Category Archives: Dictators Assembled

Note: This is one of a series of posts in The DFFD Blog Goes Girl Crazy! special — a monthlong commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the release of ‘The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!’

DATELINE – 1975      LOCATION – THE SOUTHWEST SIDE OF CHICAGO

The thrill was gone. The fun was dwindling. Awful, boring music by Pink Floyd, The Dead & The Eagles was oozing out of every radio. Led Zep was the biggest band in the world, inexplicably more popular than The Who. The Stones were still up there, too. Most of my favorite bands were either on the way to oblivion, or were already there. The Coop had just replaced his band with dancing toothbrushes. The mighty Sabbath was sputtering. Blackmore had ditched The Purps. Jimi was still dead.

Acts like Blue Oyster Cult, Aerosmith, Queen, Thin Lizzy, The Nuge & Kiss had steadily built large followings, all would break into the rock & roll stratosphere in the next couple of years. AC/DC was unknown. We upper midwest record store geeks had just found our great white hope, a band from up Rockford called Cheap Trick, who were blowing our earflaps off in the bars and clubs around Chicago. Man, they were the most exciting live band this side of J. Geils! The Trick brought back some of the thrills, fun, and power we’d been pining for, but it’d be almost two years before they got an album out.

It would be another year before the two headed dog of punk and disco would begin to howl at each other.

Photo by Judycube

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Note: This is the second post in The DFFD Blog Goes Girl Crazy! special — a monthlong series commemorating the 35th anniversary of the release of ‘The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!’

Dateline: Suburban Boston, 1975.

It was my senior year of high school, I wasn’t quite 18, and I was still worshiping at the altars of Elton, the Beach Boys, and the Raspberries. I didn’t know any better, because there really wasn’t anything better to know about. What else was there for a kid from the ‘burbs? J Geils was great, but they were homegrown and played in town 10 times a year, so we took them for granted. I hated Zep, hated Bad Company, the Coop was in the bottle, Grand Funk was over the hill. It was a musical wasteland. So, I went searching, and started digging in the used stores for stuff I’d never heard of, and reading reviews of new acts. I saw this one review of a new band called the Dictators that used the phrase “Nazi surf band.” “That sounds pretty good,” thought I, and seeing that there was a wrestler on the cover sealed the deal. I needed this lp, and added it to my search list. The problem was it was nowhere to be found! I hit every store in town — nada. I’d do a sweep every week — zip. Boston was not hip to the Dictators!!

The picture above is from Christmas morning 1977. Those jammies were high style at the time.

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Note: This is the first post in The DFFD Blog Goes Girl Crazy! special — a monthlong series commemorating the 35th anniversary of the release of ‘The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!’

The following first appeared as a chapter in the second book of Martin Popoff’s Ye Olde Metal series, Ye Olde Metal: 1973 To 1975.

For details on each of the five books thus far — 1968 To 1972, 1973 To 1975, 1976, 1977 and 1978 — please see www.martinpopoff.com.

Yes, Manifest Destiny is taken care of in 1977 and Bloodbrothers is written up in 1978.

The Dictators – Go Girl Crazy
(Epic, April ‘75, KE 33348)

Revered by critics, ignored by the industry (except in Spain), The Dictators are New York rock legends that did more for punk rock than people know. It all starts… not back at the first record, Go Girl Crazy! (not the real title, more on that later), but a cupful of years before. I mean, send it back to ’73, and you could slot The Dictators right in there with the Stooges, MC5 and the New York Dolls as four seminal bands that made punk possible.

“You know, this is one of my little pet peeves,” says bassist and chief writer for the band Andy “Adny” Shernoff, making sure we get the naming of the record fixed but quick. “People always say, the Dictators’ first album, Go Girl Crazy!. It wasn’t Go Girl Crazy!; it was The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!, like a movie title. It was supposed to be like a teenage movie or something. That was the concept.”

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The month of March commemorates the 35th anniversary of the release of The Dictators Go Girl Crazy! We’re celebrating this sacred event with a monthlong series of posts. We’ll have personal stories, from the staff and also from respected guest writers, about hearing the album for the first time and the influence it has had. We’ll also have reviews and ads from BITD, trivia (did you know, that if you play “Back To Africa” backwards, you can hear Ross say “I buried Stu-Boy?”), and plenty of other foolishness. Be there or be square!

— Salvi C.