Fun with Jello

Jello Biafra is busy looking for a few unchallenged minds. Because he’s bringing his national spoken-word tour to Topeka, he’s hopeful about his prospects.

“Nowadays it seems as though it’s been a bit more preaching to the choir,” says the Dead Kennedys alum and Alternative Tentacles record-label head who sought the Green Party presidential nomination in 2000. “But I think in a place like Topeka, it means a lot to people just to show up and find that many people from the same town in the same room who hate the Bush agenda as much as they do.”

Biafra has never been shy about exactly who and what he hates. He made headlines for his role in the Seattle World Trade Organization protests and for his obscenity trial in the ’80s. But he’s spent more time telling the news than appearing in it, from the lyrics of his seminal punk band’s “California Uber Alles” to recent spoken-word tracks about where the “War on Terror, Inc.” went wrong.

“It’s gotten to the point where corporate media is as dumbed down as Pravda was,” Biafra explains. “But instead of keeping the public in the dark through lack of information, they do it by snowing us with useless information.” With shows that last as long as four hours, Biafra attempts to reverse the trend, digging under the surface of issues such as why we’re fighting in Iraq and the implications of unchecked corporate power.

Using a rallying call he’s yelled since the first Gulf War — “Don’t hate the media; become the media” — Biafra says changing minds isn’t as hard as it seems. “The most important part of becoming the media is talking to people one on one at home, in school or even in your own family.”

The underlying message of Biafra’s spoken-word show in Topeka is just as simple. “We’re not as alone as we think we are.”