Anyone who has read this article will realize that this isn't the Warsaw. Brett's photos, ahem, didn't come out. This picture of Jello Biafra is from our SXSW2001 feature, and was taken by Andrew Magilow.

For many, Jello probably dropped off the map after the demise of his seminal band. While he worked on other projects, including Tumor Circus and Lard (a collaboration with Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker of Ministry), his chief work has been in the field of political rabble-rousing. An inveterate Green Party stumper and Nader apologist, Biafra's long, strange, often chaotic, decidedly paranoid trip to become one of the most consistently interesting voices of the Left has been documented over the course of seven spoken-word records.

If you haven't had the pleasure, I suggest you pick one up. Biafra's style of speechifying -- part stand-up, part conspiracy loon, and part cogent newshound -- is addictive, and his spoken-word shows draw impressive crowds.

On the fifteenth, just such a crowd filtered into The Warsaw, which is technically called The Polish National Home in Greenpoint, but has started doubling as a concert hall in the last couple of years. This means that in addition to the evening's entertainment, patrons have the opportunity to buy reasonably priced and steaming plates full of pierogies, applesauce, sausage and "hunter's stew". A more appropriately off-kilter setting couldn't be hoped for.

Jello took the stage at about ten o'clock, beginning with his trademark declaration of martial law, an artifact from his first spoken-word release, No More Cocoons. Ironically, whereas in the late eighties the idea of martial law sounded ludicrously far-fetched to all but the most paranoid, the Patriot Act and our current level of national panic made the half-joking piece far more relevant than it had ever sounded in the past.

Biafra appeared onstage in a black trenchcoat and a beret, striving to look sinister in dark sunglasses, but far too amused with himself and his audience to project real menace. As the initial tirade ended, he pulled off the coat to reveal a policeman's uniform shirt, jeans, and an enormous, country-and-western style belt buckle. Let the ranting commence.

Biafra is a Leftist of the old school, and when I say old school, I mean the twenties-era trade unionist radical type Left. He's anti-WTO, anti-Free Trade, anti-genetically modified food, anti-death penalty, anti-corporate, pro-Chomsky, pro-Nader, pro-drug legalization, pro-maximum wage, etc., etc. He's equally convinced of the purity of his ideals and the moral bankruptcy of those who oppose them, and he preaches to the choir. He's the diametrical opposite of Rush Limbaugh in every way but these last, though he is far wittier, more energetic and more fun.

The familiar targets were immediately lined up to be gunned down. Biafra is vehemently opposed to a war in Iraq, suspicious of the Bush administration's motives and fearful of John Ashcroft. Of course, the above positions apply to any number of fairly moderate Americans, including yours truly. What sets Jello apart is his willingness to go the extra mile and draw almost totally untenable conclusions from his readings of laws, ideologies and people he disagrees with.

For example, in discussing a bill that would increase the penalties for some form of hacking, Biafra insisted that if one broke it, one would receive something on the order of a $200,000 fine and life imprisonment. Now, I feel certain that given the most extreme set of circumstances (probably involving prior convictions, among numerous other mitigating circumstances), said legislation could probably result in life imprisonment. Biafra has, in the past, similarly exaggerated his cases against Reagan, Bush, the WTO, etcetera; one gets the disturbing feeling, while watching him, that the reason that there aren't more calls of "Bullshit!" from the audience is that that audience is either ill-informed or as reflexively accepting of rhetoric with which they agree as are the Dittoheads Biafra derides.

This criticism aside, there is much that is great in watching Biafra work an audience. While he's a born showman, neither his voice nor his presence seems made for spoken word performance. It's even more remarkable, then, to feel, along with the rest of the crowd, the anger that boils up as he describes his struggles against his former bandmates (they sued him and won, on a host of rather spurious-sounding claims, and their recent animosity apparently stems from Jello's refusal to go along with the band's wishes to include the DKs' classic "Holiday In Cambodia" in a Levis commercial). The other subjects on which Biafra's arguments are most cogent concern censorship, the corporatization of America and the gradual dumbing-down of press coverage. One highlight was a seemingly unending stream of banal and/or out of touch Newsweek and Time covers, which drew both peals of laughter and gasps of dismay from the crowd.

At 12:15, after he had been speaking for more than two and a half hours, Jello announced "intermission". I would have loved to stay and hear the rest. Really, I would, but I had a day job to get to in...well, a few hours. I'm sure that those who stayed enjoyed every minute of it, both the insightful and the outrageous.

Article by Brett McCallon.