POP REVIEW : Rocker Jello Biafra Still on His Free-Thought Mission

Erstwhile punk-rocker Jello Biafra’s last appearance in Los Angeles was last August outside a downtown courtroom.

Obscenity charges against him had just been dropped and he spoke passionately about the importance of freedom of speech: Jello Biafra--poster boy for the anti-censorship movement.

Watching Biafra, 29, returning Tuesday to top a night of spoken-word performances before a capacity crowd of 500 at the Roxy, there was little to indicate that he had been embroiled in that much-publicized courtroom drama.

It was business as usual for the former leader of the Dead Kennedys and 1979 San Francisco mayoral candidate. And that was both good and bad.

On one hand, it was nice to see that Biafra--an intense, animated performer--was not bent on exploiting the notoriety that resulted from the trial. (The charge involved distributing a painting by Swiss artist H.R. Giger depicting male and female genitalia, a poster of which was included in the band’s 1985 “Frankenchrist” album.)

Rather than come on as the self-appointed conscience of a generation, Biafra made a point of encouraging members of the highly supportive audience to reach their own conclusions, even berating them several times for being willing to go along with anything he said.

Biafra is still a man on a mission. It’s just that the mission is much the same as before his boost in fame: to battle against complacency and for free thought.

Also on the positive side, there was little shock-for-shock’s-sake in this show. Though including scattered elements of profanity and brutality, Biafra’s language and imagery was quite mild compared with a Robin Williams performance, let alone one by Sam Kinison.

Yet Biafra hasn’t used his higher profile to move beyond broadsides he’s been hurling since emerging with the Dead Kennedys a decade ago.

At the Roxy, he ranted about the usual easy targets--Tipper Gore (the Parents Music Resource Center co-founder whose Beverly Hills speech earlier in the day had been picketed by about 200 demonstrators, including Biafra), Pat Robertson, Ollie North, Madison Avenue, punk and heavy metal deprogrammers.

Provocative but obvious were lines like: “If we judge all people who like AC/DC by the Night Stalker, does that mean we should judge all people who believe in God by (John Lennon killer) Mark Chapman?”

Biafra is less a satirist than a commentator, and the fact that he read most of his lines gave the performance a clunky, programmed air. What would have been noteworthy as an off-the-cuff observation seemed ponderous as a written diatribe.

Encouraging, though, was the fact that the audience--most apparently in their 20s--responded to Biafra’s give-and-take manner. What started as a very inappropriately devotional follow-the-leader event quickly became more freewheeling, with the best moments coming during some quick, spontaneous exchanges between performer and members of the audience.

And though Biafra was the nominal headliner of the evening, the real star seemed to be the ghost of the Doors’ Jim Morrison, who is more responsible than anyone for rockers taking themselves seriously as poets.

“Jim Morrison . . . just refuses to stay dead,” said former Morrison confidant and Doors historian Danny Sugerman, reading from his upcoming book “Wonderland Avenue.”

And that, more than Biafra’s presence, directed the tone of the evening. People squealed and applauded every time Morrison’s name was dropped by Sugerman or the duo of poet Michael McClure and ex-Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek (who offered tedious post-beat poetry and light, jazzy piano, respectively).

An opening presentation by Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell, which had nothing to do with Morrison, was a different matter. Using a flat conversational tone on a piece revolving around the word trauma and punctuated by a series of phone calls, Farrell displayed a sharp eye for detail and sense of timing.

Fortunately, though, Sugerman had the courage to tackle the morbid romance many young people have with Morrison (who died of a heart attack at age 27 in 1971), and his memoirs serve as a chilling cautionary tale against excess of all kinds:

“Jim Morrison . . . it was all for naught,” he read. “We got his life, but he got zip.”