Plastic Surgery Disasters is the second full-length album released by punk rock band Dead Kennedys. Recorded in San Francisco during June 1982, it was produced by the band and punk record producer Thom Wilson, with Geza X getting a "special thanks" underneath the DK's/Wilson credit for additional production. (DK's guitarist East Bay Ray redundantly added his own name to the production credits on Manifesto reissues of the album.) The album is darker and more hardcore-influenced than their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables as a result of the band trying to expand on the sound and mood they had achieved with their 1980 single "Holiday in Cambodia".[10] It was the first full-length album to feature drummer D.H. Peligro, and is frontman Jello Biafra's favorite Dead Kennedys album.[11]
The album's cover features the band's name superimposed over the black-and-white photograph "Hands" by photojournalist Michael Wells. Wells's photo depicts the emaciated forearm and hand of a malnourished Ugandan child in the palm of a European missionary to highlight the horrors of famine in parts of the African continent during the 1970s and 80s. The same image was used by another San Francisco-based punk band called Society Dog for their 1981 EP .....Off of the Leash..
Most pressings of the album include a booklet containing lyrics and pieces of collage artwork by Biafra and Winston Smith that thematically tie in to the lyrics of each song on the album.
Track listings
On the album's original vinyl and cassette releases, the A-side comprises tracks 1–8, ending with “Winnebago Warrior”, and the B-side tracks 9–13, kicking off with “Riot”. Some reissues parse out Melissa Webber's spoken intro to the album from the opening song, "Government Flu", and list it as a separate track entitled "Advice from Christmas Past". Similarly, Webber's spoken outro after "Moon Over Marin" revisits "Advice from Christmas Past" and is listed as such on some editions of the album.
All tracks are written by Jello Biafra, except when specified
The compact disc of the album has been reissued to include the EP In God We Trust, Inc. as eight tracks added onto its end and also appear on streaming versions of Plastic Surgery Disasters.
^Ray Flores (1 July 2000). "Jello Biafra". Juice Magazine. p. 52. Archived from the original on 10 October 2014. Retrieved 31 August 2014. Interviewer: "Who else influenced you?" Jello Biafra: "...When I wrote Plastic Surgery Disasters, the main stuff I was listening to was Bauhaus, Les Baxter and The Groundhogs."
