Na het uiteenvallen van de Dead Kennedys begon zanger Jello Biafra een solocarriëre, waarbij hij incidenteel samenwerkte met sterk door zijn oude groep beïnvloede bands als D.O.A. en NoMeansNo. Van deze projecten is Last Scream Of The Missing Neighbors in mijn ogen de beste. Hoogtepunt is het 14 minuten durende Full Metal Jackoff ( een verwijzing naar Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnamfilm Full Metal Jacket). Biafra’s waarschuwing voor de wijze waarop de staat angstgevoelens exploiteert om burgerrechten af te schaffen en de bevolking onder permanent toezicht te plaatsen is in het post-9/11 tijdperk actueler dan ooit: “finally gotcha psyched for a police state”.
Around our nation’s capital
There’s a freeway 8 lanes wide
White concrete ringed around the city
For those who want inside
Get on get off
Ignore everything to the sides
In your midst I drive
While homeboys in the back of the van make drugs
Wanna hide something like a crack lab
Just put it in plain sight
Only stop to refuel and unload
More poison to tear more lives apart
Whole neighborhoods are going psycho
Gang wars like never before
Better lock your doors, buy some guns
And pray for martial law
On the Washington D.C. Beltway
Around and around I go
In the black van with no windows
And a chimney puffing smoke
Bloody headlines in the news each day
Drug “crisis” everywhere
So much comes in so easy
It’s as though someone wants it there
It would be a little obvious
To fence off all the slums
Hand out machine guns
To the poor in the projects
And watch ‘em kill each other off
A more subtle genocide is when
The only hope for the young
Is to join the Army and slowly die
Wall Street or Crack Dealer Avenue
The last roads left to the American Dream
Wall Street or Crack Dealer Avenue
Only on road leads to this neighborhood
Little kids wanna sell drugs when they grow up
The folks might get just a little upset
If they knew where that dope comes from
From Columbia to the Contras
To our Air Force bases, where we trade it for guns
The moral equivalent of a serial killer
And his CIA friends
Call the shots from the White House
But now that we own the media too
Those stories just don’t run
On the Washington D.C. Beltway, ‘round and ‘round I go
In a black van with no windows, and a chimney puffing smoke
Same gang that ran smack in Viet Nam
Ain’t got no reason to fear
Just get a Vice President so dumb
The crook at the top never gets impeached
That sure was easy wasn’t it?
More crack-more panic- more cops- more jails
You see emergency-total war
You see a black face-you see a crackhead
You see a black face-you see Willie Horton with a knife
You see Willie Horton with a knife
You see one Willie Horton you’ve seen them all
They’re everywhere, I know
You asked for it, you’ve got it
Drug suspects have no rights at all
Property seized and sold before trial
Labor camps-on American soil!
Neo-Nazi bootboys
That the cops never seem to arrest
Prowl neighborhoods with baseball bats
Why do they get so much press… ?
Mein Kampf-the mini series
Ollie North-“patriotic” hero
The leader for tomorrow is yours today
Finally gotcha psyched for a police state
On the Washington D.C. Beltway
Around and around I go
In a black van with no windows
And a chimney puffing smoke
My van’s a mobile oven now
That burns the bodies you never see
Just like in Chile or Guatemala
People just seem to disappear
Just like Rome
We fell asleep when we got spoiled
Ignore human rights in the rest of the world
You might as well lose your own
As the noose of narco-militarism
Tightens ‘round our necks
We worry about burning flags
And pee in jars at work
To keep our jobs
But if someone came for you one night
And dragged you away
Do you really think your neighbors
Would even care…
Ollie for president, he’ll get things done!
