Don’t Wanna be a Rat Like That.
King Lizard (1967-1976): History's forgotten punks.
Welcome to a special music edition of Automatic Writer! I dug up an article I wrote a while back for the popular (at the time) POGGO magazine. I hope you enjoy it!
I’ve watched them all: The Decline of Western Civilization, Gimme Danger, Punks not Dead, End of the Century: The Story of The Ramones, and none of them—not one!—mention the first punk band to ever to release an album, King Lizard. Even the book Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain seems to have purposely excluded King Lizard. But if you ask anyone from the New Jersey punk scene from back in the late sixties, you might not get a ringing endorsement of King Lizard’s music, but nobody will deny (off the record) that they existed.
I remember the first time I saw Dixie in the back of a CREEM magazine my dad kept hidden in the garage; she was biting an apple, and wearing her signature leather cowboy hat, the words LIZARD KING tattooed across her forehead. I was immediately enthralled by her—and this was before I’d ever even heard her voice, with its masculine crooning interspersed with angelic yet lashing howls. I was obsessed! I dug through crates at record shows, asked record shop employees, looked through magazines—I couldn’t turn up any information about the band. It was like, one day—Poof!—they had ceased to exist.
Ask any music aficionado who the first punk band was and they’ll say The Ramones, or The Stooges, maybe Velvet Unground, but nobody ever brings up King Lizard.
Growing up with a punk rock dad, we always had King Lizard spinning on the record player in the family room. I’d dance around on the shag carpet singing to my favorite song, Daddy Cleans the Pipes!, while my dad smoked cigarettes and read Baudelaire.
On a recent trip to Florida to visit my dad in his cushy retirement community, I decided to give the King Lizard record a spin, but it was missing from his collection. He said he’d never heard of the band.
I started to question my sanity; was I making all this up? Was King Lizard even a real band? I decided to find out.
Tracking down anyone involved with King Lizard proved difficult, Cabbie having passed away last June and Donka reportedly living off the grid somewhere in Appalachia. Dixie hasn’t been seen or heard from since 1976, but her Honda Goldwing was found outside Lizard Mound State Park in Washington County back in ‘78.
Dixie’s mother agreed to answer a few of my questions.
Shony: Did you like King Lizard? Like, were you a fan?
Sandy: Did I like the band? No. You have to remember, Dixie was only twelve when they started, and Donka and Cabbie were both in their forties. As a mother, that worried me a great deal. I got used to it, though. I even grew quite fond of Cabbie. Donka was a bit much for my taste. He’d always try to make me listen to the music he was fond of at the time—‘I don’t listen to that style of music,’ I’d say to him, but that didn’t stop him from telling me anyway. He’d say, ‘Check out this song by The Vexed Children’ or ‘Mrs. Puss, you’d love this band Booty Tooth.’ I told him, if it’s not Harry Belafonte, leave me out of it!
Shony: What happened to Dixie?
Sandy: She saw that man in his leather vest, writhing on the floor and, well—all the girls wanted to be with him, you know. They found him to be very sexy. God knows why. But Dixie didn’t want to be with him, she wanted to be him…and so she started wearing leather pants and rhyming all the time. Alfie didn’t mind, but I prefer to talk about my day around the dinner table rather than listening to someone talk about Lizards or Sun Goddesses, you know?
King Lizard began their journey as a trio. It was Donka Shane on drums, Cabbie Wallace on bass, and the mastermind behind the project, a five-foot-five powerhouse named Dixie Puss at the front.
Dixie was born in Mississippi but raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, where her father, Alfie Puss, found stable employment as a pipe organ maintenance man. The Puss family didn’t have much money, but because of her father’s profession, Dixie grew up with a deep appreciation for music, often spending hours of her day humming in her room.
“…Dixie didn’t want to be with him, she wanted to be him…and she started wearing leather pants and rhyming all the time.”
Shony: She’d hum for hours?
Sandy: Nonstop! And it was always the same song. She’d hum To Sing for You by Donovan. I didn’t mind the song at first, but when you’ve had someone humming anything for hours on end…then she saw the man with the leather vest and that was that.
When Dixie was eleven, her father, who, according to Dixie’s mother, enjoyed relentless organ solos, took her to see The Doors at Asbury Park. It was a life-changing experience for the young soon-to-be punk rocker. Friends who grew up with Dixie told me that when she got home that night, she proclaimed herself to be the Lizard King, and spun around on top of the dining room table until her mother took her to a priest, to make sure she wasn’t possessed.
Shony: Is it true you took her to see a priest after she saw The Doors?
