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back on broadway epBack On Broadway EP – Handsome Dick Manitoba (Heavy Medication/Ghost Highway/Take The City)

He’s back and as bombastic and brash as ever. Handsome Dick Manitoba and the band he made his name with, The Dictators, are irrevocably divorced, but The King of Men punches on with this four-song vinyl EP, comprising two new studio tracks and a brace recorded on the road.

In case you didn’t know, Manitoba’s been doing a bit of touring in the USA and Europe with his own bands after the big split and something of a slow motion fall from grace away from the stage. If you’re not familiar with the story, the title track “Back On Broadway” spells it all out:

My boss done fired me from my radio job
My girlfriend left me for a left coast slob
The band said I was torturing them
The money was bad, that was the end
But the end ain’t the end, it was just beginning for me

Not a hint of self-pity, just a declaration of intent. And an optimistic one, given that he’s still not a household name, but neither are The Dictators, and both facts just prove what a messed up world it is in which we all reside.

Pushing the back-story to one side, “Back On Broadway” (the song) is a respectable work-out and the claim that it could have sat well on “DFFD”, the last studio ‘Tators album on which Manitoba sang, holds up. Flip it over for “Deluise Nation”, a trip back to schooldays and The Handsome One's admiration for a pair of brothers who surely sent him down the path of juvenile delinquency. A lash of sax and a neat lead-break are cherries on top.

The record's fleshed out with live takes on “The Parry Starts Now” and “Savage Beat” (two Andy Shernoff songs, ironically enough) and they kick arse even without the presence of the guitar force of nature that is Ross The Boss.  

The EP’s a markedly different direction to Manitoba’s 2019 solo record "Born In The Bronx" and hopefully will lead to something more substantial. If not, there’s always “Blood Brothers” and that Manitoba’s Wild Kingdom record to blast the neighbours into submission. It's a seven-inch EP and numbers are limited. 

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