The Dickies were punks from Southern California who drew slapstick (and stage prop) inspiration from England’s the Damned, whose cover art for Damned Damned Damned would have suited the Dickies just fine. Singer Leonard Graves Philips also sounded eerily interchangeable with Wire’s Colin Newman. One of their distinguishing factors, though, was a way with turning cover songs, which always started out seeming like mockery, into expressions of earnest tribute. On 1978’s “Silent Night,” with a misogyny-tinged picture sleeve that reinforces “punk-version” expectations, Philips sings his heart out and the guitar solo reaches for the stars. It becomes an un-silent yearning for silence that brings more layers of meaning out of the familiar song than countless other versions have ever managed. The silence shtick carries over to side B, a cover of “The Sound of Silence,” with an intro that makes you think of Loverboy’s forthcoming “When It’s Over,” and when the whole song really is over, silence never sounds louder.