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The Dictators LiveThis CD is not a recording from a reunion show.
The Dictators don't do reunion shows...Never did, never will...We also don't
scream "Cleveland, are you ready to rock?", play drum solos, spend time
in drug rehab, or cowrite with Desmond Child in a desperate attempt to
manufacture hit singles. The Dictators formed as a reaction to the rock
formula, and in my mind, rock and roll reunions represent every Spinal
Tap music biz cliche we always hated. They are crass and lame; everything
the Dictators aren't. Well, maybe we are crass, but we're not lame, damnitt!!
The point is, you can't reunite if you never broke up and The Dictators
never broke up. Sure there were occasional gaps of a few years between
some shows (we had lives to lead) but deep in our hearts and souls we
always knew we were Dictators. We couldn't escape it even when we tried.
The label ex-Dictator followed us around every turn. Ex-Dictator Ross
the Boss had gold records with Manowar, ex-Dictator Scott Kempner toured
the world with The Del-Lords, and every record I ever produced tagged me
as an ex-Dictator. I was once arrested and I served time in detention
while in high school but check out my permanent record; it says ex-Dictator
with a big gold star next to it.
That's because becoming a Dictator was a life decision. It was a tattoo on
my legacy. The Dictators was the first band for all of us. Before we ever
rehearsed, we moved in together, just like The Beatles in "Help!" or The
Monkees on TV. We never thought there was any other way to do it. Joining
the band wasn't a whim, it was the light at the end of the tunnel of our lives.
When we were teenagers recording The Dictators Go Girl Crazy in 1974, we were
advocating rock and roll as an all encompassing lifestyle. It was something
you lived 24 hours a day. Nobody had really dressed it up like that before.
Chuck Berry and The Who had suggested it, but we lived it to the hilt and
then sang about it, truthfully. We combined all those disparate elements
of pop culture that we loved but had never been lumped together. Television,
food, sports, wrestling, alcohol and snotty sarcasm all played as important
a role in our lyrics as the traditional subjects of cars and girls and
teenage rebellion. And the truth is, we would have been phoneys if we
wrote and sang about anything else...As phoney as if we played reunion shows.
D.F.F.D.
Andy Shernoff
September, 1998
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