"Those Dumb Punk Kids (Will Buy Anything)" is a song by Jello Biafra and The Melvins. It appears on their second album Sieg Howdy and was composed by Biafra and Melvins guitarist Buzz Osborne.
The main target of the song is Biafra's former band Dead Kennedys, who sued Biafra in 1998 in order to gain control of the band's master tapes. (See the entries for both Mr. Biafra and Dead Kennedys for details on the case.) The song title derives from a quote by Dead Kennedys guitarist East Bay Ray that Biafra has been recalling in recent spoken word performances: "(He) always used to say that our own fans were so dumb that they'd buy anything, and that 'nobody believes that political shit anymore'."
In the lyrics, Biafra blasts his former bandmates for being greedy, for tainting what the band stood for by doing a reunion tour "for all the wrong reasons", only "playing hits from the good old days/About how bad the good old days were" (a lyric borrowed from Biafra's 1993 song "Buy My Snake Oil"), performing live without any rehearsal, and having "a former child star" (referring to Brandon Cruz) "who doesn't even know the words" taking Biafra's place.
Semi-facetiously, Biafra claims that this "new" Dead Kennedys lineup could start a precedent where other former child stars take the place of original lead vocalists in classic punk bands, hypothesizing that Frankie Muniz would front The Misfits, Black Flag's new frontman would be Gary Coleman, and that The Germs would return with Emmanuel Lewis substituting for Darby Crash (The Germs recently reunited with actor Shane West, who portrays Crash in What We Do Is Secret, as lead singer). Biafra also fears that, using the same precedent, Courtney Love would lead her late husband Kurt Cobain's band Nirvana "at last".
The song concludes by referring to the Sex Pistols' infamous collaboration with Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, suggesting that with that precedent in mind, Enron's Ken Lay could be the next lead singer of Dead Kennedys (although on the record, Biafra substitutes Martha Stewart's name instead, even though Stewart had not embezzled from her own company as Lay did with Enron.)
The song was recorded during the sessions for Never Breathe What You Can't See, but could not be released until after the Biafra vs. Dead Kennedys trial had been concluded.
Famous quotes containing the words dumb, punk and/or kids:
“Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
“When there’s no future
How can there be sin
We’re the flowers in the dustbin
We’re the poison in your human machine
We’re the future
Your future
God Save the Queen”
—The Sex Pistols, British punk band (1976-1979)
“Take two kids in competition for their parents’ love and attention. Add to that the envy that one child feels for the accomplishments of the other; the resentment that each child feels for the privileges of the other; the personal frustrations that they don’t dare let out on anyone else but a brother or sister, and it’s not hard to understand why in families across the land, the sibling relationship contains enough emotional dynamite to set off rounds of daily explosions.”
—Adele Faber (20th century)