The Dickies Can't Get Serious

The Los Angeles punk scene is generally though of as where the underground element of the genre got it’s real start. While the New York bands may have been around earlier, a great many of them ended up signing to major labels relatively early on. That’s not to say that the Ramones shouldn’t have signed to Sire Records, but what if they hadn’t? Punk might be a whole bunch different. Regardless of that, the crop of SoCal punkers weren’t necessarily snatched up in the same way their east coast brethren were. In part, that was simply because the scene, for whatever reason began and remained more of an underground phenomenon, being focused at the Masque and an assortment of other shabby venues.

The first group on the west coast snagged by a major label, though, was the Dickies. Considering the folks that surrounded them, it’s a bit surprising. The band’s influence is no where near that of its cohort. Quick – name all the bands you’ve seen cover Black Flag. Now, how many have covered songs from the Dickies? That’s obviously not a way by which to judge the validity of any group. But what probably explains this confusing situation is the fact that where Ginn and company focused on some heavy handed and somewhat personal issues in a lyrical sense, the Dickies were kinda the bar band of the SoCal scene. I mean “Banana Splits” being included on your debut album might not take the politicized punkers imagination by storm. But moves like that immediately were able to ingratiate the Dickies to a more general and broad fan base.

It got to the point where the band was even tapped to record the theme for Killer Klowns from Outer Space, which if you haven’t seen it was probably the most terrifying thing I’d every watched at the age of 8. But regardless of the Hollywood connections to the career of the Dickies, the band would release it’s first disc - The Incredible Shrinking Dickies - in 1979. Coupled with that playful title was a clutch of songs which, while maintaining the breakneck speed of other SoCal bands, was able to work in enough goofy playfulness as to make the entire thing a pretty broadly appealing thing.

Again, the songs chosen for inclusion here are as much the cause for the Dickies relatively warm reception as anything else. “Eve of Destruction,” a weird folk/protest song, was given the once over and arguably trumped the Barry McGuire (from the New Christy Minstrels) version recorded just a decade and change prior to the version represented on The Incredible Shrinking Dickies.

Overwhelmingly, the Ramonesy feel that is pretty consistent throughout is one of the reasons that the band was able to be relatively successful in the States and even perhaps part of why the group was able to score a top five single in the UK charts. Of course, the Brits had punkers toping various charts prior, but these were Americans. And they are the Dickies, nothing else.