Dogs D'Amour

DOGS D'AMOUR In The Dynamite Jet Saloon 1988, China By Pepsi Sheen ___________________________________________________________________________________
"...But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone-I'll be speaking to you sweetly, from a window in the Tower Of Song..." (-Leonard Cohen) "I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but Heaven knows I'm miserable now..." (-the Smiths) "Once again, the hurricane outlives the hook..." (-Scarce) "Got nothin' to say, I done said it before-I've bled all I can, I won't bleed no more..." (-Sisters Of Mercy) "They've been wishin' me dead since the 70's, man..." (-Keith) "As you are now, so once was I, As I am now, so you shall be..." (-Tyla) _____________________________________________________________________________________________ WHAT ALL THE FUSS WAS ABOUT... I think I was probably crouched down on my knees in front of the metal mag section at the bookstore in the mall, the first time I ever read an interview with GUNS 'N' ROSES. I'm pretty sure it was "Concert Shots", and I knew I was gonna dig 'em, cos they were so obviously into Hanoi Rocks, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, AC/DC, and the Stones - like me and my unruly little crew of dirt-trail delinquents. They already dressed cooler than us, and Axl talked about being from a shit town in the midwest, just like me, he bitched about how when he was back there, growing up in the cornfields, he was antagonized for being a hippie cos he had long hair, a punk cos he liked Devo and the Sex Pistols, and a queer for liking T.Rex and David Bowie. Just like me. So, needless to say, I was real lit about hearing some trashy blues metal by an older group of nose-ringed misfits whose singer was considered a "hippie punk rock faggot" in his homeland, who even got kicked out of school, and hassled by the juvie authorities all the time. Just like me. When I finally did get my black fingernail varnished little claws on "Live Like A Suicide", I was initially a little put off by his metal screech, cos even as a young and tender hooligan, I was always way more into Lou Reed than Bruce Dickinson. Upon repeated listens, though, it grew on me like a fungus, cos all those tunes seemed to be specifically addressing my own tortured adolescent state of being declared incorrigible by the court, and lookin' to make my way back to the coast, to make it big with my snotty punk band. "Nice Boys Don't Play Rock'n'Roll" was my favorite song back then, cos I'd gone to the preppie rich school and was painfully disgusted was painfully disgusted when all the Polo shirt dorks started growing mullets and even wearing denim jackets, like us burnout kids. "Reckless Life" just nailed it, and needless to say, "It ain't easy livin' like a gypsy" ALWAYS spoke volumes for me. "Move to the City", in all my ceaseless teenage vainglory, just seemed like it coulda been written by, or about me, or one of my sleazy bros. These songs all totally captured our pain, and seemed like they were all written by rebellious gutter punks who listened to "Lost In The City" and "11th St. Kids" 2,000 times a day, just like we did. It really did feel like these five guys definitely would have fit right in with our disreputable little clique, that these were our kinda people. Even though they were a little older than us, it seemed like they were cats we coulda been friends with. We BELIEVED them! Scarlet Rowe, from Angels In Vain, pointed out to me years later, that that was part of their whole appeal, why they broke so huge-cos EVERYBODY felt that same exact way about 'em. Slash was like the creepy drug dealer with the empty terrarium, cos he always got too stoned and lost his reptile, that we've all scored cheap drugs from. Duff reminded you of the coolest metal head in town, who only wore a Motorhead t-shirt, and had SLAYER painted on his skateboard, but knew about cool 70's rock, in addition to bad thrash shit like fuggin' Metallica and Megadeth and Anthrax. Steven was the suburban geek who hung out with the jocks and preps, and you hate his guts cos all the hot babes fawned all over his dumb Farrah hair, but eventually, you ended up having to jam with him, cos he was the only rock drummer in town, besides that bitter old Stooges collector who says he grew up with Cub Coda and the Ashton Bros., but he hates your guts because you don't know who Rory Gallagher is, and cos you still get laid alot. AXL was your unstable best friend from that crazy hillbilly family with the cars in their yard that everybody gossips about, who bloodies the nose of any prep who tries to pick on you, but gets all misty and sensitive and deep whenever he's stoned, and talks crazy shit all night about how that crap Elton John song, "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" REALLY DID SAVE MY LIFE ONCE, MANN! And IZZY, yeah, Izzy was totally one of us. A stylish loner Hanoi Rocks/Johnny Thunders guy, who is technically the weakest player maybe, but who is the catalyst teaching the rest of the gang what was cool. For a year or so ('So' meaning, 18 years, probably...) our top groups were Hanoi Rocks, the Cult, and Guns 'N' Roses. Then, loads of great bands started rising up, in rapid succession. Circus, Zodiac, Mother Love Bone, Sisters, the Front, Four Horsemen, Hangmen, Rock City Angels, and most importantly, the DOGS D'AMOUR, who probably made the hugest lasting impression on us, along with Z and GNR. These are also the bands me and Sleaze initially bonded over back in 1991, os so. THE DOGS D'AMOUR were one of the most significant groups of all time, if you were part of the FLASH METAL REVOLUTION. Yeah, the Hangmen, and Sea Hags, and Princess Pang were all having their way with our cassette decks, too, but none of them measured up to the Cult or GNR in our book, GUNS and the CULT gave us something to be. Evolution dictates that we outgrow our early idols at some point, and by the time we started following Circus Of Power around the country, and forming our own "street glam" bands, it wasn't long before we started embracing the DOGS D'AMOUR as the genuine articles we'd been waiting for, and soon after the release of the "Lies" EP, I personally, had already started losing my patience with Axl and his bicycle shirts and overwrought ballads and dolphin videos. We all loved the first e.p. and "Appetite", but by the time they released, "Lies", we were gettin' hepped to the great Dogs D'Amour, who kinda made G'N'R look like total poseurs. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ON PUTRID GREEN VINYL...
