The Dickies
Dawn Of The Dickies

THE REVIEW

Imagine Cheap Trick at twice the frenzy...
Imagine Devo after a neuron removal...
Imagine the Ramones daring to pick up instruments other than the usual three and trying some other effects on the guitar besides the usual distortion... 
Imagine the USA, as you've always seen them on TV, in soaps and sitcoms...

Think about all that plastic, all those beaches, all those roller-coasters, all those naive illusions... think about California, not the one of the hippies nor that of the skaters, but the one from Baywatch... still, thinking about it, skaters have something to do with it, since "I'm A Chollo" is a "half pipe riding" in full effect and the feeling is the same that the more determined Joey, the most inspired Screeching Weasels, the most expansive Dead Milkmen, have given us at different times...

The one by the Dickies is one of the most demented, fun and extravagant punk of the late 70s... it is a vitriolic satire of star-spangled civilization, of its most cartoonish aspects... such a caricatured approach brings to mind visual references of the caliber of Matt Groening and John Waters...

"Night In White Satin" would not look out of place in "Are We Not Men" and even indulges in an oriental interlude... "Stuck In A Pagoda" instead overlays very stupid beat falsettos ("eh-de-de-de-di-bi-du-daaa") with a Chinese operetta theme...

This album smells of the 70s, but it does not celebrate them, it turns them inside out like a glove... the ridiculous effect these songs generate is comparable to that of a US president's gaffes: they are the stupid-songs in the time of Jimmy Carter...

Not everything adds up: "Splitting Headache" feels like nothing... but on the other hand, we know: not all jokes work... "Attack Of The Mole Man" attempts the card of grotesque epic and puts the contemporary Stranglers to shame... "She Loves Me Not" once again speaks the language of Devo, and brain damage is rampant... With "Gigantor" and "Bowling With Bedrock Barney" there is the definitive landing in the distorted universe of cartoons: weak episodes, perhaps a bit self-serving, too programmatic in their studied pomp...

The Dickies, despite the limits, the simplisms, the black humour at its tamest, remain an important chapter in the history of satirical rock; it's hard to resist their jokes and, in the end, they have left us with a handful of anthology tracks...