The most any of us could really claim to be concerned with in grade five was handball and picking fruit roll ups out of our teeth. But for inspiring pre-teen punk fan Taylor-Ruth, such silly childhood distractions were set aside to fight the good punk fight against “the man” and fascism.
The Indianapolis native apparently penned a letter of angst and innocence to storied punk band the Dead Kennedys when she was in the fifth grade, and it’s a mix of not-so-punk heart-dotted ‘i’s and cutesy butterflies, bolted together with an attitude well beyond her years.
The burgeoning DKs fan’s letter, which recently caught the eye of former frontman Jello Biafra, tells the story of how she came to discover the band, taking on a librarian who dared stand in the way of borrowing CDs with curse words in them.
“I had to promise Ms Jervis I am 15. I am not yet but I think that lying does not count at the library,” Taylor-Ruth muses defiantly.
Having straight up given stupid old Ms Jervis the middle finger, Taylor-Ruth’s appetite for rebellion only emboldens, writing that any enemy of the Dead Kennedys is an enemy of hers.
“I have noticed in a lot of the CDs that the singers do not like the man. They even cuss at him! I do not know who the man is. Maybe it’s Bush or the singer’s principal. But if the Dead Kennedies do not like the man so don’t I.” Burn it down!
If you still aren’t convinced of her cred, Taylor-Ruth tackles the big political issues (“I also don’t like fashists”) and nails that self-aware arrogance so coveted by the punk (“So far I think that I am more punk than anyone else I have met in my life”).
Obviously there’s no way of telling if this letter is actually legit — the now-20-year-old Taylor-Ruth posted a scan of the letter on her Tumblr page over a year ago, and it was verified as her work by Devin Faraci at Badass Digest — but it gets Jello’s blessing so it’s good enough for us. Read it in full below.
