Punks grappling to touch a pink fluffy hand puppet shaped like a penis? Of course it’s The Dickies, and The Bristol Fleece was packed to witness the wonderful world of this punk band from the Californian west coast of the U.S. on Friday, August 5th.
That night lead singer Leonard Graves Phillips in his tight black tights was armed with his box of goofy props which saw him pull out the aforementioned pink ‘willy’ hand puppet for "If Stuart Could Talk/See Me Feel Me", a gorilla costume for the wild and popular "You Drive Me Ape (You Big Gorilla)", return of the hand puppet in the form of dog for "Poodle Party", and finally donning a pair of goggles whilst waving a sex doll around.
The packed Bristol venue with it’s stone slabs held an energetic audience who jumped around to a set list that held most of the favourites from this influential punk outfit. This included the theme tune to a prime time 
children’s TV show The Banana Splits, which became a top 10 hit in the U.K. in the late ‘70s.
Phillips was flanked by original member Stan Lee on guitar, who displayed great craft to show that punk rock and the sound of The Dickies is no fluke. On his other side stand Gregg Hanna on his bass guitar, sun kissed with his mohawk grimacing along adding to the quirky rampaging music. Next to him on guitar was Dave Teague decked out in his The Omen t-shirt. However, there was nothing sinister or scary about The Dickies, who endeared the audience with humour and never taking themselves seriously.
Phillips took time to interact with the audience and especially one female member of the audience with her impressive star shaped spiked hair. Also present was local punk ‘Pig’, who himself was once a guitarist in one of Bristol’s finest punk bands, ‘Maggot Slayer Overdrive’
The music of The Dickies has remained timeless and this was reflected within the varied mix of young and old within the audience with the band themselves adding a bit of youth through Travis Johnson perched behind his drums.
The band returned for an encore to cap off an evening of great fun.