It was memorably me ace pal, Cowboy Bobby Cloyd, who first turned me on to the DOGS D'AMOUR. He worked at the chain store - National Record Mart, in the mall, the one that would never give me a job, supposedly because I had long hair, but he had long hair, and so did all the other dudes that worked there. They just had to wear ties. No problem, I've always worn ties just cos I like to. The real deal was that you could only have long hair if you were a G.Q. good looking preppie kinda guy - if you looked like Michael Hutchence, or Kip Winger, or some other male model kinda dude the aging groupie store managers were attracted to; but you couldn't have long hair and work there, if you were a scrappy, ugly, pale weirdo RAMONES guy like me. It wasn't fair, it was so obvious and hurtful and insulting, cos I got a girl pregnant at 17, and I REALLY needed a record store job. Anyway, my friend got hold of a promo copy of "DYNAMITE JET SALOON", and instinctively, rushed it straight over to my two room apartment above a bar called the Roxy, that one of the prettiest girls in the world at the time was helping me paint purple.
I know we always say that, but she really was something amazingly special to behold, a really wild, vivid beauty, the likes of which I've seldom seen. She looked kinda like that model, Elle McPherson, but even prettier, and she dressed really cool, understated, European new wave and, well, I spent six long years on her trail. You shoulda seen her, really. She was definitely one of THEE ONES. Of course I still love her, she's the one I wrote all my best songs for, besides the ones I wrote just for you. All my male friends from back thenhated my guts because of her, and I didn't realize it 'til they started dredging up all these resentments I'd been oblivious to close to twenty years later, but anyway...I started a band with her Morrisey geek turned skinhead bootboy, turned mod popnik cousin, and Cowboy Bob, and some other friends, called VAIN DAMAGE, not long after Bob knocked like he was making a bust, interrupting me, and the movie star blonde love of my youth, who were deep in discussion about Morrisey Vs. Westerberg, or something, when he frantically exclaimed, "Put this on right now! Wait 'til you hear these guys! They're like a cross between Rod Stewart and the N.Y. Dolls" I stared at the colorful album sleeve for a long while, thinking to myself, "Yeah these guys sure do look a mangey mess-kinda like the Lords and Hanoi!" They looked more like me and all my friends besides Bob, than GNR did. They were weirdo teased haired Ramones, too. These weren't more Kip Winger/Jon Bon Jovi pretty boy products faking rock'n'roll. The first song he skipped the needle to was "How Come It Never Rains" and my mostly unrequited first love smiled that red velvet sunshine smile of hers at me, cos Tyla's ragged caterwaul was not unlike my own, proving once again, that there's a little Errol Flynn in every little jetboy. The song was astonishingly good. Like The Stones. That kinda quality, I was in total awe. All these songs positively bled, man. Bobby was right-on. This music was made for you and me. A couple weeks later, we got tickets through his record store connections, and traveled to a nearby big city and met the DOGS. They weren't all that friendly to us, except for BAM, who was a total sweetheart, but then again, TYLA really was completely fucking smashed. Bob thought he was faking it-acting drunker than he really was, but he sure nuff seemed drunk like me. Despite the Dogs setlist being composed in large part of songs from the album we were already familiar with, upstart Aerosmiths from Seattle, MOTHER LOVE BONE, actually stole the show that night with Andy Wood's saucy Tyler/Rothisms, dancing on the bar, wearing a Circus Of Power rising sun t-shirt (big points for that, cos they were friends of ours, back then!) and in spite of his hitting on my old lady, who we later discovered, beared an uncanny resemblance to Xana LaFleunte, his old lady, but it's gonna get too confusing if I try to tell all these stories at once. I was with my other old lady that night, not the movie star blonde, but let's save the MLB stuff for another rant, alrite? _________________________________________________________________________________________ LOOKIN' RATHER THIN....
