Trnfest 2013 Gets Shock-cupied!

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik

Location: Ljubljana / Trnfest (KUD France Prešeren) / Slovenia
Concert date: August 21, 2013
Attendance: 500
Ticket price: €0.00 (free entry)

If any gig ever landed in Slovenia’s August »dead zone« like it was ordered, then this one definitely belongs in the series of such meteors of »enlightenment«: a visit from the »almost-congressional rascal« who ran for president in 2000 as the Green Party candidate (sounds unbelievable, but apparently the US has a Green Party too). This tireless “rider with faith in a better tomorrow” goes by the name of Jello Biafra. Head, beard and all. Everyone took him to heart as the former member of the cult San Francisco punk rock outfit Dead Kennedys, and for a few years now he’s been buddying up with new musical challenges. In 2009 he put out his first album with his backing band The Guantanamo School Of Medicine, and RockLine first caught Jello with the “Guantanamo crew” on the FreQuency festival stage back in 2009! The KUD show was the second visit for Jello and company. Three years ago they played CUK Kino Šiška in Ljubljana!

How do you throw an orgy? Nothing easier. Jello is the right man for the job. With a second album in the pocket with his backing band Guantanamo School Of Medicine, titled »White People and the Damage Done«, he’s got a fresh authorial document on his hands! No holding back and a finger right in the eye! Even a blind man couldn’t miss it! The quintet presented it in Ljubljana in a massive way!

No. Jello doesn’t go to bed with the chickens. The rules for gigs at Trnfest are strict. The people around KUD, you see, like their sleep. Apparently the average age at this end of Ljubljana is strictly north of 70. Joking aside! The Trnovo locals just can’t stomach the sweet sounds of alternative rock culture, so the evening’s art has to wrap up fast in this part of Ljubljana. I showed up pretty late myself, but the sight that greeted me was worth every sin! The KUD courtyard was packed to the rafters! Your heart skips a beat on the spot! Insane energy. The quintet on stage ecstatic and unbridled. Jello in great spirits, harnessed to athletic, acrobatic bits of stage theater, including throwing himself off the stage into the crowd, which carried him along on their hands. A master of words, a master of the sermon. We got two flies with one swat at this show. As much truth as Jello served up to everyone present this evening, through the spoken word or through bursts of testosterone in the songs from the new album »White People and the Damage Done«, you don’t hear at public rallies these days, when the censorship of free speech and thought is getting tighter and tighter. At one point near the end Biafra let slip: »Remember! Money isn’t everything. It’s not the first thing!« And that gets you thinking. What the hell does the dark side –the ones who take– have to say to that? The ones because of whom most of us live badly today and the planet is dying nonstop. They probably tell themselves something like: »Great! Keep thinking like that, there’ll be even more left for us!« You never get to the bottom of it, and it’s clear that only one road remains, called »Back to the Woods«, which we won’t live to see anymore. We’ve become a blind mob that would rather »slaughter each other« over trifles than come together and hit where it’s needed. Thoughts like these and similar ones were all over the KUD grounds that evening. Jello gave us a proper wake-up call!

Back to the gig. Jello is an exceptional performer. Of course there’s no need to waste words saying Jello is a fantastic creator of big show theater! He does it with the pinky of his left hand, visibly enjoys it, and people eat out of his hand! His tongue runs sharp as a razor. Every song the quintet tackled on stage was ushered in with a long spoken intro in which he poured out his bile over the injustice ruling the world. Delusions, delusions, delusions. And delusions. Of the white man!

The crowd was bursting with surplus debauched punk rock energy and the front rows sweated out hectoliters. The smell of boozy exhaled fumes hung everywhere. A classic scene! The stage kept welcoming one overheated head after another, craving a »free jump and fall« into the audience’s arms. The band’s head tech had to step onto the stage quite a few times to check that all the cables were still connected the way they should be. KUD was in a trance. Jello Biafra’s charisma knows no limits. In his theater the man took several staged tumbles to the floor, rolled around the stage, got into the roles of an airplane, a soldier, a complete idiot, an arrogant politician, a corrupt greedy bastard and so on. Boundlessly entertaining kinetics of the unfolding events on stage! There wasn’t a moment that didn’t deliver full-blooded fun in shock therapy! Most people naturally expected Jello and the crew to play mostly Dead Kennedys songs. But they didn’t overdo it with those: Chemical Warfare, CA Über Alles, Nazi Punks Fuck Off, then Kill the Poor in the encore, plus a surprise in the encore with Police Truck and the expected Holiday in Cambodia. No Too Drunk To Fuck this time. The new material from The Guantanamo Medicine Of School is really a logical continuation of the legendary band’s character and work. And it works fantastically! No joke!

Jello Biafra and the crew, made up of Ralph Spight (guitar), Kimo Ball (guitar), Larry Boothroyd (bass guitar) and Paul Della Pelle (drums), kept building the gig up. From song to song through the repertoire. It got hotter and hotter in Trnovo! With that in mind, Jello saved up for the closing stretch one of his favorite original creations of the new era, called Shock U-Py, which he stretched into a punk rock epic of more than ten minutes, slipping into several different characters along the way, including a superb impression of war veterans who in 2013 are still looking for the enemy in the Nazis and singing an ode to joy to Benjamin Franklin. To that end Jello masterfully transformed into a real doddering old man with a trembling voice who sees only things to fear all around him – the kind of lunatic whose brain goes sour in old age,

The sound was fantastic. Both guitars built a crumbling, authentic sonic backdrop, a ruin of untamed rock ‘n’ roll detonation driven by the dissonant culture of punk! A better and more authentic show was really not something we could have wished for this time. Jello is one hell of a man. A bright spot, a bright example of what the point of punk is! The KUD courtyard was literally bursting at the seams this time, and the gig was over in a flash. An hour and a half of ruthless punk rock arrogance and wagging a middle finger at those who did the damage. White people. The ones who took and are still taking, and the ones we let take – the silent observers, that is! Let’s hope the great awakener Jello returns to our parts soon. His performance is a textbook example of what a real sermon should look like. And a mass!