Category Archives: Dictators Assembled

by Salvi C. | October 18, 2012 · 10:24 am

Coney Island High 10/18/96

(click to enlarge)

Today marks the anny of the Dictators’ first-ever appearance at Coney Island High. CIH was the short-lived punk rock clubhouse on St. Mark’s Place in NYC, and was a precursor to the Bowery Electric.

  This date was the Dictators’ only U.S. show for the year. They were fresh home from 2-plus weeks of kicking it in Spain and Sweden. There’s an excellent, full-length video of this show that hasn’t yet migrated to YouTube, and it shows our guys to have been in excellent form for this show. RTB was wearing his Marvin the Martian shirt, HDM was sporting the ponytail, and Frankie Funaro featured a brand-spanking new “Manifest Destiny” era logo on the bass drum.

  Set list:
• 1. New York, New York
• 2. Haircut and Attitude
• 3. Master Race Rock
• 4. I Want You Tonight
• 5. Faster And Louder
• 6. Baby Let’s Twist
• 7. I Am Right
• 8. Call Me Animal
• 9. The Party Starts Now
• 10. I Stand Tall
• 11. Weekend
• 12. Science Gone Too Far
• 13. You Had It Coming
• 14. Search and Destroy
• 15. Next Big Thing
• 16. Stay With Me
• 17. Sonic Reducer
• 18. Two Tub Man
• 19. Minnesota Strip
• 20. California Sun

— Salvi C.

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by Salvi C. | September 20, 2012 · 10:17 pm

A Little Bit of History

The historic Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY, recently reopened for music. What better way to celebrate, Dictators style, than to share these fantastic pictures from their only ever appearance there. These shots are from February 2, 1974, the second Dictators show. God, were we ever that young?

We have about a dozen of these that we’ll share in future posts. These pictures are the property of Ross Friedman, and are not to be re-posted without his permission.

— Salvi C.

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by Salvi C. | August 17, 2012 · 6:13 am

“Are You Talkin’ to ME?”

Today is Robert De Niro’s birthday, and what better way to pay a little respect to the man than by watching 3 minutes of his best work set to the sounds of 3 minutes of our guys’ best work?

— Salvi C.

400 Saturdays

We all get misty when we tell the “back in the day” stories about music. Maybe it’s a generational thing, or maybe it’s a natural reflection on how music is packaged and purchased now as opposed to 25 years ago, but it does seem like the whole buying experience was a lot more FUN back when it was a tactile event, as opposed to today’s purchases always being one click away. “400 Saturdays” is a new book, wonderfully compiled by Kim Johnson-Bair, that chronicles the lifelong quests and obsessions of 58 music fanatics.

While those interviewed come from various backgrounds, there are many common threads that repeat when reading their stories. Music was an active part of their growing up years, so the passion was as much inbred as it was genetically passed on. More importantly, almost everyone interviewed makes mention of how the search was almost as import as the find, how buying and interacting with other musicaholics was just as cool as the actual listening to the records was.

The Dictators get many mentions as influences, which shouldn’t be a huge surprise, considering that two of this site’s regular contributors are amongst the interviewees. The whole thing is a fun read, and has assumed a position of honor in my reading room. It’s available at 400saturdays.com.

— Salvi C.

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Filed under Dictators Assembled, Vinyl

by Salvi C. | February 24, 2012 · 1:15 pm

A Closet Patriot Fan?

Feb. 23 was the 10-year anny of this gig, which was the only show ever attended by all 3 members of the DFFD editorial staff. This was the Dictators’ first Boston show since the release of “DFFD,” and Axis was packed from the get-go. HDM offset the usual Boston hecklers by congratulating the Patriots on their 1st Super Bowl win, and by declaring that he’d won $500 betting on the game, so maybe he was “a Closet Patriots fan!!”

WMBR heavily promoted the gig, and a couple of the djs were walking around with their little kids in tow. I wonder what those 4-year-olds with Mohawks think about those days now.

