DICKO COMES TO AMERICA: Poor man's Don Rickles takes to pulling wings off flies on US TV

Fox's "The Next Great American Band" broke wind from eight to ten last night, giving Ian "Dicko" Dickson, its chief judge of talent, his shot at American celebrity after being a big deal on "Australian Idol."

However, one understands that being big in Australia means doing well in Melbourne and Sydney, equivalent -- numbers-wise -- to being hot between Harrisburg, the capitol of Pennsylvania, and Baltimore, MD.

Dicko was designated Mr. Supercilious, next to nice lady Sheila E. and cool dude Johnny Rzeznik.

Perhaps it's the accent of British empire producers now look for. It's been all downhill for being professionally insulted by a fellow American since the death of Howard Cosell and the retirement of Don Rickles one or two decades ago.

Fifteen years ago DD would have said insulting struggling rock bands in a talent show on network TV was a great idea.

However, now everyone who wants to be in a rock band in the States IS in a rock band in the United States. The noise to signal ration has become so high, ridiculing the pathetic and ludicrous isn't challenging. It's not even light work.

In Allentown at the Morning Call, you had to go to the trouble of shlepping to the arenas and clubs. There you would endure the excruciating in shows people actually paid for. There was some honor, consumer reporting and civic duty involved in puncturing balloons, gratuitously slagging overpaid favorite sons and blackjacking complete strangers in print for the weekend editions.

Now the pathetic and ridiculous come at you every hour of the day for free -- in promotional materials, on the Internet and television. If you go to a website that purports to provide professionally done reviews, better than half the time it will include barely listenable and totally unlistenable bands shoving MP3's at you.

Hey, I've written for them and I know the ropes.

In any case, perhaps one of the reasons for slumping sales of CDs -- besides the rampant stealing of music on-line -- is that the number of people in pop rock bands is rapidly approaching the number of people who actually want to listen to new pop rock bands. And when the first number inevitably exceeds the latter, the latter will become so turned off by rock 'n' roll that only oldies acts at county fairs will survive.

"There are a lot of bands around these days -- it's not quite as common as having a blog, but it can seem that way ... " wrote LA Times TV writer Robert Lloyd on Friday, in a short preview for "The Next Great American Band."

A bit understated but, heck, he's just a TV critic.

Dicko shelled the obvious on Friday night: An Asian woman who slaughtered "Good Vibrations," a polka band, a fat and mouthy 40-something guy from Hollywood who dressed in Kiss make-up and a clown suit, a band of dancing girls in sequins who performed to a tape, a band whose frontman wore a foam horsehead much like the idiot things worn by college football fans.

We have no shortage of Rupert Pupkins, something which has made watching "The King of Comedy" impossible.

When Zolar X, a trio of middle-aged men who dress in the garb of Seventies Star Trek aliens hit the stage, Dicko yelled "Rubbish!"

Many of Dicko's insults are fairly obviously staged, prepared prior to dismissing a band from the competition.

When Zolar-X were interrupted, Dicko asked a question to which he already had the answer.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"We're from Plutonia," said Ygarr Ygarrist of Zolar X.

"Oh, I thought you were from Uranus!"

Haw-haw! Haven't heard a variation on that one, Dicko, since "The Groove Tube."

Many TV rock shows are not complete without the spectacle of twelve and thirteen year olds doing heavy metal.

This was old ten years ago but it's a stubborn and and always growing fad thanks to those white trash Mums & Dads who see "School of Rock" or the doc on the real school of rock in Philly. A kid is always viewed as a way to vicarious thrills and perhaps a bag of cash.

Is there anyone who has not yet seen and heard a few twelve-year olds who can shred like Eddie van Halen?

The shtick is to buy the kid a ton of equipment, have the parents act as managers, and set him loose like a wind-up toy on as many stages as possible.

Generally, many idiots can be counted on to be impressed by the process although such novelty acts never sell.

Light of Doom, from San Diego, were the twelve and thirteen year-old wind-up toys ready to replace Iron Maiden or Dio. They passed the audition although one of them squirmed a little when asked why he didn't say onstage what he said he was into -- tits -- on his "resume."

There were two acts chosen for their stories of perseverance.

Big Toe featured a bass player/singer, born without arms, who played bass with his big toes. If one set aside the spectacle of it, Big Toe was awful. Of course, no one actually knows what to say when confronted by the various Big Toes of America except variations on, "Wow! Ain't you something! Keep on doing what you're doing and you'll make it eventually!"

Look, only three and a half million hits for plays-guitar-with-feet on Google!

The other story of stick-to-it-tiveness came from The Muggs, whose bass player had suffered a stroke a couple of years ago.

The Muggs are a hard rock band who have made a CD independently, a good one, of which DD has a copy. Their bass player switched to organ, which allows one -- as old classic rock fans know, to still rock out mightily in the bass register.

The Muggs impressed everyone and were qualified for the next episode.

Another thing that plagues these types of talent search shows is the front-loading with hack bar bands from Nashville. Think of them like upper-class cockroaches.

There were three on "The Next Great American Band," all obvious pros who'd been grinding it out in country dives in Tennessee for years. Two featured players who shredded ... on mandolin.

One of the van Halens of mandolin from Nashville thought to dress his band in zombie make-up.

The other van Halen of mandolin was in The Clark Brothers, an act which did not dress in zombie make-up. They did "Jesus on the Mainline" and professed fervently to their evangelical beliefs.

The last act were a group of girls from Hollywood who played a stiff and light-in-the-loafers cover of The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop." They were called Rocket and didn't although their picture made it into the LA Times.

Rocket graduated to the next episode because they were inspirational and empowering to other young girls. That's so novel. Or at least I thought that was the message Dicko was trying to put over on us. Hey, men are creatures with two legs and eight hands, I heard once.