Pull My Strings (lost footage from Dead Kennedys live performance; existence unconfirmed; 1980)
A photograph of the band taken on the night.
Status: Lost
The Bay Area Music awards, also known as the 'Bammies', was a yearly awards show held in San Francisco where well known bands from the city would perform, the winner would then be selected through viewer polls. For the 1980 Bay Area Music awards, the event was to open with the punk rock band Dead Kennedys where they were scheduled to play their increasingly popular song, 'California Über Alles'
The band came on stage wearing white shirts with a black 'S' spray painted onto them and started to play the first few seconds of the song, where then lead singer, Jello Biafra, stopped them and said.
"Hold it! We gotta prove we're adults now, we're not a punk rock band we're a new wave band" After this, the members each pulled a black necktie from behind their necks and brought it to the front to turn the "S" on their shirts into dollar symbols. They then begun to play a new song called 'Pull My Strings'.
The songs lyrics insult the music industry in a satirical but lighthearted way, with the opening lines being: "I'm tired of self-respect, I can't afford a car, I wanna be a prefab superstar". Other notable sections of the song include short portions of the song being a parody of the song 'My Sharona' by The Knack, a huge hit song at the time, where they play the chorus of this song and replace the words with "Drool, drool, drool, drool, drool, drool, my payola", payola being the illegal practice of record companies paying radio hosts to play specific songs and have them act like it is just a normal part of their broadcast.
The f