Holiday+in+Cambodia

**Dead Kennedys** are an American punk rock band, formed in San Francisco, California in 1978. Pioneers of hardcore during the 1980s, the band gained a large underground following in the international punk music scene. Their music mixed the more experimental elements of British 1970s punk with the raw energy of the 1980s American hardcore punk scene. Dead Kennedys' songs mixed deliberately shocking lyrics with satirical and sarcastic critical of social and political issues of the Reagan era.

**Holiday in Cambodia**" was the second single by the American punk band Dead Kennedys, realised in May 1980. The cover picture of the single is taken from the 6th October 1976 Massacre in Thailand, and depicts a member of the rightist crowd beating the corpse of a student protester with a metal chair.



The song attacks both Eastern totalitarianism and Western complacency. The song's lyrics offer a satirical view of young, self-righteous Americans (So you been to school/For a year or two/And you know you’ve seen it all/In daddy’s car/Thinkin’ you’ll go far...) and contrast such a lifestyle with a brutal depiction of the Pol Pot regime of Cambodia (Well you’ll work harder/With a gun in your back/For a bowl of rice a day/Slave for soldiers/Till you starve/Then your head is skewered on a stake).