The Dickies – Brightening up City Gardens in New Jersey on October 13, 1985
Lunch with The Dickies for Monday – recorded at City Gardens, New Jersey on October 13, 1985. One of the longest tenured bands in Punk History – The Dickies got started in 1977 (a scant 48 years ago), making them together (with only two original members) for almost 50 years. Of course, not without the usual shuffling, firing and unforeseen circumstances.
Some artists eschew the term “pop punk“, perhaps viewing it as implying less authenticity than the label “punk rock” (for example, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong: “I’ve always hated the phrase. I think it’s a contradiction in terms. Either you’re punk, or you’re not.”). Phillips, however, has said he “has no problem” with the label being applied to the Dickies, rhetorically asking “can I help it if we are musical?” Stan Lee once said of the early period of the Dickies: “We were a pop band masquerading as a punk band.”
During the band’s formative period, they viewed the already existing punk bands as being divided into two camps: serious political bands (such as the Sex Pistols and the Clash), and fun, entertaining bands (like the Damned and the Ramones). The Dickies made a deliberate choice to belong to the latter camp, albeit with a distinctive southern California vibe. Elaborating on their distinction from the angrier, angstier bands, some of whom had gritty upbringings, Lee points out that at the Dawn of the Dickies’ career, he was living with his parents in the San Fernando Valley with a swimming pool, preoccupied with waterslides and television shows, finding not much to complain about. Hufsteter, an influential figure in the Dickies’ formation and a sometimes “extra member” of the band, opines that “the Dickies never really thought of themselves as punks” at the outset, but instead saw the form “as an opportunity”, particularly the “silly” variant of punk evident in Ramones music.
Here’s what they were up to in 1985 at a concert from City Gardens, New Jersey.