, hearing DK for the first time when I was young was a pure "holy fuck" moment for me in the way very little music really was. Def in the "wait music can do this?" category, which I never got from hearing the sex pistols. Or ramones, or most of the others.

I hear you - I definitely got the same rush when I first heard it from Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables and Cambodia in particular. Just a totally unique, tight and adventurous band and singer.

i loved fresh fruit! and the in god we trust EP and even plastic surgeries when it came out. i even bought a t-shirt and a dead kennedys book when i was a kid. at newbury comics. when newbury comics was way cool.

moon over marin was no cambodia though...though it was a good attempt. actually that riff in moon over marin is a good pistols riff.

Jello was cool in that Incredibly Strange Records book too.

JB's vocals can annoy me sometimes - I remember saying that he ruined the 80s hard rock poll playlist for me - but their OTT theatricality really works to deliver the sarcasm on "Holidays in Cambodia" for me. Rotten sounds a bit mechanical in comparison. The second verse of "Cambodia" about the middle management office worker always seemed more biting than the verse about the student to me and JB really spits it out with the needed bile.

Both are awesome. The lyrics of Holiday in Cambodia are a funny mockery of a couple of mostly American stereotypes of the time and also seem more prescient regarding tourism to developing countries etc. Even the bit about the businessman going on a slum vacation and maybe ending up getting his head removed seems relevant to stuff that is happening today with ISIS etc. Same thing with California Uber Alles - my kids actually DO mediatate in school now except they call it mindfullness.

Lyrically Holidays in the Sun doesn't seem too meaningful to me. But the riffage and production are about as good as it gets. Is it Griel Marcus that really goes into this song in a lot of depth in one of his books?

yeah, he talks a lot about it in Lipstick Traces iirc.

I don't know if its lyrics are meaningful, really, but they're totally great.

A misheard lyric for you, all together now,..

"Colllld.. HOT!
Colllld.. HOT!
Colllld.. HOT!
Colllld.. HOT!
..."

lol

always thought it was "Ray Charles snazz".

Curiously, California Uber Alles has proved itself the more malleable song, with Jello updating it to take on Reagan and Schwarzenegger. I even thought of doing a contemporary Brit version with my band. "It's the hipster beardy police, they have come for your chavvy neice."

does 'now i got a reasonable economy' refer to e. germany or the tourist?

"Holidays in the Sun"...the Dead Kennedys are America's the Clash, they suck.

I remember buying that well after the fact and not knowing was the Sex Pistols would sound like. I had heard Black Flag and the Ramones and D.R.I., but that was basically it for punk. Put on the tape and heard the marching and figured, okay, this will probably sound more like D.R.I. then. Well the first guitar chord gets strummed and it's like, uh, this is Girls, Girls, Girls by Motley Crue.

― how's life, Tuesday, February 10, 2015 10:27 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

see the reason i love bollocks so much is that it's basically just a supremely catchy, loud as hell, obnoxious, 70s glam arena rock album with an insane rabid rotten on lead vox

OTM

there's a quote in the This Heat box from an interview where they are talking about how they had heard about punk and were super excited, then they got the 1st Clash album and thought "this is just louder faster Chuck Berry" or something.

and it's like, yeah, maybe it is just sped-up rockabilly, but it was what was needed. plus, spitting.

it was among the first punk i heard and def was approachable because it seemed pretty in spirit to like bon scott AC/DC to me

but at the same time, rotten made it feel more scary to me than the clash or the ramones (which i had also heard) like i wouldn't have played the sex pistols if my mom could hear, but i would be fine w/the ramones

my mom was like "oh, the Sex Pistols? I've heard of them, let me hear it"

she was not impressed, but then again I also subjected her to Siouxsie, the Dead Kennedys, and early Current 93, so she had some points of reference

Rotten's vocals are definitely the scary out-of-control wild card that makes the album

I wonder how many young punk fans back in the day heard the criticism that the Sex Pistols ripped off Chuck Berry, go off and listen to Chuck Berry and then wonder what the fuck everyone is on about. Because that's what happened to me.

lol when i was a kid i was p disappointed in hearing the original which paled, in my opinion, to the Judas Priest cover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zxoGFjFJlk

but at the same time, rotten made it feel more scary to me than the clash or the ramones (which i had also heard) like i wouldn't have played the sex pistols if my mom could hear, but i would be fine w/the ramones

― kurt kobaïan (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, February 12, 2015 10:49 PM (16 minutes ago)

yeah, for sure. i always hear ppl say the sex pistols sound "tame" compared to (whoever) but rotten's vocals are really scary and in-your-face in a way that doesn't date at all imo, like i can still imagine some of the songs being disturbing to ppl who'd been brought up on any kind of music. i've heard "bodies" a hundred times and i still get a little creeped out by it.

i dunno about scary but rotten and olga from toy dolls are all time favorite comedy voices. jello's funny too i guess but johnny being obnoxious interview subject always seems funnier. has nardwuar ever interviewed rotten? nardwuar and jello are a pretty good comedy voice duo.

I wonder how many young punk fans back in the day heard the criticism that the Sex Pistols ripped off Chuck Berry, go off and listen to Chuck Berry and then wonder what the fuck everyone is on about. Because that's what happened to me.

I think I expected punk rock to sound much closer to blues-based 50s rock and roll before I heard the Sex Pistols (not that this happened at the time or close). It was fun and exhilarating to hear a stripped-down streamlined Alice Cooper instead.

(I'd sooner just put on Alice Cooper now obv.)

this made me listen to never mind the bollocks for the first time in ages and this album really holds up, every song is good

see the reason i love bollocks so much is that it's basically just a supremely catchy, loud as hell, obnoxious, 70s glam arena rock album with an insane rabid rotten on lead vox

― kurt kobaïan (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, February 12, 2015 5:35 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh yeah, nowadays I'm good with it. As a kid who was trying to get deeper into underground music after being a big hair metal guy, it felt like there wasn't as much of a difference as I was hoping for.

i had those beautiful 70's pistols 12 inches that came out in new zealand on virgin and man they sounded soooooo good. wow. like disco 12 inch loudness. a revelation. 70's punk was recorded so well. well, most punk was until 1985. the year everything died.

True. My introduction to the Pistols was hearing the 12" of Anarchy In The UK played really loudly at a friends house. Not sure how Chuck Berry was supposed to compare with that.

interesting that both narratives imagine going to places that were communist hellholes and impossible to reach for a westerner when the songs were written - both would be considered pretty cool vacation spots now

So the cover of "Holiday In Cambodia", which I won't post here, is actually from Thailand and depicts the aftermath of an attack on a left wing student rally by right wing paramilitaries and government forces.

It’s “I” vs “You” … like there is more critical detachment in Cambodia … I loved both songs as a teenager (over 30 years ago), and I come back to Cambodia more as an adult, probably because of the “You” detachment… it is easier to relate to as an old person. I don’t remember if it was partly inspired by the tankies of the time, but contemporary tankies make me think of it fondly.