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Richard "Handsome Dick Manitoba" Blum: vocals
Ross "the Boss" Friedman (a.k.a. Funicello): lead guitar
Scott "Top Ten" Kempner: rhythm guitar
Mark "The Animal" Mendoza: bass
Andy "Adny" Shernoff: keyboards, vocals
Ritchie Teeter: drums
Petronius Woods: additional keyboards
Let's see... A largely Jewish mid-'70s New York rock band produced by Murray Krugman and Sandy Pearlman? Ladies and gentlem... OK, it's not the Blue Öyster Cult, it's The Dictators. Formed in '73 by bassist Andy "Adny" Shernoff and guitarists Ross "the Boss" Friedman (a.k.a. Funicello) and Scott "Top Ten" Kempner, with a revolving cast of drummers, they released their first album, the patchy Go Girl Crazy!, on Epic in '75, with 'secret weapon' Richard "Handsome Dick Manitoba" Blum as band mascot and occasional vocalist. After it flopped, they were picked up by Asylum (those were the days, eh?), although by this point, Shernoff had been replaced by Mark "The Animal" Mendoza. Shernoff was persuaded to return on keyboards and vocals, completing the 'classic' six-piece lineup that recorded what, for me, is their ultimate statement, '77's Manifest Destiny, named for the nineteenth-century policy of American expansionism. Amusingly, given their ethnic backgrounds, the band had already been accused of Nazism, so adding racism and belligerence to their portfolio was fairly small fry in comparison.
As you can see, someone (label? Producers? Themselves?) saddled the band with one of the most preposterous sleeve designs known to mankind. I mean, WHAT were they thinking? It's genius of a kind, albeit a kind that had more to do with idiots savant than actual intelligence per se. Actually, I suspect it was all a huge joke at someone's expense. Possibly ours. From the right, we get a crouching Handsome Dick roaring into his mic, Mendoza looking all rockstarish with his shades and shitty Gibson Grabber bass, Ross taking off at ground level, drummer Ritchie Teeter throwing a 'this is how not to play' look behind an extravagantly oversized chrome kit, Top Ten striking his best Townshend arm-flail with a not-very-rock'n'roll-looking natural Strat and, possibly best of all, Shernoff in his best lounge entertainer rags giving us a 'one hand on the keys, one appealing to our better natures with bent knees' pose behind a random selection of keyboards, including a recased Hammond, a Wurlitzer piano, a MiniMoog and, er, something trailing lots of wires. Fabulous! And all on a ridiculous, multi-levelled stage set in front of stacks of amps and a ludicrous, Metropolis-inspired cityscape. Genius. Raw fucking genius. (In actuality, I suspect the individual pics were taken and superimposed onto the set, but let's not spoil a good pic, eh?). The rear sleeve depicts the same 'set', now empty, apart from five of the band sitting at one end, while Handsome Dick lies huddled on the ground, surrounded by a red glow, as the 'O' globe from their logo sinks slowly behind the 'stage'. The visual concept is carried over onto the lyric inner, the globe depicted in stark black-and-white on one side, while a diagonal division splits the lyric side into monochrome halves, the text switching from black to white sometimes within a letter. What does it all mean?
The music? The music's brilliant, of course, why d'you think this is here? The band actually out-BÖC'd BÖC, at least briefly, especially as that outfit had sidetracked themselves into a lucrative (and, admittedly, fairly good) AOR blind-alley by this point. While this is only the second entry in this series, I imagine many other 'old faves' will sound slightly less good than I remember with the passing of the years, but there isn't actually a bad track on Manifest Destiny, with five of its eight self-penned numbers standing the test of time with the best of 'em.
Exposed: Opening with the album's strongest song (always a good move), Exposed is a mid-paced, major-key tune, featuring a series of great melodies, not least the guitar motif that opens the track and the bass work throughout. The song moves through several repeating sections with a couple of 'unique moments' thrown in for good measure, including a great 'building' vocal harmony section and the key changes and guitar figure that close the track. As if it wasn't already good enough musically, it's also a vessel for the album's best (or at least, funniest) lyrics, on the subject of serial marital infidelity, featuring couplets of the quality of, "They'll tell my wife/Then I wouldn't bet a nickel on my life" and the album's best stanza, "I gotta get away/I don't wanna meet my maker/I gotta get away/I think I'll become a Quaker". Genius. Pure. Fucking. Genius.
