Customer Reviews

Bloodbrothers

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4 star:		(4)
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The Dictators make sure you know exactly what you're in for as soon as the music starts..."Faster And Louder!" This was the most forward of the Dic's three original albums and the closest they came to a mainstream sound. That being if you could call anything The Dictators did "mainstream." Their's was a take no prisoners attitude, with everything about "Bloodbrothers" being so sorely missing in music at the time of its release. In 1978, Punk was just beginning to come into its own and the whole CBGB's crowd was setting their sights on world domination.

That may have been to The Dictators' detriment. In a period when bands were deliberately trying to sound more garagey and nihilistic, Handsome Dick Manitoba and the boys were rocking polished and hard, more like Blue Oyster Cult than the Dead Boys. Despite being "Faster And Louder," this band was not trying to break punk rock's land speed records. A classic case of zigging when they should have zagged.

No matter. There were no other bands with this much panache, humor and ballsy fun coming out of NYC, and "Bloodbrothers" spends its nine songs without letting up on the throttle once. If you aren't out of breath by the end of The 'Tators' rip snorting cover of "Slow Death," then you'd better start the record over and start paying attention.

This is the absolute best Dictators album ever. It is also one of the bestrock and roll albums ever. Punk rock with real rock guitar leads. Humor, Tunes, and the Boss to boot. Great. Should be considered in all Top Rock Album Lists but is either forgotten orhasn't been heard. A must for any punk or hard rock fan.

When I bought this cd I didn't really know what to expect....but then I gave it a spin and it totally blew me away! This is such a stunning fusion of styles, part punk, part metal, 110% awesome. Infectious energy abounds here; the first half makes a case for the Dictators being some of the best American punks, and it's truly flawless. The second portion is almost as good and a little poppier (I Stand Tall) (Borneo Jimmy). Sure, you can't call Handsome Dick a great vocalist, but that's not the point of this album. This put fun back into rock n roll, and it shows even after 20 years.

Man, oh man! This is the stuff baby. The mighty Dictators worship cars, girls and more girls! The Dictators have been an influence on bands like The Devil Dogs and The Humpers who, during the weak grunge and "pop punk" 90's, tried to get folks listening to real rock'n'roll again. That alone is reason to worship the Dictators.

People, all I can only say is that The Dictators rule baby! This is what punk should have been. Unfortunately, the super lame "hardcore" movement pretty much drained punk of all of it's rock'n'roll spirit in the 80's. The whole "punk" world would suck a lot less today if people had listened to this stuff instead of metal heads like Sick Of It All and Agnostic Front or those morons The Exploited. Like, how lame are the Exploited anyway? Yikes!

This record is rockin', honest and full of the spirit of honest-to-god, red-blooded American rock'n'roll! Long live The Dictators.

....there was a rock band called "The Dictators", whom everyone who knew anything about rock music agreed was one of the best bands they had ever heard.

Unfortunatley, there were dark and evil foces lurking in the world of popular music who thought that people needed to here a lot of shlocky top-40 crud. So, The Dictators were forced to languish in obscurity, like many other great rock acts.

Oh sure, there were a few fortunate acts like Aerosmith who succeeded in spite of the evil pop meisters who controlled the music business (or the Muzak Bigness or the mmmYouSick Bidness). But most bands were condemend to live in obscurity unless they agreed to play really awful pop music and dress up like wussies in order to please the pop music masters.

Well, fortunatley, ther are a few artifacts left behind from the bygone age of real rock bands (in the days before MTV and electronic dance music killed off live rock).

BloodBrothers sounds like the CD that Blue Oyster Cult always wanted to do, but somehow never got around to creating. Like "Manifest Destiny" (their prior release, sadly unavailable) this is streetwise, heavy rock for the natives: the ones who don't think too much of "boy bands", and who recognize that in the world of rock music, females are sex objects (unless they're ugly, in which case who needs 'em?).

Check this one out. You may not "live happily ever after", but you won't be disappointed either.

Best cuts: "Baby Let's Twist", "Stay With Me", "Faster and Louder".

