Perhaps these progressive quotes describe the philosophy of MDC’s Dave Dictor most succinctly: “People need perspective, they need growth, they need to keep their minds open to change and not be so narrow in my humble opinion, and I am an outspoken person…We need to speak our minds and it’s important for us to be individuals.  And that’s why I’m happy for us that we’re not goose-stepping with all the people who just wanna look good in their fashions and wanna go smile at themselves in new clothes at The Gap and live those…empty kind of lives.”

And Dave certainly abides by these words, and through the now-legendary extremely candid and outspoken hardcore punk outfit MDC, the frontman has been transmitting his views for 23 years since the band’s inception in Texas in 1980.  There’s so much to discuss, it’s hard to know exactly where to begin, but logically, it would be with the events that led to his involvement in music and the punk scene. 

Dave is actually a native of Long Island, having grown up in Glen Cove.  Upon graduating high school there in 1973, he “got into this Willie Nelson-groove thing” (of course there was no punk yet), realized just what a dead-end kind of place his hometown (and basically all of Long Island) was and headed out to Texas where he planned on making bluegrass and folk rock music.  In any case, he attended the University of Texas and graduated in 1979 with a degree in American studies.  But, before graduating, he was quite affected by the burgeoning punk scene circa ’77 and ’78 with acts like The Dead Boys, The Ramones, Blondie, and Patti Smith.  His interest was furthered by a little hangout called Rauls where there were free music nights on Mondays when, as Dave reminisces, “All the punk bands would come there with their funny haircuts and sing ‘Wild Thing’ really sloppy and awful, but it was great.” 

Dave made his own debut one night when he grabbed the mic and shouted those five little words that would begin his punk rock career: “JOHN WAYNE WAS A NAZI.”  He says, “The next thing you know, I’m building a band around it and people liked it.”  Two of who were Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra and Tim Yohannon of “MaximumRocknRoll”, who invited Dave and his cohorts in 1981 to play with DK and Flipper.  But, Dave, the only member to stick with the band for the long haul, ultimately decided punk was his calling because he realized he “didn’t want to fit into a culture that robs you of your individuality and…values money and status.”  Before they were MDC however, the band’s moniker was The Stains and they released their first record in 1981, which featured two songs “John Wayne Was a Nazi” and “Born to Die”.  Some time between this release and their first album, the brilliant “Millions of Dead Cops” in 1982, the band changed their name to MDC.

So just how did Dave come up with “John Wayne Was a Nazi”?  Well, the day John Wayne died in 1979, everyone at the University of Texas was crying over his death, but Dave would have none of it and truth be told, was quite disgusted by these people’s tears and whining over a man who wasn’t all that great, thus blurting out, “He was a Nazi!  John Wayne was a Nazi.”  Sure when he was younger the singer viewed the actor as a hero like most people, but with Wayne’s actions during the whole Vietnam fiasco and other sordid facts that came to Dave’s attention like learning about with which groups he was affiliated, Dave realized this guy was not someone people should be looking up to – he was a racist and in ways a fascist.  Witnessing people’s responses to his bold declaration, he realized that he kind of liked how this one statement really angered all these people, coming to the conclusion that “if just saying that can piss them off, then I want to piss off the whole country and the whole universe eventually.”  His noble goal was also to enlighten people and make them aware that some of the people and things they hold in such high regard, are not worthy of such praise.

One of MDC’s greatest assets, aside from their bludgeoning hardcore punk style, is that they’re not afraid to speak their minds on any topic and well, piss off everyone in the process.  “I’ll give you my opinion on everything,” the frontman boasts.  So was he ever reluctant to comment on anything?  Dave laughs, “No.  On Dead Cops I sang ‘No war no KKK no fascist USA.’  We got in a rock fight with the Klan, we got in fights with Nazis, we talked the talk and we walked it.”  Yet, for all these statements his outspokenness was sort of a touchy subject within his own family, as he half kids, “I love them; I just didn’t want them to think I was going down the toilet.”  Dave relates a great story about how his grandmother, a devout Catholic, mind you, responded to his various projects as MDC: “I did Millions of Dead Cops and she’s like, ‘Dave be careful,’ and then we did Multi-Death Corporation and she said, ‘Oh, I like the drawing.’  Then we did Millions of Damn Christians and she goes, ‘Dave, I’m gonna pray for your soul.’”

But it’s not even just the name of the record that was to blame.  Even worse was the cover artwork, which is a picture of the guys in MDC each portraying an apostle.  For instance, Dave is in the likeness of James the Great while the drummer is Doubting Thomas, and the guitarist is Jesus.  So maybe Dave wasn’t afraid to sing about any certain topic per se, but there was a degree of reluctance when it came to his family seeing this sacrilegious album, causing him to even want to hide it from relatives.

