nyc

Okay.  True story; this.  I’m in Red Eye Records, Sydney, cruising the racks.  Trying to find that new audio kick.  I chance upon this item.  Surely, I have every damn thing the Dictators ever released.  What is this thing?  A cursory glance at the back cover says it came out in 2008.  I reach for my mobile phone and jump to the I-94 Bar for the good word and there isn’t one to be had.  There is no frigging review.   Clearly, I had better rectify this situation.

Everybody's heard the rumors about a seedy gang of leather clad strangers seen obscenely strutting up and down the boardwalk, right around the time that all those teenagers started going missing from the amusement park and comic book shop, on the shore, like some ageless, ’80s hellraisers, who refuse to die. 

Some believe those kids joined some hard partying Ricky Kasso hesher-cult, many have even claimed some second hand knowledge of a fire flickering batcave filled with opium den antiques and gypsy tapestries and a big blacklight poster of Jim Morrison, reptiles abounding...

I, personally, suspect it's all just a big conspiracy theory, the stuff of urban myth, bored kids with overactive imaginations, who have spent to much time watching zombie-hunter shows on cable, reading that "Twilight" book series, and chatting about Slenderman and Bigfoot and Anne Rice stuff, online. 

It's rare that you find a disc with which you can't find even insubstantial fault. The Dictators, live and amped-up, are simply one of the best things on this musical planet. If you had to come up with something to balance the lavish praise we and fellow Tators fan-atics are spouting about this, it might be that the contemporary tunes on "Viva" manage to sound exactly like their studio cousins. And that's supposed to be a bad thing?