Scott Braun
There’s some poetry in the fact that the Dictators formed around 1973, the same year that Hilly Kristal opened CBGB. Max’s Kansas City, meanwhile, was still a year away from losing the Warhol crowd. See, every yin needs a yang. In retrospect, it’s difficult to imagine a world populated by David Byrne and Patti Smith and Joey Ramone and Deborah Harry and Tom Verlaine and Jayne County (etc, etc) would also include former wrestler “Handsome Dick” Manitoba. And yet that gloriously storied New York (proto) punk scene was anything but homogenized.
It helps that the Dictators were a tremendous band.
→ Continue reading at The Village Voice