Around 1982, a friend of mine had a single produced by Andy Shernoff. When we started talking about it, I commented that I had never heard of The Dictators. Stunned, my friend put on this album. It literally changed my life. For once, everything I ever wanted in a band was all in one place. Great songs, top-notch playing, humor, charisma, and FUN!! I cut my teeth on this album and played it pretty much every day for years.

There isn't much more to say than that. Handsome Dick Manitoba is a masterful singer, Ross The Boss is a guitar God, Andy is a brilliant writer, Scott Kempner is a stopwatch, and Ritchie Teeter is an incredible drummer.

They used to talk about 'Desert Island Disks' - This is definitely one of them!

The Dictators were the greatest band of all time. Their sound was not captured 'til Bloodbrothers, with Manifest Destiny a mess, and The Dictators Go Girl Crazy! an album that's a lotta fun but the great songs on there were not captured in the best manner; Andy Shernoff was quoted as saying that he never intended the humor on it to overshadow the music, and he stated that Bloodbrothers was the first album to truly represent The Dictators' sound. Which I fully agree with.
This mighty masterpiece, filled with soul, passion, and strength, is too great for words.
For a LONG while I was completely addicted to D.F.F.D.; now once again I turn back to the album that defined the GREATNESS that was The Dictators.
Where to start? Faster And Louder is both funny at times and an assertment of the need to break free, break loose, and MAKE SOME NOISE! It's a superb rocker all the way. Bruce Springsteen has a cameo on it (he yells, low in the mix, "1, 2, 1-2-3-4!" before the final verse. He was a fan (Lynn Goldsmith's book of photos of him shows him wearing a Dictators shirt; they had a mutual admiration society). It's appropriate for me, as my two favorite albums from '78 are Bloodbrothers and Darkness On The Edge Of Town (Radios Appear comes a very close third--or is that SECOND?!)
Baby Let's Twist is the same kinda deal as Sheena Is A Punk Rocker, except this time it ain't all fun being different; here the lonely girl can't find love, but finds comfort and a realization she's not alone in her alienation due to the healing power of rock 'n' roll. This song says it better than Rock And Roll by the Velvet Underground! Tremendous heart and soul.
No Tomorrow is beautiful and melancholic; school surely can be the most traumatic time of one's life; it can leave scars that never really heal; and the "sting of rejection" -- here, the DICTATORS sing for the lonely!
THAT'S what this album is all about! It gives strength, like "Rocky", only better.
Minnesota Strip is about the OLD New York (see the version on Viva Dictators! for Handsome Dick's opinions about how it is now that's it's been "cleaned up". I'M SICK OF EVERYWHERE BEING "MODERNIZED"!!!
Great guitar by Ross The Boss -- WHAT, you'd expect less than that from HIM??!
Stay With Me -- AH, oh MAN!! The best song The Dictators ever DID! The perfect pop song, done later by Scott in The Del-Lords, and with Dion in The Little Kings (NOT to be confused with cheesy L.A. band from '89 or so); The Creamers from S.F. covered it too.
It's one of the most perfect pleading love songs ever--"I stare into the TV screen, but every face reminds me of a girl/ I never used to be so Mean, but I can't bear to face my shattered WORLD YOU just ain't fair to this Romeo..." -- DIG that change, the way Andy wrote it so WORLD blends into the next line! Man, that's BRILLIANT! He does it again once more in this song, "I'm only half the man I was with YOU SAID we'd never part til we die, WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP WHEN YOU HEARD ME CRY BABY, baby..." -- he does it TWICE in that line! He sets it up for the chorus! Shernoff, a genius at times, truly a songwriting genius.
(for those who don't know what I'm talking about, you NEED to hear this song! and a sample won't do!)
It's one of my favorite love songs EVER, up there with Splash 1 (13th Floor Elevators) and I Can't Hide (Flamin' Groovies)-- 'cept this song CAN'T MAKE me SAD!! It's all heart and soul! the only tears The Dictators can produce from me on this album are tears of PRIDE! Of being HUMAN! this album encompasses everything in the New York Dolls' classic "Human Being"; Personality Crisis too, come to think of it.
Now side B (I ain't got no turntable anymore, it broke down, what am I saying? But it opens with...a song that makes it ALMOST hard to say that Stay With me is their best! ALMOST...)
I Stand Tall is far less about being proud to be an American than it is about pride as a person, as an individual Human being, although coming back from touring overseas, where they felt a police-state environment, especially in regards to the searches involved with traveling, inspired this song to be written.
Yet its the call for individual assertiveness in standing tall as a HUMAN BEING, having pride in yourself, that this SUPREME song is about.
What other song can you think of , where the band pleads with you to stand tall? (the ONLY one I can think of is Stiff Little Fingers' "Stand Up and Shout", which was the definite highlight of seeing them March 22, 1992; but I Stand Tall, live by The Dictators, was surely as much a tear-jerking, heart-warming moment!
This song is just what I need right now; my Mom died this year, and today would have been her birthday; I felt NUMB until hearing this.
This song is the most beautiful thing in the world!
"I STAND TALL! And I STAND PROUD of WHAT I AM. REPEAT THESE WORDS! REPEAT THE WORDS THE DICTATORS ARE SINGING! STAND UP, AND SAY them LOUD and CLEAR! STAND UP, and be PROUD! I STAND TALL
AND I STAND PROUD--
PROUD
OF WHAT I AM!"
Majestic.
As only The Dictators can be.
This song also urges evryone to pick up a guitar, and give playing in a band a shot, a chance. Beautiful. Right ON!
(This song is like the National Anthem of Rock and Roll!)

