This is a song about Ronald Reagan… mostly. For those of you not old enough to know who Ronald Reagan was, he was a B-Movie actor. He was also a douchebag supreme.
Also, a real prick. But he was physically strong.
Anyway, Dead Kennedys were the first band I listened to that wasn’t mid 80s top 40 pop. Hooray!
I believe that “In God We Trust, Inc.” was one of the first albums I ever bought too… maybe the 5th or 6th cassette I bought. My Canadian version didn’t have the helpful and hilarious blank side B, but since it had the same album on both sides, it allowed me to choose the stronger audio signal to digimify when I mikeified it. (Translation: I copied my cassette to CD and cleaned up the audio.)
And what a fucking epic 14 minute album! The finest punk rock album ever recorded, IHMO (In High Mumble Opinion).
There’s a story behind this album, and I will now attempt to tell it from memory. The Dead Kennedys recorded this album twice. The first time, which got filmed, is what you can see in the first YouTube link above. Fortunately, as it turned out, the tape they used to record the album suffered from “cracking” and everything they recorded had to be junked.
This made the band angry, and they re-recorded the whole album at another studio. Their anger made the tunes come out MUCH better. And that’s why you can hear so much more energy in the second version.
If you’re in the mood to hear some of the best Punk Rock ever recorded, buy this album. If you find it packaged with the “Plastic Surgery Disasters” album, then you might as well pick that one up too because it also rocks.
Oh, and before I forget to mention it… this song is a re-working of their song “California Uber Alles”.