The Next Great American Band: Dicko Dickson Says Sixwire Interview by Gayl Killough
November 15, 2007
Ian "Dicko" Dickson, the so-called mean judge on The Next Great American Band was gracious enough to hold a conference call with the media, and I was one of the writers invited to participate. Everyone who participated in the call had the chance to talk directly with Dicko and I asked a couple questions directly myself.
On the show he talks very fast and I had assumed that he just had a lot to say in a very limited time frame for the purposes of the show. However, he really does talk very fast all the time and that is just his natural pace. I was surprised that listening and talking with him on the conference call was just like listening to him talk as a judge on the show. I had figured that his sarcastic put downs referred to as Dickoisms, were something that he just planned out to say beforehand, mainly for comic purposes for the audience, and were not part of his natural speak. I assumed wrong. As a judge on the show, he mixes these sarcastic put-downs with his advice for the contestants. While answering questions, he talked the exact same way, mixing sarcastic humor with answers that flowed in a completely natural way. He stopped at one point, and joked that he should save some of these sayings for the show. I can't stress enough that the Dicko that is seen on the show is the real life Dicko. Dicko is who he is.
He also commented that when he was approached to be a judge on Australian Idol that he was asked to be like the Simon Cowell judge. He did not really understand what they meant at first since he had known Simon as a person and had not really seen Simon as a judge on American Idol. His reaction was that he can't wear his pants that high and that he did not want to die his hair black. As far as being assigned the role of the so-called mean judge, he just naturally has a biting sarcastic sense of humor and he wants to help contestants on the show get better. He stated that he is mean in order to kill weeds, but that he is not mean for fun. He really would like to see all of the bands on the show get better and to do well beyond the show. There is something that he likes and dislikes about all of the bands on the show.
I have been fascinated and highly impressed that after years of working in the music industry that Dicko still shows a genuine love for music. A lot of industry people seem really jaded and I often wonder if they ever liked music. The music industry is a cruel place for music fans and business comes before the music. So the first question that I asked him was how he maintained the balance between being a music fan and representing the realities of the music industry. His answer completely surprised me at the time, but it makes sense. He said that he left the record industry a couple years ago when his reality television career took off. He admitted that the recording industry and Idol's focus on marketable acts caused him to lose his religion and that he did not listen to music for about a year. It was his teen daughters who brought him back to rediscover his love for music. They were listening to The Artic Monkeys and that was the catalyst for returning to loving music.
The second question that I asked him and I admit that I kind of botched the question while asking him, since he did not answer the way I thought he would on the first question, had to do with musical diversity. Luckily, he answered the question the way I had intended, so somehow he still understood what I was trying to ask. I appreciate that he really listened to me and stuck through my rambling question. I personally love the diversity of the bands on the show and I think that especially since I had a non-traditional musical upbringing, I am more apt to appreciate musical diversity. However, some feedback that I have gotten from friends and I have also seen on the message boards, is the complaint that there is too wide of variety of bands on the show and that people do not want to sit through music that is not their musical taste. I am trying to get more people to watch the show, but friends have told me that they do not think it is worth their time on a Friday night to sit through bands that they assume they will not like in order to listen to one band that they might like.
I think the musical diversity of the bands is a major plus of the show, however the ratings are really low, and I try to be open to opinions, even if I don't like them. For example, to me, the music on the radio is sounding more and more alike every day, as if the radio station's goal is to sound like it is playing the exact same song the entire time. I can imagine the radio station saying that you can depend on this radio station to always sound the same. I personally hate that, but I have to consider that maybe the recording industry really is correct after all in that what people really want is a musical comfort zone and that unfortunately, people want to stick to the narrow musical genres of their personal taste. I was hoping that he would tell me that the diversity of bands on the show was a good thing.
Dicko is proud of the show's.....
About Gayl Killough
Gayl considers herself a jack of all trades and has too many interests. Gayl writes environmental legal documents for a living and hopes people find this commentary to be more interesting. Gayl likes to believe that being born on B.B. King's birthday means she was born to love the blues.
You can contact Gayl at gkilloug@yahoo.com.
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