Heartache: Although one of the album's lesser songs, the major-key Heartache has some good moments and its middle-eight shows the influence of '60s girl-group records on Shernoff's compositional style.
Sleepin' With the T.V. on: Probably the nearest the band were ever going to get to a ballad, Sleepin' With The T.V. On makes us wait through two long verses before the money shot of its chorus, followed immediately by another '60s-esque middle-eight and a closing motif similar to Exposed. "Sleepin' with the TV on/dreaming William Powell dies". But who, exactly, is William Powell? This one's been bothering me for over thirty years. Get a life.
Disease: The album's longest track, the Alice Cooper-esque Disease opens with two minutes of narration, Manitoba taking the title part, the music building up behind him threateningly, with some great organ arpeggios from Shernoff. Once the mini-epic actually kicks off properly, it almost matches Exposed for Dictators genius status, particularly the ominous middle section. Shifting through multiple parts, this is the bastard offspring of Alice's Halo Of Flies. And for lyrical eccentricity, look no further than the line shown on the lyric sheet as "Gettin' by on a sneeze", sung as "HAT-CHOO!" on the actual record.
Hey Boys: What was that I was saying about ballads? Yet another major-key effort, Hey Boys is even more laid-back than Sleepin' With The T.V. On, a nice guitar part not quite rescuing it from its 'album's weakest track' status.
Steppin' Out: Another mid-paced effort, Steppin' Out opens with an instrumental part that, while working well, bears little relation to the rest of the song, before leading into a slow verse and its strongest point, the bridge/chorus pairing. Other highlights are Ross' ripping guitar lines and the 'major chords in minor mode' feel to the whole thing, not to mention the energetic build-up to a nice ending section.
Science Gone Too Far!: A welcome burst of energy after several mid-paced efforts, Science Gone Too Far! powers along nicely, with another memorable chorus and plenty of rock'n'roll rhythm playing from Kempner. Another genius stanza: "Science gone too far!!/How did you ever break the jar?/Science gone too far!!/Maybe it hasn't crawled too far!".
Young, Fast, Scientific: You know, I LOVE it when bands get all self-referential on our arses! Think: Queen getting a Seven Seas Of Rhye reference into Sheer Heart Attack's Lily Of The Valley, or Rush bringing By-Tor back for a line in Caress of Steel's The Necromancer, amongst other examples. All of which brings us to another high-energy effort, Young, Fast, Scientific, a quote from Go Girl Crazy!'s liner notes, not to mention a lyrical reference to 'the Two-Tub Man' from their debut. But is it any good? Damn' right it is; it rocks like a bastard, Ross letting rip again half-way through, not to mention a great Ross/Kempner duel at one point.
Search & Destroy: To put this cover into context, The Stooges' last album, '73's Raw Power, sold poorly, making this less obvious than it might appear. A roaring take on the track, it's made to sound live; it's possible the opening crowd noises are genuine, but the stadium cheers are most certainly not. The only keyboard-free track here (unsurprisingly), I wouldn't be entirely surprised to learn that Shernoff plays bass; he certainly takes several lead vocals across the record, although not here.
I can guarantee that you won't find another album like Manifest Destiny; it mixes its disparate influences together with an attention to detail that borders on the aspergic. Five stars? Probably not, but a definite four-plus. Still sounds good over thirty years later...
Mark Mendoza left the band after the album's release, subsequently finding (sort of) fame and fortune with Twisted Sister, his departure shifting Shernoff back onto bass for the original band's last album, '78's punkier Bloodbrothers. Since then, they've drifted into and out of existence, 1990's ...And You?, released under the name Manitoba's Wild Kingdom, being a Dictators album in all but name. Individual members went on to various projects: Ross played on several albums with the ludicrous Manowar, Kempner formed the Del-Lords and Shernoff played with The Fleshtones. Manitoba gained a(nother) degree of notoriety in 2004, when he took Canadians Manitoba, led by Daniel Snaith, to court over the name, forcing a name-change, although Snaith reportedly commented that it was like, "The Smiths suing John Smith", in which he, er, had a point. Manitoba apparently also owns an East Village bar called Manitoba's. Should I ever frequent NYC again, I must pay a visit.
Manifest Destiny finally became available on CD in the 2000s, currently as a 2-on-1 with Bloodbrothers on Evangaline. Listening to it again, the BÖC influence is less apparent than before, but fans of the Blue Öyster boys should find something to like here. And Shernoff wrote all his own lyrics.