The Record That Changed My Life: Dennis Lyxzén on Dead Kennedy’s – Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death (1987)

With 15, I was living in a small working-class town in the north of Sweden. I was a metal-head back then and was just starting to approach hardcore and punk, I only had a very vague idea of either. In my area there weren’t any punks, nothing happened in Sweden in that regard, there were no bands. Punk was generally pretty dead in 1987. One day I bought Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death by the Dead Kennedys in nearby Umea. Somebody had told me that they were the world’s fastest band. Which of course was not true, but back then I thought: “I have to have that!”

I went to my friend Tommy’s, with whom I was playing in a band back then, a band that was going from metal to punk. We put on the record in his basement. I remember hearing the first song “Police Truck” and immediately knowing that nothing would be as it was before. I had been a rebel as metalhead, but a rebel without a cause. I had no clue why I was so angry. That changed when I started listening to the Dead Kennedys. They talked about politics, about being an outsider, and they explained that it was not you who was the problem, but the fucking rest of the world. I started studying Jello Biafra‘s lyrics. That changed my entire view of the world. The very next day our band was playing punkrock and I was wearing a mohawk and Doc Martens. Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death is the reason why I still love hardcore and punk and stuck with it. Today I still get goose bumps when “Police Truck” is playing somewhere.

by Dennis Lyxzén (Refused)