	THE DOGS D'AMOUR were far, far more than another Johnny Thunders tribute act, which is my gripe with all the bands of today. I mean, don't get me wrong. I think the Favours song, "Leave L.A. Alone" smokes the entire Faster Pussycat catalogue, it's power pop genius, and the Pussycats are the band they always get compared to, but unless that one song's a total fluke, they're probably much better songwriters. I love alot of stuff by the Diamond Dogs, too, but I wish they were more lyrically original, and had something new to add to the whole Faces/Stones/Dogs/Quireboys cocktail. I prefer Wilco's Replacements shit to Wilco's Radiohead shit.
Juliette Lewis and the Licks are cool - they, too, have at least one killer, killer song, called "All American Boy" that I thoroughly dig, but this nutty broad's a millionaire actress with access to any kinda high falootin' cultural shit she wants, so am I supposed to be impressed she got around to discovering Gary Numan, Flock Of Seagulls and Nena Hagen? I mean, she's sexy, passionate, and very entertaining, but she's still acting. You want Iggy Pop or Curt Wylde? "Radio Ethiopia" was brilliant, but that was Patti's statement in the 70's, it ain't really Juliette's. "American Boy" is the tits, great tune, great sentiments, all true, much needed political rabble rousing, right? But all her phrasing and warbling and whole act, really, is just a pale portrayal of Patti Smith by a talented, angst ridden actress whom I have faith can continue evolving until she finds her own musical vision/voice. Sour Jazz rehashing the Doors or Iggy's "Dum Dum Boys" makes for fine sonic wallpaper, but don't we expect more from guys that competent than tired retreads? I mean at least Don Bolles' band, Raw Power Rangers are just upfront about being Stooges impersonators. Their new album is flawlessly executed, as always, but I'm still yearning for something newer, braver, more original. I want to hear new music that transcends, that goes beyond. Morrisey mighta liked the NY DOLLS as much as us, or Tyla, but he and Johnny Marr created something totally different and unique and arguably as substantial, by NOT slavishly imitating all of David Jo's and Thunder's old moves. That's the idea. Iggy dug Morrison plenty, but you'd never mistake the Stooges for the Doors, except maybe live, right? This Brendan Flowers kid, poncing around in his mascara in the pages of Spin- "explaining" that he's "influenced" by Bowie, Morrisey, and New Order. C'MON! The whole album sounds like all those band's 80's out-takes. When I hear the Next Big Things alot of the time nowadays, I'm always thinkin' shit like, Bring Back the Candy Harlots. Sultans Of Ping F.C., come back, all is forgiven. Even Heart Throb Mob keeps sounding better and better. TYLA was a Great, because he left his own red dragon tattoo on a tired kindof dinosaur rock formula, and by doing so, revived it, and made it new again, for a whole new generation of gypsy punks and bubblegum sluts, who were too young to have witnessed all the great 70's super rockers in their prime. The important part was how he brought his own twist, his own pathos, and baggage, and personality to the table. He wasn't trying to make you think HE was THUNDERS. He had his own shit to do, 4 Real. Otherwise, the DOGS woulda been boring, useless, and redundant, like many of today's subterranean junkie romance bands. Who needs another Thunders wanna-be? No one. THE DOGS D'AMOUR were a genre unto themselves, in spite of all that came before, they were creating their own mythology, always reaching well beyond rewriting "Vietnamese Baby" and "Personality Crisis", even though they did that very well. They weren't content to stay there, initially. I guess I'm just starving for more courage, genuine commitment, and actual creativity in rock'n'roll. When I say I wish there were "more bands like the Clash", I don't mean like, Libertine and Rancid, I mean, more bands brave enough to cut their own path, with something meaningful to convey. Go back