Another thing that goes hand-in-hand with his intense frankness is his extreme disdain for the normal American life.  Yet even though much of his lyrics deal with this topic, he “can relate to the fact that some people just went into the straight world and bought little houses and are paying off mortgages and trying to keep their little families together and they party once a month,” as he himself has brothers in Hicksville, Floral Park, and the Hamptons (all Long Island towns) living in this manner.  Yet, the contempt for this chosen path comes through, as he playfully continues, “It seems a little retarded to us ‘cause we see them celebrating Pat Benatar and their tight pants…just looking way dated.  But that’s who they are, and you can’t think you’re too cool for who you are ‘cause as fabulous as I sometimes think I am, I know I’m just a human being.”  And this sarcastic, humorous proclamation is just what’s so great about Dave and MDC.  They speak about so many important issues and are so impassioned, yet are never preachy, never belligerent.  Moreover, they mostly always add a bit of humor into their songs (whether the stuffy shirts out there will find it charming is another story…) giving them a real endearing quality.  Take for instance songs like “Chicken Squawk”, “S.K.I.N.H.E.A.D.”, and “Nazi’s Shouldn’t Drive”, all songs about extremely serious topics – the former, one of the first punk songs to deal with vegetarianism, while the latter two deal with fascist skinheads.  Yet, the lyrics are lighthearted and accessible but at the same time really witty and smart.  “Swing to the east, swing to the west/Swing with the chickens that you love best,” Dave sings on “Chicken Squawk”, where he also name checks cartoon characters – how he doesn’t want to eat Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig and that MDC is cool with Foghorn Leghorn because he approves of their dietary habits.  Meanwhile, “Nazis Shouldn’t Drive”, is in response to the death of Skrewdriver’s Ian Stuart, a fascist icon, a stab at him and his culture, with biting lyrics like “They can’t think left, they can only think right” and “They should’ve paid attention in drivers ed. instead of hating foreigners, queers, and Reds.”  Classic.  Oh, and who could forget their sardonic, “bastardized” rendition of “Deep in the Heart of Texas” (“The policeman is in the Ku Klux Klan…”).

Therefore, the band manages to get their points across in a non-confrontational way.  Even about the Nazi theme for instance, Dave doesn’t just come out and say, “Nazis I hate you, you stupid asshole bastards.”  And that tells something about his character because he’s had plenty of run-ins with skinheads and Nazis, but has numerous friends who’ll be right by his side when trouble starts brewing.  Whether it’s a bunch of punks ready to take care of a couple of skins who were going to beat him up for being a “queer commie” or John and Harley from The Cro-Mags defending him in front of CBGBs, he has legions of friends and fans who will help him out of any situation.  And even though he’s been threatened by them, his “temperament’s not to try to engage everyone in a fistfight or to be hostile toward people, whatever their beliefs are.”  He elaborates, “As much as I hate Nazis…I try to personalize everything ‘cause everyone’s got a history…and I really wanna hold out belief that people will stop being Nazis,” adding “I just try to communicate and be real and honest, and there’s some people that will never change.”  But he has witnessed some that have, and feels good that perhaps he had a hand in helping them alter their skewed mindset. 

And his accepting mentality and deep down desire for change and helping people must make him a great teacher.  Yes, that’s correct.  The man who sings “What makes America so straight and me so bent” and songs like “No More Cops”, is a teacher.  But remember, their music is about exposing social ills and oppression – a means for change, if you will.  Anyway, he actually graduated from C.W. Post after he came back to Long Island four or five years ago and has a Master’s Degree in special education.  He had had some trouble with the law in the past, but “appealed to the state and showed to them I was a person of good moral character,” and as a result, has been working at a school for developmentally disabled children in Syosset.

So Dave is doing pretty well now.  He enjoys teaching, but absolutely loves making music.  “[I] feel all happy and privileged to be making it.  I’m privileged that people actually keep buying it and I can sustain at least partially a life from touring and making music.”  At the twenty-year mark, MDC released a career retrospective, which includes essentials like “Corporate Deathburger”, “Dead Cops/America’s So Straight”, “Millions of Damn Christians”, and of course, “John Wayne Was a Nazi”, as well as newer fare in the form of “More Squawk”, a song Dave wrote as a means to address the plight of animals being slaughtered in order to fatten up us humans, 18 years after “Chicken Squawk” was released.  And he’s still making new music, as he and original guitarist Ron Posner, who’s back with the band once again, are working on a new record.  But how will this newest addition to MDC’s ever-growing catalogue sound?  “The music’s very [much] like the first album; it’s very early on MDC, very hardcore/thrash,” Dave reveals.  Some songs already composed are “Prick Two-Faced Bastard”, “Prime Evil”, “Sleep a Little Less and Dream a Little More”, which Dave describes as being Crass-like, “very drum bass-y,” and “Sick of It”, a song that was actually featured on a recent compilation.

And MDC continue to tour despite a brief hiatus: when he returned to Long Island four or five years ago, ending his drug addiction and raising his son on his own, for about a year, the band only practiced a couple times a month and played a gig every now and then at local haunts like the Village Pub in Port Jefferson or King’s Club in Centereach and sometimes ABC No Rio in NYC.  But then things began to happen – MDC toured Brazil, which Dave praises not only for the lush, exotic beauty, but also for its acceptance of punk rock in the culture, and then went to Europe the past two years – touring in 2002 with NYC’s Molotov Cocktail and playing the huge Holidays In The Sun festival over in Morecambe, England both years.  Recently, the first weekend of October, they played the HITS related Viva Le Punk three-day fest at CBGBs, and plan to play Europe again (including Wasted – the new name for HITS), do a U.S. tour in the spring and then head out to Brazil again.  So, we have a lot to look forward to from this band that has stood the test of time.  And it’s great to see everything working out so well for Dave, truly a sincere, understanding, down-to-earth man who has lived an extraordinary life.