Bassist and founding member of the Dead Kennedys, Klaus Flouride, is taking a leave of absence from his institutional hardcore punk band due to a medical condition called Angioedema. "I'm not leaving the Dead Kennedys so much as, right now, I can't perform with the Dead Kennedys for the foreseeable future," Flouride tells Spinner. "And it's nothing to do with personal stuff or anything like that."

While on tour with the Kennedys, Flouride's face would break out in hives. "Sometimes I can look like Homer Simpson, sometimes I can look like John McCain," he jokes. "It's really neat. If only I could make it happen at will."

Upon diagnosis, the doctor's orders called for Flouride to cut down on as much stress and fatigue in his life as possible. So, of course, no more crisscrossing the globe with that high energy, politically-charged, stage-dive inducing punk band of his. Flouride will still continue to record and perform with various projects in the Bay Area and fans can keep in touch with him via his self-maintained website, klausflouride.com.

"It's not like I'm shacked up in the house with an IV in my arm and dying here," he says. And as for returning to the stage with the DK's? "The thing I've learned is to never say 'never,'" he says. After all, didn't the Kennedys originally break up in 1986?