and listen to "Clampdown", or "Death Or Glory", f'rinstance. I just dunno if I can fully agree that Crystal Pistol are the "new Guns "N' Roses". I mean, I wish they were. To me, they're just the "new" Robyn Black & the Intergalactic Rockstars, the "new" Hardcore Superstar, maybe, or the "new" New Scarecrows. They look cool enough, I s'pose, -much like the Sinisters did, but they just sort of pile on the cliche's, don't they, layer after layer, I dunno... I haven't connected with any of their songs as much as I did, say, even, Marilyn Manson's "Dope Show", or "Beautiful People"...or "Live Forever" or "Cigarettes & Alcohol", by Oasis, two bands that even the mainstream gimmick-lickers innately understand are gratuitously derivative of Bowie/Alice and the Beatles. Whereas, GUNS 'N' ROSES DEFINED their own genre for our generation, adding Nazareth, thrash machismo, misogyny, and an all too familiar brand of dangerous redneck-ness to the Hanoi Rocks formula, and the DOGS D'AMOUR sorta inspired us to keep reaching to continuously evolve our ideas of ourselves, like, y'know, Dylan said. "He not bust being born is busy dying". Cats like Stiv and Tyla wanted us all to be OURSELVES, not third-rate clones of THEM. That's just too easy, too dumb, too cheap-what's the point? Cowboy hat all you want-it don't make ya TYLA. BESIDES, who the fook, besides himself, would WANT to be? Does that man seem happy to you? I just wanna urge summa our leading lights to surpass their idols, resist their own cliche's, and realize their own potential. I want choo to take me on a new voyage. I've already got all the Lords' albums, dig? When TSAR riff on "Purple Rain" in the midst of their song, "Ordinary Girl", it's COOL, cos it's subtle, they're not stealing the hook, it ain't wholesale plagiarism passed-off as "sampling". They ain't trying to fool nobody that they ARE Prince. See the difference? The Dogs D'Amour were one of the last bands of people who were just undoubtedly, born to rock, born rockstars, that got to flirt with any real degree of popular exposure. The DOGS D'AMOUR weren't good at playing the industry game, or managing business, or investing money in anything much besides the next pint, cos they were artists, pirates, songwriters, drunks. They didn't think it was their calling to focus opportunistically on careerist ambitions and money whoring. Hats off to these legends for the legacy they left us. Leave all that status seeking meet and greet bullshit industry weaselry to the fully-posable clone drone image pedaling show-biz wankers. The DOGS D'AMOUR were like four rogue-ishly charming, shitfaced Captain Jack Sparrow's, obliviously, crashing the hair-band's ed carpet party. I was so disappointed when Spike from the Quireboys made that album with C.C. from Poison - I hope he got alot of money. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ UNCONSCIOUS BOY....
Tyla really knew how to tap that main artery, didn't he, how to slice me a bone of the universe. He could make a lonesome cowboy ballad vivid and real, come full to life with some cactus, and a can of beans, and a lonesome prairie dog howlin' underneath the bloodshot moon, like nobody's business, unlike all those Winger/Whitesnake/Bon Jovi wankers who were polluting up the airwaves back then with all their stupid "Fly To The Angels" vapid power ballad salad tossing. The record label A&R guy was probably beggin' for a single-Tyla'd give 'em something along the lines of "Drunk Like Me", then make 'em press another 12 inch E.P. to cash-in on the collector's market. In the old daze, he couldn't really write a crap song- I mean, even Dogs early throwaways, I'm thinkin' of, "Planetary Pied Piper", maybe, or a really gear B-Side, say, "She Thinks To Much Of Me", f'rinstance, they were ALL always miles above the best songs by all the million seller hairbands. The Dogs couldn't help but emanate pure trash, that whole sordid, 70's sloppy, raunch rock abandon, like the Faces, Stones, Dolls, Mott, and Hollywood Brats before 'em.
