The Dictators / The Hasbros

The Dictators show will feature former member MARK MENDOZA (bassist extraordinaire) from Twisted Sister joining his former band.  The band also features drummer ALBERT BOUCHARD - founding member of BLUE OYSTER CULT.  Twenty year rock veteran KEITH ROTH handles  lead vocals and, of course, Ross The Boss on Guitar.

Considering that the first Dictators album came out in 1975, scads of credit is due these hearty pre-punk New Yorkers for blazing a long trail, melding the essentials of junk culture — wrestling, fast food, TV, beer, dope, cars, scandal sheets — with loud/hard/fast rock’n’roll and thus creating an archetype that has been adopted and adapted by countless other bands. Although wavering wildly in terms of style and track-to-track consistency, all of the band’s albums are great. As protégés of genius music journalist Richard Meltzer, the Dictators helped translate a lot of intellectual fandom’s crazed hypothetical theorizing about rock’n’roll’s possibilities into wretchedly wonderful reality. Originally formed as an homage/response to the MC5, Flamin Groovies, New York Dolls and the Stooges, the Dictators wound up playing a similarly crucial and inspirational role to the generations that followed them. Even more amazingly, the group has endured to compete (artistically/conceptually if not commercially) with those acolytes — and their progeny.