“Shut up. Be happy. Everything you demanded is now commanded.” Jello Biafra is stalking the stage at Northwestern University, goose-stepping from one end to the other. He wears a black leather trench coat, black boots. His face is obscured by dark glasses and the script trembling in his hand.
Neither Jeff nor Mike looks particularly punky, however. Neither one is wearing black or any of the usual metallic accessories associated with the old Sex Pistols look. In fact they appear rather safe, in pastels and jeans faded almost to white. Mike has a new red gym bag between his feet.
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Jeff turns to Mike and shrugs. “Performance art, I think.” Mike throws open his hands, resigned to the possibility.
For Biafra, everything he’s doing is about rock ‘n’ roll. The whole show, the whole performance, is consumed with a singular, almost unbelievable mission: he’s got to save rock ‘n’ roll. It’s not madness that grips him but the kind of anger that comes from having been slapped around.
In August 1987, Biafra was acquitted when the jury deadlocked. But the case haunts him, as his show at Northwestern evidenced. For Biafra, his arrest is the result of the land of the free’s ever-constricting definitions of freedom. “They didn’t go after the big guys,” Biafra rails. “They went after the little guy who manufactures his own record.” He points out that the record-store chain that actually sold Frankenchrist was miraculously left off the indictment list.
Mike’s eyelids are dropping. Jeff shifts in his seat. Mike touches Jeff’s elbow and with a jerk of the head signals toward the exit. “Wanna go shoot some baskets?” he asks. Jeff nods. They get up wordlessly and disappear through the door.
“Yeah,” beams a boy. He’s terribly pleased with himself.