Well, it's hard to follow that one, and the album does go down a little bit afterwards, but only in comparison, in relative terms.
Borneo Jimmy is a great song that may have been for Richard Meltzer, but they are encouraging for anyone not to give up, and keep chasing their dream, that their day will come. (I don't CARE if that sounded corny to you! This album is about HEART!) It's about never letting life get you too down.
GREAT guitar solo also--Ross, yer amazing! YEAH, yeah, YEAH!
What It Is is a good song, basically about how the chick just doesn't get it that you are the one for her, what's WRONG with her? Ha ha ha, What it is!
And Slow Death, by the Flamin' Groovies, their best song in my book (well-- yeah, it's better than Shake Some Action, I think...)-- closes out the album in fine syle, despite their getting some words wrong; this song was chosen as the album's closer over a cover of Dance, Dance, Dance (the Beach boys. who else?). The band felt it fit the mood of the album better, and man were they right! When I got to see them at the Stone in S.F. in August of '91, the ending of this song was like a sonic, musical equivalent of an orgasm, it was so incredible!
Oh Man, this album was JUST what I needed today!
It belongs in EVERY rock 'n' roll fan's collection, with NO exceptions!!
Their finest album.

As the majestic looking ad for this (which SHOULD be a poster, dammit!) said--
There's Nothing Tighter Than A Bloodbrother.

RIGHT ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Dicators live forever.

When I hear the Dictators today, they sound as good as...no, BETTER than....they did, in 1977. I saw them open for KISS in 1977, in Iowa (yes, Iowa). Most in the crowd didn't have a clue as to what to make of this band. For me, they made me want to go home 10 minutes into KISS' set. They were THAT good! They rattled the rafters, and the feature band was ill prepared to follow up. KISS fumbled through their songs, like they'd never played them before. Many in the crowd began to chant "We want the Dictators", as they started to see how good the Dictators really were. I can't help but feel deja vu here. The Dictators are still trying to get the respect NOW...that they deserved THEN. Long live Punk.

"Bloobrothers" sounds GREAT on CD and is a must buy, with killer liner notes from Top Ten that describe perfectly what the mid-'70s scene was like. His notes reminded me of how anybody who saw or heard the Dictators back then really appreciates what a revelation and salvation they were at the time, and why we will always be fans. (They saved me from disco!)It also confirms all the more so what a sin it is that any rock fan with a pulse wasn't and hasn't been turned on to this great band, while many others with less talent got the breaks they needed and made it big. Maybe it will happen with this re-release and a new album that is currently in the works, although with the state of radio and MTV these days, that will be difficult. Check out thedictators.com and the link to the dffd fan site for tour info etc. Can they still wind up being THE NEXT BIG THING?

Next to beer, the Dictators are God's greatest gift to mankind. Finally you can stop looking for a copy of this record (which is gonna cost you big $) and listen in pleasure. Buy this. NOW.