The Dictators: Twenty Twenty Vision.

The Dictators play the Waterloo Hotel on Friday

“We kind of really broke up whatever that means. Then, it was so much fun doing The Dictators that once a year or so we'd get together and do it until about 1996 when we were doing a CBGB anniversary party and somebody from Spain saw us and bought as to Spain and then somebody in Spain saw us and bought us to Scandinavia and it just took off from there. The more we played and the more we did it the more people responded to it and it sort of evolved into a record. It seemed like there was an actual reason to make new records so we did,” explains Dictators front man Handsome Dick Manitoba, regarding where they've at today. “I think that the band is kind of doing better than ever now. Hey however you get there... I don't know there are all different kinds of roads in life. We took a strange one.”

It's been over twenty years since The Dictators released a studio album; did you feel there was any pressure to prove yourself with DFFD?

“Certainly. I didn't write the songs but my goal in making this record was to prove that we're still a ferocious ass-kicking band who write good pop tunes and number two to make sure that we pay respects to our past and our history without trying to be twenty year old guys again which is horrible to see forty year old guys act if they were twenty. We didn't write songs sounding like we're twenty year old guys in terms if the lyrics and we didn't try to be twenty-year-old guys. We made a record for who we are today with respects to the past and I think we nailed it.”

A review of your new album in Rolling Stones read, 'who will save rock n roll, they ask? They already did, for today, at least '. How does a comment like that make you feel?

“It feels great. It feels great when you do something and it gets appreciated and understood it's wonderful. We're doing it for ourselves really in a lot of ways. We're a bunch of kids that grew up in the 60s and 70s and rock n roll was the thing we knew how to do and it's still the thing we know how to do. It's not like 'okay rap is happening now so let's be rap'. We don't know how to, this is what we do and it feels great to feel loved and appreciated and respected for what you do. I don't know how important we are that's for people to decide... how important we are, how great we are. All I know is we're having a lot of fun doing this and it feels wonderful to be able to travel to different places in the world and get paid money to play rock n roll music that you enjoy playing. I just feel really lucky that way.”

Being in and out of the music industry for so long, what's one of the most valuable things you've learnt?

“I think we sort of live in the cracks of the music industry. I don't consider us... like you sign a record deal you're with a big record company you have a staff that does your publicity and people that do your videos. We don't really kind of roll on that, we don't kind of really go on that gas. Dictators kind of fell between the cracks but we kind of found a niche. We found a place for ourselves in the world and it's a smaller place then playing places like Madison Square Gardens but never the less it's a place, a very important place and it is a place that allows us to tour and make money and make x amounts of people happy with what we do. It's a valuable thing that we have.”

Was there ever any other option for you then being in The Dictators? Weren't you a wrestler didn't you drive a cab driver?

“I always did something. I drove a cab, I wasn't a professional wrestler but I love wrestling somehow that story got out. I have my own bar now. Its sort of all tied into The Dictators... the bar, the band and the whole lifestyle. I don't know what else I could of done, I don't really think about it too much. I dropped out of college, I became a mailman, I became a cab driver, I became a drug addict, I became a singer in a band then we broke up, I became a cab driver and a drug addict and then I stopped being a drug addict and I became a bar tender, I became a Dictator again and now I'm a bar owner and a Dictator and not a drug addict. So it's kind of worked out good, everything's pretty good right now.”