Their authentic punk trashiness was really uplifting to hear back then, cos everything else was all that heinously phony, compressed, canny, pitch-shifted Def Leppard radio gloss to get on the radio, and the DOGS D'AMOUR (and the Four Horsemen and Circus Of Power if you're askin' me) were irrefutably, the genuine articles, at long last, the cavalry, the mythical return of somebody to rescue us from all those suntanned Phil Collins jockstraps with their spandex and hair extensions. Alot of their songs were about drinking-and girls, which were my foremost preoccupations at that time, and usually, in that order. The only song on "Dynamite Jet" I remember not being all that wild about was the one the bleached denim metal-heads gravitated immediately too, and that was, "I Don't Want You To Go". I remember not being as smitten with that one as much as I was the rest of the record-I dunno why, but it just seemed like that chorus was really lazy and formulaic in a Nashville kinda way that anybody could've written, whereas every other song really just invigorated and mystified and enraptured me and my gang's early20's. I'd found the sound I'd been waiting for ever since I first heard Hanoi Rocks sing, "Just back comb your hair/Let's get out of here!" over Razzle's pounding surf-beat. These four gonzo bluesmen, Tyla, Bam Bam, Steve James, and Jo Dog were like my ruffian Beatles, back then. I mean, Guns 'N' Fuggin' Roses were the obvious badboys, are age group's street fightin' men, but it was Tyla & Co., who really wrote the songs that fuelled all our fantasies and sparked off the Flash Metal Revolts. Those tunes just got inside us all. I wanted to leave town spontaneously, and drive immediately, to wherever this Dynamite Jet Saloon was located. Especially, being's how we used to drink Wild Turkey all day....Popular mythology has it they first became overnight sensations back in Merry Olde, by blowing Ronson & Hunter off the stage. I wasn't there, so I dunno. They started in Birmingham with future L.A. Gun Robert Stoddard on vocals. (Stu, Sleaze, Adam T., c'mon, fellas, we gotta track down THAT guy!!) TYLA joined later. It was BAM, and some other guys, I can't remember, no namers. Yo Ho Ho & A Bottle Of Rum. Argh. THERE'S A BILLION DOLLAR SILENCE & SOMEBODY TAKES HIS PLACE.... The Dogs took all us restless, fresh from detention hall, scummy little, yankee suicide girls and boys on an all for fun, and fun for all, fiery, raving romp, through the back alley way puddles and streetlights of our imaginary London after midnight-swingin' the bottles again-and doin' it well, as all hell. From the rousing, introductory battlecry of Tyla's gin-soaked, "Fi Fi Fo Fun!" where he details his own rollicking origins into the neon hued realms of filthy rock'n'roll, "Ya take a boy from Kensington, put him in a cab towards Waldorf Street/The Pussycats got 'im on his back/Tied up sweet, sweet and neat": Am I the only one here tonight gettin' a visual of that chick from the Pussycat Dolls who does tha "Doncha" song, right about now?, to the sackcloth and ashes woe and misery of, "How Come It Never Rains?", alla Tyla's sodden odes to glory, and road weary, bellowing elegies seemed to mirror our own tender-footed, early capers, and greasy, roller coastering (mis)fortunes. A pirate's life for me, y'know? "To dream the impossible dream", and all that wretched adolescent hoodwink. His waggish Field Marshall and drummer non parallel, the underappreciated, BAM BAM, was one of the most charismatic rock'n'roll merrymakers to ever tread the boards-a wild-eyed, dreadlocked, flamboyant spectre, easily in league with the greatest of the greats-Moon, Charlie, Jerry, Razzle, Clem, Martin. The thundering, frolicsome Mystery Train drums were essential to the Dogs D'Amour's triumphant and carousing high spirits. TYLA, was, of course, the self-mythologizing Bullet-Proof Poet, part Charles Bukowski, part Andy McCoy. JO DOG was the gifted foil, the quieter, delta-blues virtuoso-kinda like Mick Taylor-in that, he wasn't oneof the glimmering emperors of decadence you'd see hogging the spotlight, but his highly proficient channeling of black American blues licks lent an authenticity, a certain legitimacy to the DOGS, that was always so lacking in many a poor man's Aerosmith, or KISS, L.A. bar bands that tried for street cred, but always seemed to suck shit. "When I joined the band, it was like a cross between Slayer and Hanoi Rocks. It was really dirty, not like Dogs D'Amour - they're just Poison who doesn't take showers. We were more of a street look, glam-like Skid Row, meets Vain, meets Poison." (-Metal Mook and Noted American Scholar, Jason McMaster, of Dangerous Toys.) Bassplayer, Steve James, somewhat strangely, would often look a bit like the young David Johansen, and he wasn't a bad harmonica player, either-a dapper teddy boy from the wrong side a town, kinda like Pete Farndon, Steve James was a longtime fan favorite, and DOGS disciples, worldwide, were somewhat crestfallen when he left the band. What the hell went wrong? As much as their loyal cult may have come to appreciate their other various collaborators, throughout the years-from Crybaby and Ian