Against the bullyboys

An interview with MDC founder Dave Dictor

The Reagan era, to me, was defined by hardcore punk, and vice versa. As a kid in the ‘80s, it seemed to me that the only reasonable response to the harsh realities of Reagan’s United States was to be a hardcore kid, and there were few bands as hardcore as MDC.

MDC, who play The Vanguard on October 9, were early exponents of extreme punk—exemplars of lightning quick tempos and harsh, distorted guitar noise and strident, shouted vocals decrying police brutality and racism. They advocated for human rights when it wasn’t in vogue.

For years, people have declared that punk is dead and no longer relevant. But it never really went away. Today, MDC’s music seems prescient and relevant—all over again.

Dan Riffe: It’s like the Trump era is a weird echo or replay of the Reagan era.

Dave Dictor: Yeah, it really is. It’s back to the future one more time with all the crazy bullyboys— down to what’s going on with the NFL. It’s just incredible to see the president act like that and of course that’s a smoke screen—it’s them trying to steal health care from regular people and all the other things they’re trying to get away with.

As far as making music in the early ‘80s, I was someone who grew up a decade ahead of you. I lived through the ‘60s and I got to see the whole spectrum from John F. Kennedy being assassinated, Martin Luther King and Bob Kennedy, the Vietnam War and all the double talking. And Richard Nixon … they recorded all these lies and he has to resign, and then finally Jimmy Carter came, and then four years of Jimmy Carter and they got rid of him. And then it was Reagan in 1980 and it was incredible to live through it. They put a hold on all the rights between eight years of Reagan and four years of Bush. They got to stack the Supreme Court. They still have a stacked Supreme Court. We’re living through it and there’s things that coincide with the ‘80s and some would say even the ‘50s. Hopefully we’re a little farther down the road as far as the right side of history.

Riffe: You grew up on Long Island. Were you aware of the Austin music scene before you moved down there to go to school?

Dictor: Somewhat. I was. I knew Janis Joplin lived there for a while and they also had this kind of country swing music, and I heard Willie Nelson moved there and that put the nail in the coffin—I’m gonna go hang out with Willie. Actually, I never got to see Willie in Texas. So punk rock started happening around me and I fell into that vortex.

Riffe: Tell me a little bit about the whole Bad Brains fracas.

Dictor: Basically we met them; we idolized them. You know, they were the African American hardcore band and the songs on that first release or two they put out were totally like P.M.A.—positive mental attitude. It was all kinds of uplifting kind of stuff. They definitely had some Coptic Christian islands philosophy, Rastafari to the max, homophobic to the max, and it just didn’t work with me at all. I knew Randy Biscuit [from the Big Boys] and Gary Floyd [from The Dicks] well. I had my own sexual feelings, you know, [like] how do I fit into this world? It became, this is not my punk rock that I wanna be subjected to.

Back then bands had their own philosophy and people were drawn to that philosophy and I didn’t want to get on the fence with it. I really had to be outspoken about it. So I did an interview with Maximum Rock & Roll and told them what happened, how they were using the term “bloodclot faggot” and “they deserve to die” and “we don’t want to ever hold a microphone that’s held by a bloodclot faggot” and he was talking about Gary Floyd and Randy Biscuit and it just didn’t work.

Riffe: Looking at young people specifically, how does punk and hardcore fit into the modern era as opposed to in the ‘80s?

Dictor:  To me it’s all punk rock. I started out being in a punk rock band in 1979 and things kind of morphed into MDC which was a hardcore thing.  I was never locked into this, “This is all I do is hard core.” That’s not how I feel.

Riffe: Green Day took your lyrics from “Born to Die”—the “No war, no KKK, no fascist USA,” but changed them to “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA” at the 2016 American Music Awards. Did you feel like they ripped
you off?

Dictor: It never occurred to me as that at all.  I got a call from Rolling Stone magazine saying, “Oh, Green Day is doing your song” that night, half an hour after it happened. I wasn’t watching the AMAs. I was very happy. Use my art, use my music. They played for millions of people that night. The “Born To Die” version of our song went from having 4,000 hits to 40,000 hits. So I was happy.

Riffe: Is the song “My Family is a Little Weird” a reflection on how you were raised?

Dictor: Totally. My family was a little weird. My high school had this event with the girls that played basketball and the boys were supposed to dress up like cheerleaders and I got a lot of harassment from older jocks to the point I was beaten up at the beach. We’re talking about Biff from “Back to the Future,” bully-type of people. You know, saying, “You’re a man, you should act like this.” That song came out of that.

It’s bad, the realization that they’re making a comeback, but I guess we have to do our thing and speak out against it and make music that rocks against it and sways the kids who are these hungry vessels looking for role models. We need try to rescue as many of them as we can.

There’s nothing better to do than to try to reverse mass extinction of mammals and wherever this global warming thing is gonna lead. Then there’s economic injustice, so we don’t go back to the 1890s.

Riffe: In our so-called Christian nation, what would Jesus say?

Dictor: People that want to be Christians, how can they cut welfare, how can they cut food stamps, how can they cut special education funding?  I guess people celebrate a different god and one god was trying to help each other out and the other god was kind of Calvinist, kind of stern, you know—buck up or we’re gonna get rid of you. It’s real stuff to ponder and we better nudge it along to a positive place if there’s gonna be survival of this planet—or we’ll live not taking care of people with special needs and that’s where it almost goes to the Nazis. They believed in exterminating people that aren’t fit in their eyes. So here we are trying to do the right thing and I’m glad we’re here.

MDC with The Elected Officials, Battalion Of Saints, The Cryptics, and Life As One
October 9, 7 p.m. | The Vanguard | thevaguardtulsa.com for tickets and more information