E-Mail This Article to a Friend Mr. Unstoppable Bosstone Dicky Barrett takes over Los Angeles BY JOHNNY ANGEL

"I became the singer in the Bosstones because that was my skill, sort of," confesses the Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ colorful frontman, Dicky Barrett. "We sort of picked roles for ourselves in that band based on what little we did know, like Joe Gittleman did know a little bass, so he became the bass player. Ben, the dancer, only became the dancer to get in to clubs underage. You have to be in the band to get in the door, that’s what Mitch [the late Rathskeller doorman] told us. When we played with Fishbone, they loved the idea, maybe that’s where Fugazi got the idea for their on-stage dancer, I dunno. It’s like all punk rock — you’re a hanger-on and then you just do it, I guess."

The fortysomething singer is sitting in the dining room of his newly purchased Craftsman home in the San Gabriel Valley town of Monrovia, some 25 minutes from Hollywood (one of LA’s "10 best-kept-secret neighborhoods," he confides with un-punk-rock-like pride). That he, Dicky Barrett, even owns a home anywhere is miraculous to those of us that have known and loved him since he was an underage skater sneaking into clubs and getting into brawls. "Yeah, that was sort of my thing," he says. "Stage diving and skating and definitely not totally straight-edged. I did it at every show I could get into." Which explains the drunken melee he got into on stage at the Channel in 1984 with an infuriated Lux Interior of the Cramps that began the Barrett legend. "I wouldn’t give him a moment’s peace. He took a swing at me, I swung back, it got written up in the Globe. And I love the Cramps — today, Lux wouldn’t remember it as the Bosstones singer that hit him, just some drunk idiot."

Which, post-Bosstones, he definitely isn’t. On February 1, Barrett will assume his second job, morning-drive DJ on LA’s Indie 103.1, which recently was voted "America’s Coolest Radio Station" in Rolling Stone. A semi-free-form madhouse of a station featuring a noon show by former Sex Pistol Steve Jones and programs hosted by Crystal Method, Henry Rollins, and others, it’s hipster heaven. And Dicky is about to become the morning voice. "I was in the green room at the Jimmy Kimmel show [Barrett’s first job is being the Jimmy Kimmel Live announcer] with Indie’s PD, Michael Steele, and I told him how much I liked the station, was there anything I could add? Well, we talked, and I came up with the ‘Punk Rock Minute,’ a kind of news report from the sorta underground, and we started taping that. Now, we’re gonna try the morning show.

"I also told Steele when I met him that the station was too good — that it might last maybe a minute."

Barrett will get off to a flesh-tearing beginning — on his second shift, Street Dogs’ singer Mike McColgan is slated to get a tattoo of the late Clash frontman Joe Strummer on his arm. "I’ll have to smack Mike’s arm for some reaction, huh?"

Once a punk, always a punk. But Barrett is willing to try anything and stand or fall with it. Which might explain his odd career. As hard as it might be for the legions of amp schleppers that pour in and out of tiny Eastern Massachusetts clubs to believe, there is life after rock and roll, or whatever variation on that hoary form they’ve chosen to play. And Barrett’s path is stone simple to figure out. "I turned 40. I figured I’d done it, is there anything else, I mean, I could have stopped at 50, but then there’s even less time to do other things. So that’s when I stopped, for now." (The Bosstones haven’t officially broken up, they just aren’t playing right now; Barrett rules out nothing.)

For a band who started as a goof and a way to get into clubs free, the Bosstones became an institution. Barrett, Gittleman, guitarist Nate Albert, and drummer Josh Dulcimer began as a hyperactive metal-punk-ska-quartet who rapidly added horns, first at recording sessions, and then at live gigs. "We did our first disc for Taang!, Devil’s Night Out, with Bim Skala Bim’s trombone player, Vinny, and Tim Burton on sax and Tim Bridwell on trumpet. Bridwell’s dad wrote Clifford the Big Red Dog [the children’s book and TV show], so now Tim travels the world spending his dad’s dough making lousy art films — he’s from the Vineyard, typical Island nutbag."