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Filed under Dictators Assembled, Live, The Cincotta Archives

by Salvi C. | October 21, 2011 · 8:03 am

They Went to the Land of the Ice and Snow

October of 1996 found the Dictators on their first and only tour of Sweden. With the possible exception of Spain, there is no other European country that has a greater appreciation for rock and roll than Sweden, and our boys spent a whirlwind 10 days supplying both in the land of the lutefisk.

In between practical jokes pulled by their tour mates, the Hellacopters (“No kidding Manitoba, whale blubber behind your ears is a real-turn on to Oslo women!”) and participating in the Swedish National Pastime, which is making fun of the Finnish***, the band somehow found time to play 9 dates with the Northern Lights as a backdrop.

October 2, 1996, was the first date, at Geno’s in Stockholm. There’s an excellent video of this show that hasn’t shown up on YouTube yet, so you’ll have to take my word for it that our guys were firing on all cylinders.

— Salvi C.

  The 1996 Nordic Tour:  
10/2 Stockholm
 10/3 Linkoping
 10/4 Gavle 
10/5 Borlange 
10/6 Oslo 
10/8 Lund 
10/9 Gothenburg
 10/10 Malmo 
10/11 Copenhagen

  Set list from Oct. 2:
• 1. New York, New York
• 2. Haircut and Attitude
• 3. Master Race Rock
• 4. I Want You Tonight
• 5. Faster and Louder
• 6. Baby, Let’s Twist
• 7. I Am Right
• 8. Call Me Animal
• 9. The Party Starts Now
• 10. I Stand Tall
• 11. Science Gone Too Far!
• 12. You Had It Coming
• 13. Search and Destroy
• 14. The Next Big Thing
• 15. Stay With Me
• 16. Minnesota Strip
• 17. Two Tub Man

*** Q: Why do Finnish people never play hide and seek?
 A: Because nobody wants to look for them.

  Q: How many Finns does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Five. One to hold the bulb, and four to drink enough vodka until the room starts spinning.

My First Time With the Dictators

(And They Were Not Gentle With Me)

Here's HDM on 10/20/78, again sporting his Mr. Potato-Head shirt. Let's hope it hit the laundry pile between 9/19 and 10/20.

September 19, 1978. A summer of scouring the Phoenix concert listings finally yielded the Holy Grail: The almighty Dictators were going to be making their debut at the Paradise on Sept. 19. Darest I go? I had chickened out earlier in the year, when the band made its Boston debut with a couple of stealth gigs at the Rat, but those were on Mondays and Tuesdays, which were no-gos for a working slob such as myself. No excuses this time — it was a Friday, and I was THERE!!

The Paradise at the time was still brand-spanking new, and had the cachet of being Boston’s premier new music venue. What a bummer to get inside, and find out that A. Dancing was not only discouraged but could get you tossed, and 2. The tables and chairs were actually nailed to the floor, so if you didn’t get a chair facing the stage, then you were in for an evening of neck-strain. It didn’t matter to me. These were the Dictators. I would have endured standing on my head if that’s what it took to see them.

After an OK opening set by Thundertrain, who were one part Dolls mixed with two parts Aerosmith, the boys hit the boards to thunderous applause and ripped into “What It Is.” My immediate thoughts were “THAT’S Manitoba?!? He’s so skinny and short!” and “How come Scott is louder than Ross?”

HDM wasted no time before he was dissing Boston fans and sports teams, proclaiming NYC’s superiority to Bostin in every category. Thank God the gig wasn’t two weeks later, after the Bucky Bleepin’ Dent debacle at Fenway, or else we would have never heard the end of it.

Manitoba also displayed excellent sartorial taste, as he sported a homemade T-shirt with a caricature of his head atop Mr. Potato-Head’s body. That was a shirt that they really should have marketed. Another missed opportunity.

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