Телерепортаж о суде над Биафрой, 1987 год

The two-week trial of former Dead Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra ended on August 27th in a victory for the singer when a Los Angeles jury was unable to reach a verdict. Biafra and Michael Bonanno, the former manager of Biafra’s record label, Alternative Tentacles, were charged with distributing harmful matter to a minor. It was apparently the first court case to scrutinize the contents of a rock album. The jurors deliberated a little more than a day before declaring themselves stalemated, causing the judge to declare a mistrial and throw out the case. The charges followed a consumer complaint about a poster of disembodied sex organs included in the Dead Kennedys’ 1985 album Frankenchrist. The insert was reproduced from a painting by artist H.R. Giger called “Penis Landscape“. The singer’s defense was that the poster was both a liters and a figurative illustration of “people screwing each other over“ and therefore an integral element of the entire LP’s concept, w