Sandy: Yes, we did take her to a priest. Alfie didn’t think it was necessary, but if you would have seen the way she was dancing! And the priest agreed with me! He said that yes, she was possessed, but that most girls her age were, and that it would eventually “wear off.”
Dixie met Donka Shane a few days after seeing The Doors. Shane was working the counter at the Old Barn Milk Bar and noticed “Lizard King” written in marker across Dixie’s forehead; he asked if she was a singer, and despite having only ever hummed, she nodded yes. That night, they wrote what I propose was the first punk song ever written, the blistering, Don’t Wanna be a Rat Like That.
“He said (the priest) that yes, she was possessed, but that most girls her age were…”
Shony: What did you think of the song Don’t Wanna be a Rat Like That?
Sandy: It was no Belafonte—I’ll say that much. To be perfectly honest with you, the only song I enjoyed by King Lizard was Powder Keg Baby Girl. It had a nice melody, if you covered your ears a little, like so.
Over the next few months, the trio wrote over twenty-five songs as King Lizard Foot Rash, later shortened to King Lizard, thirteen of which appear on their debut album Punkathunk. Yes, you read that correctly, Punkathunk! They coined the term “Punk(athunk)” and released the first punk album, so why had they been removed from the history books? Scouring the internet turned up very little, but after calling in favors from friends who were there in the early days, I was handed a snippet of an interview with Ron Asheton of The Stooges, which might give us a clue. My source has requested to remain anonymous.
“Dixie was fucking nuts, man. King Lizard came through Detroit once, and I went up to that chick and said, ‘Hey, you were great!’ And do you know what she said? ‘I’m the Lizard King.’ That’s all she’d say—over and over again—‘I’m the Lizard King, I’m the Lizard King.’ She never said anything else! As far as I know—and from what other people have told me—that’s all she’s ever said to anyone. Like, ever! So, it was just really weird, man. Like, I get being into The Doors and all that, but enough with the Lizard King shit. You know? Most of us stopped going to King Lizard shows after that. Hell, we would have loved to tour with them but…man…that shit would drive me nuts.”
I couldn’t believe this was true, so I tracked down Cabbie’s son, Dullard Wallace, who happened to be playing guitar at the Van’s Warped tour just down the road from my office, filling in for Don “T.V.” Parley of Blacker Flag.
“That’s all she’d say—over and over again—‘I’m the Lizard King, I’m the Lizard King.’”
“Ron is telling it real. Dixie would come by the house sometimes and just point to this or that and say ‘Lizard King’, and you’d have to know what she was trying to communicate. Like, you’d hand her a Coke or whatever she was pointing to. ‘Lizard King’—hand her the Keebler cookies, see what I mean? I asked my dad about it once and he said, ‘You get used to it.’ I’m not sure how they practiced, though. What’s weird is that she was able to say other words while singing. It doesn’t make much sense to me, but yeah, I try to tell people about King Lizard and how they were the first punk group…nobody believes me. The Ramones opened up for King Lizard in ‘76! The Pistols covered I Wanna Kill a Cowboy at their Taliesyn Ballroom show in Memphis in ‘79. Sid was a huge fan—he was the only one still talking about King Lizard in ‘79! Sometimes I wonder about Sid’s death…maybe related? I don’t want to speculate.”
Upon reaching out to the founder of King Lizard’s record label, the now-defunct MickeyDicks Records, I received this communication from his daughter, Brenda Dicks.
Hello. I’m writing to you on behalf of my father, Mike Dicks, who passed away in a house fire in 1989. Unfortunately, all of the MickeyDicks Records master tapes were destroyed when the house went up. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I do recall my father talking about King Lizard. He used to say that working with King Lizard was the single greatest experience of his career, particularly working with Dixie Puss. He even went as far as to get a Lizard King tattoo on his forehead, just like Dixie’s. That was two days before the fire.
“Sid was a huge fan—he was the only one still talking about King Lizard in ‘79!”
Despite an exhaustive search, I was unable to find a copy of Punkathunk, or any of the original tracks. If you have a copy, please send it to POGGO Magazine.
Punkathunk:
Bounce House
Alive she cried
Undigested Tofu
Don’t Wanna be a Rat Like That
Punkathunk
Boot Rash
Powder Keg Baby Girl
I Wanna Kill a Cowboy
Explode me!
Daddy Cleans the Pipes!
Chris is Dead
Chris was Dead
Bite them!
Special thank you to Dullard Wallace for supplying the original track listing and for providing a demo of him playing Undigested Tofu, recorded from memory. I remember hearing this song on my dad’s record player back in 1977, but it sounded completely different. I’m including Dullard’s version anyway as a thank you for speaking with me.
This is a satirical piece. Sorry for wasting your time!
Thanks for sharing
RIP to the Lizard King!!