Your favourite recordings that everyone else hates

none of my friends understand why I love the album"Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel "A Closer Look"

It must be 30 years ago I bought the first LP by New York punk band "the Dictators". Once in a while I still listen to it.

Jkaway: You are obviously a person of highly refined taste and discriminating judgement, not to mention a few years ahead of your time, since these guys basically schooled the Ramones before anyone had heard of either of them beyond NYC (an indignant Dave Marsh infamously didn't get the joke and gave all their original albums zero stars in the old Rolling Stone Record Guides). The Dics weren't recorded with passable sound until their third (and break-up) LP, "Bloodbrothers" ('78) - their sophomore effort "Manifest Destiny" ('77) being the worst offender sound-wise. The latter-day Dics offshoot Manitoba's Wild Kingdom had a relative left-field success (critically too) with "...And You?" at the dawn of the 90's, and subsequently the band reunited for touring (they still kill live) and then recorded a new CD a couple of years ago, "D.F.F.D." (Dictators Forever, Forever Dictators). Their second and third LP's were on Asylum (of all places) after the '75 Epic debut, and are still fairly easily found at better used record stores - something I highly recommend doing for "Go Girl Crazy" fans like yourself, or anyone else who enjoys humorous hard rock with a punk attitude and a pop heart (audiophile weenies consider yourselves warned!). Also check out www.thedictators.com

Zaikes, Thanks for your kind words.I always liked self-deprecating humor in music which is something notoriously lacking in our era ,or maybe any era.There's a razor thin line between that and "cute" but like any other musical signature some artists do it naturally and some add it as schtick.The latter become annoying real fast while the former cruise along doing their always entertaining thing. Last year I saw the weird L.A. hipster Chuck E. Weiss with a cool band, he had that good thing going on.Thanks for the Dics info--- here in Frisco I can check Amoeba foe their LPs. John

Wish I could go to a store like Amoeba anytime I wanted...I just discovered them when I was out in Cali last summer, and couldn't believe my eyes that a record store could have something like 10 cashiers working and still have a 5 minute line to check out - incredible.

BTW, be aware that the other Dictators LP's begin to subsume some of the obvious humor of the first in a bid to try and sell some records (it didn't work). To those not paying close attention or familiar with the debut, those releases could in many ways be casually mistaken for a metal band playing it either stoopidly overblown ("Manifest Destiny") or blue-collar straight ("Bloodbrothers"). And indeed, bassist (for "M.D." only) Mark Mendoza went on to relative fame and fortune with Twisted Sister (a band not without a sense of humor themselves, though not in the same catagory as the Dics), hot-shit lead guitarist Ross "The Boss" Funicello has also had a concurrent but separate career as a member of an 80's-vintage 'serious' metal band called Man'o'war, and second guitarist Scott Kempner was a founder of the conventionally straight 'heartland' rock band The Del Lords. (Personally, I don't like any of those bands, or even genres.) And it's probably worth saying, for those reading along who've never heard (or heard of) The Dictators, that they are not a 'joke' or 'cartoon' band, even to the extent that the Ramones were (a band arguably much greater, definitely more influential in the end, and less of an acquired taste); sardonic humor is a strong element in the Dics work (mainly the writing of leader Andy Shernoff), but they are sincere about their love for the music - and rocking out.