Jello Biafra

Eric Reed Boucher (born June 17, 1958), known professionally as Jello Biafra, is an American singer, spoken word artist and political activist. He is the former lead singer and songwriter for the San Francisco punk rock band Dead Kennedys.

Initially active from 1979 to 1986, Dead Kennedys were known for rapid-fire music topped with Biafra's sardonic lyrics and biting social commentary, delivered in his "unique quiver of a voice". When the band broke up in 1986, he took over the influential independent record label Alternative Tentacles, which he had founded in 1979 with Dead Kennedys bandmate East Bay Ray. In a 2000 lawsuit, upheld on appeal in 2003 by the California Supreme Court, Biafra was found liable for breach of contract, fraud, and malice in withholding a decade's worth of royalties from his former bandmates and ordered to pay over $200,000 in compensation and punitive damages; the band subsequently reformed without Biafra. Although now focused primarily on spoken word performances, Biafra has continued as a musician in numerous collaborations. From 1979 to 1981, he contributed to the San Francisco punk zine Damage. He has also occasionally appeared in cameo roles in films.

Politically, Biafra is a member of the Green Party of the United States and supports various political causes. He ran for the party's presidential nomination in the 2000 presidential election, finishing a distant second to Ralph Nader. In 1979 he ran for mayor of San Francisco, California. He is a supporter of a free society and utilizes shock value and advocates direct action and pranksterism in the name of political causes. Biafra uses absurdist media tactics, in the leftist tradition of the Yippies, to highlight issues of civil rights and social justice.

Eric Reed Boucher was born in Boulder, Colorado, the son of Virginia Boucher (née Parker), a librarian, and Stanley Wayne Boucher, a psychiatric social worker and poet. His sister, Julie J. Boucher, was associate director of the Library Research Service at the Colorado State University Library; she died in a mountain-climbing accident on October 12, 1996.

As a child, Boucher developed an interest in international politics, encouraged by his parents. He became a fan of rock music after his parents accidentally tuned in to a rock radio station. As a teenager, his high school guidance counselor advised him to spend his adolescence preparing to become a dental hygienist.

In 1977, he worked as a road crew member for a local band called the Ravers — later called The Nails — helping set up their equipment at shows, including as an opener for the Ramones. The job ended shortly after the Ramones show, when the Ravers were offered a record contract and left Colorado. Boucher credits seeing Joey Ramone as inspiration to become a singer, and the Ramones lyrics for inspiring the use of humor in his own songs.

Shortly after graduating from high school, he formed a band called the Healers, with John Greenway and a third musician. Boucher has described the Healers' music as "banging on instruments we didn't know how to play when our parents weren't home". While never playing a show, the band made recordings, including an early version of "California Über Alles", but did not want any of it to be released to the public. Some of their music was made available on a 2009 compilation of late 1970s Colorado punk bands titled Rocky Mountain Low, including the original version of "California Über Alles", which Maximum Rocknroll described as experimental improv in their review.

Boucher left Boulder to attend the University of California, Santa Cruz but dropped out after the first quarter of the school year.