Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables

The band's first album was released by Cherry Red in the UK and by I.R.S. in the US, and later by Alternative Tentacles. It is the only Dead Kennedys studio album with Ted on drums. The band recorded it in June 1980, and Oliver DiCicco and John Cuniberti are credited as engineers. The front cover shows police cars on fire in the White Night riots of 21 May 1979, which followed the light sentence given to Dan White for the murders of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. The back cover originally carried a found photograph of a lounge band, Sounds of Sunshine, with the Dead Kennedys logo pasted onto the drum kit. The lounge band's singer threatened to sue, and later pressings changed the picture. The run-out groove of early pressings reads: Well?? Who are the Brain Police???

Of the fourteen songs, thirteen are originals and the last is a cover of Viva Las Vegas. Two of the best known, California Über Alles and Holiday in Cambodia, had already appeared on singles and were re-recorded here. Kill the Poor opens the record.

Release and reception

The album reached number 33 on the UK Albums Chart. Reviewing it in 1981, Robert Christgau gave it a C plus and wrote that it sounded as if Jello Biafra had discovered the Stooges in 1977. Jon Young of Trouser Press wrote that it might be the only legitimate companion piece to the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks. In 2013 NME placed it at number 365 in its list of the 500 greatest albums, and the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die includes it. In 2010 the Independent Music Companies Association certified it diamond for sales of at least 250,000 copies in Europe, and in December 2023 the RIAA certified it gold.

A 25th anniversary edition in 2005 added a 55-minute DVD documentary, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Eyeballs. Pitchfork's Cory D. Byrom wrote that the opening bass notes of Holiday in Cambodia are some of the most sinister sounds punk rock ever produced. PopMatters' Mike Schiller said the album stuffs more vitriol into 33 minutes than most bands can muster in a career. Manifesto released a remix by Chris Lord-Alge in September 2022. Biafra criticized the remix in a press release, and told the San Francisco Chronicle that anyone wanting to hear the album at its best probably already had.