Hunter sideman, Darrell Bath, to Bubble's Share Ross - Bam Bam's beautiful Missus - more than a few DOGS fans still hold firm that a true reunion would consist of the "Dynamite Jet" line-up. I know, I know, it's prolly never gonna happen, but like D.Boon once said, "Dreams Are Free, Motherfucker." "Dynamite Jet Saloon" received almost non-stop airplay in the circles I inhabited, for a solid five years. The follow-up, "Errol Flynn", in Europe; "King Of Thieves", in the states, had some stellar songs on it, too, "Satellite Kid", "Goddess From The Gutter", the hits just kept comin', TYLA was on a roll, and he had yet to really even start to repeat himself. Soon after "King Of Thieves" found it's way onto all our turntables, me and my snotsoaked band of mirth loving shit urchins had stupidly relocated to BOSTON, of all places, thinkin' it was the home of J.Geils and the Real Kids, and Aeros, and Willie Loco, and it was just a matter of time 'til Brett Milano penned our liner notes and Collins Mgt. took us under their wings, and it was in a rent controlled Cambridge apt. full of acoustic guitars and candles that we were first introduced to their actual debut, "The State We're In" that featured JACOBITES guitar great, Peter Perret's illegitimate son, DAVE KUSWORTH. His whiney vocals unmistakably lend a really elegant STONES-ish quality to the DOGS D'AMOUR's always lovably dodgy vocal harmonies. (Oh yeah, make sure you hear Kusworth's cover of "Child Of The Moon", maybe the best Stones cover ever!) It had even better songs than on "Errol Flynn"! Next, in rapid succession, cos we met this beautiful woman, the Sun Maid, we got exposed to what many of us consider consummate glam rawk masterpieces- "The (un)Authourised Bootleg Album" and "Graveyard Of Empty Bottles". The Dog's Exile On Main Street/Oriental Beat-tattered, bottle-strewn, decadent landscape always brought to mind the mild stench of cheap motel rooms, and of kissing the most gorgeous girl in town just after she'd been sick. We all used to drink a bit in those years. The Dogs D'Amour, the Jacobites, Quireboys, and Gunfire Dance were the bands all of us gravitated to, who still yearned for the trashy-poetic, heartfelt rock of yore, the older groups, like the Lords and Hanoi and T.Rex and Mott the Hoople. Everybody in the world was wearing spurs and apricot scarves and stringin' together flash sounding adjectives ("Dynamite In Nitemare Land", "Flash Metal Suicide") in slavish homage to the redhaired bard from the land of endless debauchery. It was up to you to decide what was wheat and what was chaff, and as you can see, there's plenty of us still arguing about it 20 years later. Then, as now, it just seemed like the phonier and more contrived and transparent a band was, the more popular they became. "What a shame" - the Ballad Of Jane. I remember how Faster Pussycat used to deny the ALMIGHTY soundchecks, and my own guit-sling from them daze, stationed currently in Sodom-On-The-Hudson, just met the guy who actually played most of those shitty Thunders leads we all loved on that first FPC album, in spite of the drum sound, and the Anthrax-style rap song. The L.A. GUNS with Paul Black and Robert Stoddard (early DOG D'AMOUR!) went nowhere, right? And they rocked like the Joneses, but the absolute shite by comparison, Tracii Guns/Phil Lewis incarnation sold billions. It's maddening, innit? Even Lewis said it shoulda been Paul Black who had that career, but the genuine articles never get the mainstream stardumb, anymore. C'est La Vie-it's probably all for the best. Look at Duff, now. Like Marc Bolan sang in Jason B. Sadd, "Rock'n'roll is cruel". It's always appeared as if the more gifted, progressive, original, and sincere purveyors and arcitects of real rock'n'roll were always ignored, copied, exploited, cast aside, and replaced by clueless, for-hire, copycat whores and hacks. It's heartbreaking stuff to see the most talented personalities and heads aflame troubadours wallow in poverty and obscurity, inevitably slipping slowly into various shades of bitterness, despair, addiction, and all too often death, while every jackass, cut-throat, charisma-free cardboard cut-out, corporate puppet is championed briefly as some heroic genius. Jesse & the 8th Street Kids session work paid for Bam and Share's home studio. Pat Boone blew up instead of Little Richard. Kiss got the big push, instead of the Dolls. Even Great White, for fuck's sake, got way more airplay, promotion, and record company support than our valiant and true, DOGS D'AMOUR...the pattern continues to this very day-shit-nowadays, artists like the DOGS don't even get to MAKE records. There's no such thing as rock'n'roll-just the pastimes of the rich. It's all ultimately, safe, mute, stupid, obediant models making-believe they're wild huns, but it's always been bought and paid for by fat showbiz uncles. I'm so bored with the fakes. All I Want Is Some Truth. Just Gimee Some Truth. Bob Dylan says, "I wouldn't even think of playing music if I was born in these times. I wouldn't even listen to the radio". Me, neither, Bob, me, neither. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ SLEEPS THROUGH A HURRICANE...
