Lyrics for Holiday in Cambodia as interpreted by Ice

Holiday in Cambodia Lyrics
So you been to schools
For a year or two
And you know you've seen it all
In daddy's car
Thinking you'll go far
Back east your type don't crawl

Play ethnicy jazz
To parade your snazz
On your five grand stereo
Bragging that you know
How the niggers feel cold
And the slum's got so much soul

It's time to taste what you most fear
Right Guard will not help you here
Brace yourself, my dear

It's a holiday in Cambodia
It's tough, kid, but it's life
It's a holiday in Cambodia
Don't forget to pack a wife

You're a star-belly sneech
You suck like a leech
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch
So you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you

Well, you'll work harder
With a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers
Until you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake

Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son

Is a holiday in Cambodia
Where people dress in black
Need a holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll kiss ass or crack

Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, etc . . .

And it's a holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll do what you're told
A holiday in Cambodia
Where the slum's got so much soul

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Emo.In.Flames
05-11-2002

Rated 0 
Best DK song ever!

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OceanOfChaos
05-15-2002

Rated 0 
This song is about how soft and easy it is to be white, rich, and live in america. If some of these preppy assholes around me were shipped of to Cambodia (in the late 70s or early 80s) they wouldn't last a minute.

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DaDreadlockChick
06-02-2002

Rated 0 
First, the intro is just freakin badass! Second, the meaning is so true. My generation has not been through any sort of a war, and get served everything on a golden platter. I fear when most of the kids in the US have to step up to reality. There is gonna be a lot of confused kids

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MercyKiller
06-03-2002

Rated 0 
Great song, but it basically boils down to being about ignorance. People living "happily" in America/Europe/Whatever, thinking they know everything, when there are people dying in poorer nations, being forced to kill, then killed themselves, living in squalor, etc.

"So you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you"... ignorance to the fact that society uses you.

"Play ethnicky jazz
To parade your snazz
On your five grand stereo
Braggin' that you know
How the niggers feel cold
And the slum's got so much soul"... Acting like something is cool, e.g. "the slums got so much soul", but really just ignorant to the fact of how it really is.

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TimBuck2
06-05-2002

Rated 0 
I had to write once a short essay about a visit somewhere... So I wrote about my "holiday in Cambodia"... I got 24/25 for that one... thank you Dead Kennedys! :D
This is the first song I ever heard of the Kennedys... I still like it, though I've heard it so many times it's growing dull...

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RCisGod
06-07-2002

Rated 0 
Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, etc....


can someone please explain that for me>>>

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1 Reply
casualtie14
06-07-2002

Rated 0 
This song is badass and is so true for all u rich bastards out there.
If u moved over there u would die in less than a second. DK's kickass and Jello is the best singer. (even if he did screw the DK's.)


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1 Reply
RCisGod
06-07-2002

Rated 0 
to answer my own question:
pol pot - Cambodian political leader whose Khmer Rouge movement overthrew the Cambodian government in 1975
under his regime executions and famine killed an estimated three million people he fled the capital in 1979 when vietnamese forces overthrew his government

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crick23
06-15-2002

Rated 0 
this is the first dead kennedys song i heard too. i love it and i love them

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psychotic_one
07-01-2002

Rated 0 
one lyric correction...the last chorus at the end:

And it's a Holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll do what your told
A Holiday in Cambodia
Where the slums got so much soul

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Lets_kill_music
07-04-2002

Rated 0 
Great lyrics definitely about rich white ignorance, i just dont understand the bit about packing a wife..?

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Kenny02
07-26-2002

Rated 0 
I love how this song is timeless, it's meaning is just as relevent now as it was back in the 80's.

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HarlequinStars
08-26-2002

Rated 0 
I can see why everyone would say the song is about rich preppy white kids, however i view it differently. I think its about all kinds of people who just take for granted what they have in life.

Which most likely is all of us. And about the rich white ignorance bit, what about the poor black ghetto or hispanic ignorance? Like when he says
"Play ethnicky jazz
To parade your snazz
On your five grand stereo
Braggin' that you know
How the niggers feel cold
And the slum's got so much soul"

Since im from the city that reminds me of all the ghetto 'thugs' who run around like their badasses claiming that their hard because their family has been on welfare for years and hasnt made a move to get off it either. See its not just about rich white ameica its also about the poor minorities who choose to be poor and take advantage of the system.

It can go both ways. the ignorant rich upperclass yuppies or the lazy ignorant welfare cheating 'thugz'.




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Vicki
08-28-2002

Rated 0 
i have a question for you guys. i'm a little confused. as casualtie14 said. jello screwed dead kennedys. how??? I just starting listening to the dead kennedys so i duno. i mean i know they sued him or something along those lines...???

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Blind Opius
08-28-2002

Rated 0 
Vicki, Jello did something to keep them from ruining the band's name. Now that they're touring with Brandon Cruz of Dr. Know, they have to call themselves the DK Kennedys.

God, Brandon Cruz sucks.

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HopesUnknown
09-13-2002

Rated 0 
This song is awesome..

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xThePunishedx
09-22-2002

Rated +1 
Rich white people are all ignorant just like poor people are all on drugs and black people eat fried chicken and women are only good for cooking. This song is about society's ignorance and its based entirely on concept and its far more ambiguous than you PC thugs. You should really go fuck yourselves.

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Punks_R_Us
10-12-2002

Rated 0 
This song is excellent :)

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kijima
10-14-2002

Rated 0 
Harlequin- never thought of it being about ghettto thugs. there's a ton of those wehre I live too (I'm black and am expected to be like that..it's annoying)..
I'm not sure but I think pol Pot was a dictator. I don't remember too well though, I could be wrong.

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MountainJew
03-04-2003

Rated 0 
Ray, Flouride and Peligro sued Jello for unfair distribution of the money DKs made, they also acquired rights to the albums post Fresh Fruit...
http://www.jellobiafrapetition.com/
It's mostly explained there

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fuckyouall
03-04-2003

Rated 0 
The song doesn't just apply to white rich people, it applys to everyone who gets everything handed to them. AKA our whole generation.

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Aneurysm1985
03-07-2003

Rated 0 
Great lyrics...love the 'Pol Pot' chant at the end. The version on 'Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables' is the way to go...the one on 'Give Me Conveinience or Give Me Death' is too tame.

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OneThirdOfCTW
03-13-2003

Rated 0 
This song is badass and is so true for all u rich bastards out there.
"If u moved over there u would die in less than a second. DK's kickass and Jello is the best singer. (even if he did screw the DK's.) "

I would like to know how jello screwed DK. If anything they screwed him. They sued him for not allowing this very song to be played in a commercial. They're screwing him by touring as The Dead Kennedys without the man who created DK. So know your fucking facts or enlighten me.

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EmoGuy89
03-22-2003

Rated 0 
the person who said " true for all u rich bastards out there"...that's pure ignorance. Like fuckyouall said "The song doesn't just apply to white rich people, it applys to everyone who gets everything handed to them. AKA our whole generation. " yeah.

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ubermax
03-25-2003

Rated +1 
I like what you guys are saying, but I have my own little spin to add. When Jello sings about rich, over-educated urban types with only the vaguest notion of what it's like to be poor and marginalized, and then sings about Cambodia, I think he's talking about how the Khmer Rouge emptied Cambodia's cities of anyone with an education, money, etc., and forced them to break their backs working on forced-labor farms. I think he's saying that while that was awful for them, there's quite a few people in the U.S. that should deserve a little "re-education", to see what it's really like to be downtrodden and abused, as opposed to what you picked up in your Jazz History 101 class.

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