They made the disc in three days. "I knew nothing. And I’m hard enough to work with, and I wanted to listen to the Sox in the studio, and Paul Kolderie is trying to get me to sing — what a mess." And so began the Bosstones’ adventure and routine — indie disc supported by van tour. The first tour was with Murphy’s Law, whose singer, Jimmy Gestapo, had "beaten the shit out of me at an Agnostic Front show in Boston

but was now a fan," Barrett says, recounting the story of his life.

As their sales and their fan base increased, so did the pressure to sign to a major, which they did in the mid ’90s. "I didn’t want to at first, none of us did. We were afraid of that Minor Threat thing — selling out. But Curtis [Taang! owner] never paid us, we were on the road paying for his swank San Diego beach house and begging him to release a record of ours to tour on and he wouldn’t. So we signed with Mercury and made a punk-rock-cover record [SkaCore: The Devil and More] just to stick it to him, we knew how much he’d want that.

"The label thought we might be the next Nirvana. But by then, the grunge thing was dying, people wanted upbeat, happy music, party music. And that was our thing." This is, in fact, the same explanation fellow skasters No Doubt offered for their mid-90s ascent. They had approached Barrett about touring together and had sent him a copy of Tragic Kingdom, which elicited a reaction of "I’m not feeling this" from the head Bosstone. "Can’t pick ’em, can I?" he says now of that blockbuster disc.

After the Bosstones’ own enormous hit song, "The Impression I Get," Barrett says that little changed. "Just more anxiety. More MTV, more radio appearances, just more tension. Today, I’d enjoy it more; then I thought, ‘Can’t be punk-rock anymore.’ No big deal after it faded, we still drew thousands of people a gig, all was fine. But because we were such a big band in terms of personnel, with the eight of us and everything split eight ways, we had to stay on the road all the time to pay for our houses and the like. We’re friends and all, but you do get on each other’s nerves."

After a European tour, his friend Jimmy Kimmel offered him the announcer’s job at his late-night talk show. "I say, ‘From Hollywood, it’s Jimmy Kimmel.’ When the show started, ABC was in the shithouse, ratings-wise, so they started picking everything apart, including us. And when research showed that America hated me, they cut back on me." In the wake of Alias and Desperate Housewives, though, all has changed. "ABC is rocking, and so we’re off their radar, as Jimmy says, ‘They don’t know we suck.’ So for now, I’m safe.

"I’m not dying to be on TV, it’s my job. So I told Jimmy, ‘Dude, I’m fine.’ " And he does seem so glad to be removed from his first LA home, on Hollywood Boulevard, the Roosevelt Hotel ("A freak show, every nut and kook in LA walking down that street"), and only somewhat missing Boston and the Bosstones. "I miss my friends, but it is January and 75 degrees out today. As far as the band goes, I miss parts of it, but it was just so time-consuming, so . . . "

But sitting across from Dicky at his dining table, I’m struck by the thought that he’s done what so many of us wish we could do — that is, he’s become like his hero. After all, in a parallel universe, isn’t he the American version of Suggs, the legendary frontman of the British ska band Madness? Both crew-cutted. Both boot-boy punk-rockers gone ska-crazy, both charismatic, if limited, talk/bellow singers, both proud papas of one massive international hit song, and now both TV stars of sorts. And both cats who’ve done very well using their heads, if not necessarily for "Glasgow-kissing" rowdies in bars anymore. "The Bosstones’ success came from our brains," Barrett concludes. "Nate Albert’s ancestors invented the barber pole, you know, that striped thing outside every barber shop? Nate was a barber-pole trust-fund guy. That pole symbolizes the Bosstones — we were there, no one really needs it, but it’s there. That’s how I see that band and me, I guess."