	When we first moved to Boston, me and the boys in the now miserably drummerless last dregs of our band were all still dazzle-drunk enough to go busk the streets of Central Square, not far from the angry black Apocalypse Moslims in the Grandmaster Flash garb, preaching doomsday through bullhorns, while we young drunkards drank vodka from paper bags and sang songs for quarters instead of looking for jobs. This kinda behavior naturally resulted in the women-folk who'd accompanied us on our rock'n'roll pilgrimage East, to wisely abandon us abruptly, leaving us all to our sad fates. When we covered the Dogs in nearby Harvard Square, we'd sometimes even lure summa Mary Lou Lord, and Ned "Flathead" Landlin, and the fire-eater, and the guy who juggles bowling pins' crowds away from 'em, stealing the thunder in "the pit" with our raggedy renditions andsilly concho-strap laden regalia.
Needless to say, we were all still dreaming bigger dreams back then, but eventually all that youthful momentum just kinda fizzled-out, as one by one, we all seemed to trade in our various rock fantasies for a long string of Sid N Nancy style destructive relationships, and settled for being some kinda sad, misguided, barstool celebrities, in various, unfortunate, zip codes, we got short-sighted, turned sloppy on each other, and some of us wastefully degenerated into serious, hardcore, last-stage alcoholism, instead of sticking together, and reaching beyond our individual ego trips to create something valid that might count for something of more lasting value than just another handjob, just another temporal fix of fleeting ego-star get-off. "As the lights go down in Hollywood, the dreams I've fought for our gone for good/Gone so completely, I am stunned, I'm ashamed." (-Smart Brown Handbag".) "We failed, we fucked-up, now it's time to live our lives more quietly..." (-Paul K.) __________________________________________________________________________________ MY WORLD IS EMPTY WITHOUT YOU... As you may have gathered by now, the sordid and brave, true saga of the Dogs D'Amour won't be told effectively here today, and is probably best gleened via the intrepid lexicon devil, Tyla's auto-mythological musical non-fiction. It's a dirty story of a dirty man. If TYLA has ever errored in his fruitful and always highly recommended oeuvre of lavish paintings, books of starlit poems and magnificent illustrations, and eminent body of really outstandingly remarkable songs, infused with folk, C & W, trash, glam, junkie romance kid, cry in your bourbon heartbreak, sensitive ballads, epics in every last shade of the blues and bubblegum and raw dog raunch, it's that he's been unable to make this stuff accessible to poor folk without credit cards in the states. Only collector scum can really afford to buy his shit at import prices. How much was that prohibitively expensive Dog's Dinner? Like, $150? In these dark, scary times, when every other lowbrow, middle-class mook who grows a goatee is celebritized as a 'Renaissance Man', one only needs to check out Tyla's website on-line to discern the difference. This weird old madman is like Kerouac and Kristofferson in one. All his old songs just hellhound me to this day. I had absolutely NO WAY of knowing how badly even that ONE LINE, "Your love brings me down like a heroine, who don't love the hero in the end, in the end, of the film..." was destined to haunt me everyday for the rest of my life. Times were much simpler back when a gallon of white port, a fiddle of whiskey, and a stack of Dogs D'Amour, Jacobites, and Waterboys records on the hardwood floor was all we needed to be happy. Of course, we still had each other, we still had ourselves, back then. TYLA will probably always be my sentimental favorite dangerous to know skid row Van Gogh. If my ship rolls in some lucky day, I guess one indulgent luxury I might stoop to would be buying summa Tyla and Jo Dog's paintings - Jo Dog does rock portraits ala Ronnie Wood you can check out at his PAUL BLACK & JO DOG'S SONIC BOOM website last time I checked. Real cool stuff. I loved the album Jo did with Paul, still ain't heard his country band, so you'd have to ask Sleaze about it. I think they're called Hawkeye. Of course, Jo was also a member of Andy McCoys ridiculous cock-rock band, SHOOTING GALLERY, and what more can one say about Shooting Gallery? It was clearly, neither Andy, nor Jo's finest work. If you wanted an uglier, blackhaired Mike Monroe who can't really sing, or play sax, and had a drug problem, they coulda just as easily asked me, or Ronnie Sweetheart. We both fit the bill. Sweetheart already had a record deal. BILLY G. BANG! Where is he now? His SLUM LORDS record's nigh impossible to find. JO was also in that band called BADGE, with the Broken Homes guy, and Will, the Dad's Porno Mag bassist. I saw them at the Teaszer in El Lay years back when an associate of mine was dating Shooting Gallery's manager (?) George. They were really good. That Broken