Former Dead Kennedys lead man Jello Biafra shakes up the Planet.

The first issue punk rock legend Jello Biafra would tackle if he were elected president – and he actually ran for mayor of San Francisco in 1979 and finished third out of nine – is corruption. 


“That’s the key to everything else,” Biafra says. “It’s corruption that keeps us from doing what’s necessary.”


The former frontman of the seminal punk band Dead Kennedys, playing on Thursday at Planet Gemini with The Guantanamo School of Medicine, is as passionate about politics as he is about music.


“Other people obsess about the daily status of their stock portfolio,” Biafra says. “I’ve been a news junkie since I was old enough to walk. Current events and music is where that part of my mind goes.” 


It’s where his sound goes, though, that has made Biafra’s sound strikingly distinguishable: His sarcastic twang ingrains itself in listeners’ heads. 


“Someday, if I have the right opportunity, I’m going to have an imitate Jello Biafra contest,” he says. “I’d get rid of it if I could, but I began to realize, even as a teenager, that a lot of my favorite singers were people who weren’t necessarily opera-trained or had Robert Plant’s range, it was people whose voices you could recognize instantly, like Roky Erickson and Iggy Pop.” 


He used his voice with the Kennedys to churn out many hits like “Too Drunk to F*” and “California Über Alles.” In 1986, the Kennedys were taken to trial in Los Angeles for obscenity on the album Frankenchrist. The charges were subsequently dropped, but the ordeal led to the punk outfit’s disbandment. 


Since then, Biafra has had his hand in various spoken word and music projects. His latest incarnation, Jello Biafra and The Guantanamo School of Medicine – featuring former Ween and Rollins Band member Andrew Weiss on bass, his brother Jon on drums, and Ralph Spight and Kimo Ball on guitar – unleashes an avalanche of proto-punk, noise and the paranoid angst that the Dead Kennedys used to unload. 


Its 2009 debut, Audacity of Hype (a satirical take on Obama’s biography), is flooded with crusty anthems like “I Won’t Give Up,” featuring charged lyrics: “Here’s the ads, then we vote and someone wins/ That’s all we’re allowed to really change.”


TGSOM’s new EP, Enhanced Methods of Questioning, will be released sometime in the near future. 


For Biafra, it doesn’t stop with music or politics: He says he dusted off his acting skills (he had a cameo in the cult classic, Tapeheads, in 1988 and a handful of other B-movies) this year to play a dual role in Ani Kyd’s short film, I Love You, I am the Porn Queen.


His primary passion, however, remains punk rock, just not with the group that changed the face of fast and loud music – in other words, a reunion is not in the offing. 


“Our values aren’t the same, and we have next to nothing in common except we had a really cool band at one time,” Biafra says. “I’d rather play new songs with a band that cares about me as a human being. We may do a little Dead Kennedys, but this is a new band here to play new songs and once people hear the new songs, they don’t seem to mind.” 


JELLO BIAFRA AND THE GUANTANAMO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, with special guests .45 Grave and Thee Swank Bastards, happens 7pm Thursday, April 21, at Planet Gemini, 2110 N. Fremont St., Monterey. $12 advance; $15 door. 373-1449.