First off, it takes a lot for me, an early rising working stiff, to go out on a weekday night. I am old, tired, disgusted and beaten up by the world…and that’s on a good day! The same could be said about The Dictators NYC. But it won’t…and I’m not going to go into a review of the opening bands (like who can open for The Dictators and not look like pale imitations or copycats?)
Handsome Dick and crew commandeered the small stage at Alex’s Bar with the cockiness of a teen-generate getting away with some heavy petting with the head cheerleader in his family’s basement while The New York Dolls blared on the stereo and his parents are in the living room watching “Father Knows Best”. In a perfect world, these guys would be playing Madison Square Garden. This was akin to seeing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in a small club if fame and fortune hadn’t shined on their Jersey butts! These guys were born and accepted the challenge to bring the joy of rock and roll to the effed up masses.
The Dictators NYC are pure east coast, complete with attitude and accents, leather and armed with an in your face set opener “New York, New York”. Like Miss Liberty, The Dictators NYC, want the tired, the huddled masses. They want to wake you up and breathe life into your current state of rock and roll. I’m not going into the history of these guys or the line-up changes etc (current line-up includes Ross The Boss and Thunderbolt Patterson). You guys should know all of this by now, or just Google it, but let me tell you something, you go to a Dictators show and you will hear the history of rock, it’s unsung heroes, the bands who will never be as big as U2 ( Flamin’ Groovies, MC5), the heart and soul of the blue collar man…what the lot of us work 40+ hours a week for, are in these songs, sure “Cars and Girls” has the mentality of dudes frozen in pubertyland, and “Next Big Thing” has all the swagger and confidence of a young band set to conquer the world and “Two Tub Man” has Jackie O in his pants (one of rock’s best lines,ever!).
The encore was “Two Tub Man” and “Kick Out the Jams”.It don’t get no better than this, folks. These guys had a hand in changing the face of rock and roll as we know it. I can proudly say I was the first kid on my block to own that first LP. I tried to tell everyone that I knew about The Dictators sound. Go buy that first album (with cover art by my brother Gerard “Gringo” Huerta) and check it out. It hit me the way the Velvet Underground hit me. My life was never the same.
Dig, watching The Dictators NYC was like seeing living history. But it wasn’t like seeing The Four Tops breezing through the hits for some green. Or U2 mechanically going through hits, where from the balcony, one can see Bono counting, in his head, the profits from merch sales from last night’s gig. These guys sweated, looked you in the eye, talked to you face to face, asked questions, got down and dirty, toe to toe, on the floor with the audience. They even vowed to stay (and did) and talk to anyone, take pix with anyone, sign autographs for anyone, until the last person left the bar.
It was almost a celebration of life. Not too many band people are around anymore from that early punk era. It was tough, hard times. Too many people went the way of the O/D. “WE lived through it, man!” Manitoba proudly exclaimed to the fervent wide ranging crowd. I saw 20 year olds to 60 somethings’ digging these guys. And age was not a factor in their performance. As an old dude, I look for that in these older band type shows. Respects to The Dictators NYC. It was a nice way to get back in touch with those raw feelings that pretty much disappeared for a while.
As Pete Townshend once said, that rock and roll let’s you forget all about your troubles, that for a brief instant, you can dance all over your problems. Dig, a couple hours before the gig, I got the hospital bill in the mail, concerning my wife’s stay, in ICU . It was a sickening, gut wrenching feeling.
But for a little while, I forgot all about it, thanks to Manitoba and The Dictators NYC. Misty would have dug it. She was very hard to impress. Peace to all of you…
