“…the freaks and wild children of the slam poetry world…Inviting the Suicide Kings to perform is almost like taking the bearded lady, an organ grinders monkey and a drunk to a funeral, you know something’s going to happen but it’s just too damn funny to stop it.”
- The Pirates Log (Modesto Junior College), January 29, 2004

“The trio that has just started to get the national fame (and infamy) they have long since achieved locally. They are filled with energy and conviction. As their pieces unravel, although they are coated in comedic exaggeration, they candidly show the audience the unrelenting roads they have crossed to get where they are now. Their performance left the audience staggering to find their voices to demand more.”
- San Francisco State Express, March 2004

“Sexy metaphors and smart love ballads…always straining to say what is unsayable, in a tone and form so angry it's liable to burn straight through the audience's brains.”
- East Bay Express, May 5, 2004

“Mold, fleas and high rent make for moving verse…Geoff Trenchard, a 24 year old with tattooed arms and a leather jacket, grew up in San Jose and couch surfed while he worked at the now defunct dot-com Info Seek, showering at the office. Mr. Trenchard spoke of his youth, recalling, `My last $20 after rent and groceries that went rotten in the fridge the landlord promised to fix but never did.’ A spokesman for the Berkeley Property Owner Association, a trade group representing nearly 700 landlords, was unimpressed…
That did not stop intense poets like Jamie Kennedy, 25, who won the first prize of $100, from exploring with lancing verse the `platonic master/slave relationship.’ Mr. Kennedy had written his poem on the spot in flowing ink as the evening began, his words swirling around like water in a bathroom drain. Life at his last apartment, in nearby Vallejo, was so bad, he wrote, `I chose to be homeless for nine months just to escape the memory. Every night I slept on the bus, I hoped to run into my ex-landlord in rags so I could scream, so sucker, without a roof, you’re just another one of us.’
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the Obi-Wan Kenobi of Bay Area poetry, noted that a big difference between Mr. Kennedy’s generation and his own was that today `they are interested in housing; the Beats were interested in moving around.”
- New York Times, March 3, 2003

“The highest score of the night, a 29.6 out of a possible 30, went to Jamie Kennedy’s poem in the second round, a tirade against brand name clothing that encouraged participation from many members of the audience who had heard the lyrics before. Kennedy’s first-round poem was a tribute to `walking time bombs in lipstick’ that he’s dated. He drew laughs for his lines asking women to ‘let Jamie Kennedy be your therapy.’ `I trust well-balanced women like I trust Ghandi to have my back during a bar fight,’ Kennedy said…Rupert drew cheers at every mention of his name. Rupert was the loudest of the performers, yelling lyrics about impatient customers and drunken patrons that earned high performance scores from the judges.”
- Berkeley Daily Planet, May 30, 2003

THE WHOLE STORY: SPEECH THERAPY

“The profane yet sometimes profound group entertains with a helter-skelter mix of shock theater, oddball comedy, vaudevillian antics, on-stage debauchery, a bit of self-help therapy, and yes, even poetry.”
- Contra Costa Times, October 26, 2002

“Poetry without pretense.”
- The Wave, September 26, 2002

“Vitriolic, rebellious, passionate…”
- Clearwater Weekly Planet, November 9, 2000

“Poems take no prisoners. Anything goes but boredom.”
- Contra Costa Times, April 19, 2000

“Spoken word performers bare their souls…They scream, whisper, sing and spew their writings, which tend to be very personal and gut-kicking. Thought-provoking for sure, but rarely sedate.”
- Fairfield Daily Republic, March 31, 2000

“There’s a ragtag, Bohemian, what-the-heck laissez faire to the whole proceeding in keeping with the poet’s role today as rebel, outsider, cultural jester and iconoclast, not to mention, thanks to the slammers, hipster. Multiculturalism, anit-racism, anti-establishment, anti-bull, and a celebration of the intellectual and the underdog are rampant.”
- Chicago Tribune, August 16, 1999

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