The Dicks always gigged with Big Boys, and Austin Hardcore evolved around those two groups. The Dicks were led by Gary Floyd, a fat gay singer dressed in weird drag, who'd take enema bags filled with liver and condoms filled with mayonnaise and hurl them at the crowd.
The classic Dicks - frontman Floyd with mean-ass members bassist Glen Taylor, guitarist Buxf Parrot, drummer Pat Deason - started as a "poster band", the posters promoting imaginary shows at ficticious clubs, saying things like "First ten people with guns drink for free." Their first gig was May 1980, at "The Punk Prom" at Armadillo World Headquarters.
Gary Floyd, whose powerful Johnny Winter-style Texas Blues howl made him one of the era's greatest vocalists, was a virulent Marxist who delivered incendiary anthems like "Dicks Hate Police", the title of their first single (self released in '80 on Radical Records, not to be confused with R Radical Records, later MDC's label) and "Anti Klan." In '83 Maximum RockNRoll put the Dicks on the cover: a picture of Gary in a mohawk and mu-mu with the title: "The Dicks A Commie Faggot Band!??!"
Hardcore circles best knew The Dicks for Kill From The Heart, their arresting '83 SST album. By then, Floyd had convinced the band to relocate to San Francisco - a great place to be gay and leftist in the early 80s - in fact leading the wave of Texas bands who moved there, with MDC, DRI, Verbal Abuse. Unfortunately, the other guys got homesick. Floyd tried a few SF lineups of The Dicks, which included drummer Lynn Perko. They made an excellent album on Alternative Tentacles in '85, These People - but no one seemed to give a shit. After The Dicks' '86 demise Floyd and Perko formed Sister Double Happiness; Perko later moved on to Imperial Teen.
- Steven Blush, American Hardcore
(This is an unofficial fan-made tribute page. No Shit.)
Images snagged from:
Kill From The Heart (homepages.nyu.edu/~cch223/mainpage.html),
Cargo Records (www.cargorecords.co.uk),
Sound on Sound
(www.soundonsound.org),
thanks!