Homes guy was great. My favorite thing Jo's done outside the DOGS was definitely "SUNDOWN YELLOW MOON" that album he did with Paul Black and Kyle Kyle as Sonic Boom or whatever. That song "Sippin' Away Again" was phenomenal. I found it at least noteworthy that when I last interviewed the Dodgeful Arter once known as Timothy John Taylor for one of my dumb fanzines a few years ago, that he summarily refused to acknowledge Paul Black's contributions to the project, but continued to sing his old mate Jo's praises. To order the Sonic Boom record, and I really think youshould, e-mail: Sonic48@eathlink.net in America or try www.fadingways.co.uk/newstore/sonicboon.htm elsewhere. They got everything I want. EVERYBODY LOVED JOHNNY SILVERS.... I'm charmed that both TYLA and NIKKI SUDDEN both have the bottle to call themselves "the LAST BANDIT" while both KEEF and ANDY McCOY still walk the earth, but what the hell, I used to know this vagrant songwriter who incessantly referred to HIMself as uh, "the Last of the Last of the Last of the Last", so I s'pose all these errant pirate kings'll all have to sort all that out amongst themselves. TYLA seems like he's been kinda cranky these last few years - I've been far too skint to afford to buy his albums, but his album titles have been things like, "ROGUES AMONGST THE BROTHERHOOD" and "WHEN BASTARDS GO TO HELL", and he's calling his solo stuff DOGS D'AMOUR, even though the band is gone, just like Axl. Who knows what's goin' on with him? I guess his old lady's in the band now. See - just like the Beatles. FOLLOWERS OF A BRUTAL CALLING.... NICK BAROLO from Italy did a whizbang job a couple years back of compiling a tribute album to the Dogs and I think it's the best one I ever heard, including the Japanese tribute to the NY DOLLS. Those things usually suck, but NICK organized a stellar line-up of bands, the stand-out cuts were by American Heartbreak, the Black Halos, Neil Leyton, the Trash Brats, and somebody called the Sofa Kings. It's also a testament to TYLA'S prolific songwriting prowess that all these old warhorses still stand so sturdy, even when being performed by a cattle call of raspy glam hags like my old group, who used to bludgeon, "Wait Until I'm Dead" onstage for yearson end, but like I said, we're all too scattered about to different parts of the globe now to have convened in time to participate on either the DOGS or DEAD BOYS tribs. It makes me sad. Checkout this handsome collector's item either on E-BAY, or you might trydesertinn@tyol.it or write to: NICK BAROLO Via Dotti 49 3100 TREVISO ITALY and be sure to hassle him about getting that follow-up compilation released at long fuggin' last - the BOYS/HOLLYWOOD BRATS. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ SINGIN'.....
We're all religiously devoted Dogs D'Amour fans 'round here at Planet Sleaze. I'm sure Stu is gonna have much to add when he eventually stumbles down this path, the DOGS helped found this whole sub-culture. They were our Flash Metal pioneers. We love 'em. What's more fun then staying up all night, covering Dogs & T.Rex songs on beat up guitars and arguing about which songs were best? Almost nothing. I got one close henchman who still swears their big production affair, "Straight?!@!", was their peak hour, while I still rely heavily on "Graveyard Of Empty Bottles", and "The State We're In". Haven't owned much of Tyla's solo work. I used to have "Libertine"-really liked a song on that one called, "Growin' Up". Wasn't all that keen on "Idle Gait Of The Self-Possessed", but I think I only heard it like, once, in Detroit. The guit-sling of one of my old bands always puts "Cardboard Town" and "Victims Of Success" on compilation CD's he burns for me, while another occasional partner-in-crime always does the same with "Scared Of Dyin'", and "Even Angels Have Bad Days" ...Most any album conceived by TYLA likely has loads of songs that shimmer with poignant and heartstring jerking moments of gutter-grace, and beauty, or as he puts it, "More Uncharted Heights Of Disgrace". The DOGS own fairytale hasn't always been all rings and roses-once the aforementioned Messrs. Kusworth,Stoddard, James, and Bath all came and
went, the DOGS reformed once again, with TYLA, Jo, Bam, and Share filling in admirably on bass and production duties, for a would-be major comeback album that kinda bombed, called "Happy Ever After". I dug that record the whole way through. It was a throwback to "Dynamite Jet" glory days, if you ask a fan of the band, particularly the song, "Singin'". Beautiful, stellar stuff, but the elaborate packaging and prohibitively priced promotional campaign failed to set the charts afire outside the richkid collector scum market, and for reasons unbeknownst to us faithful fans, and apparently, even to certain former members of the group, TYLA disbanded the dream acrimoniously, then started the latest incarnation with the Missus no one seems to have heard much about. TYLA continues to steadily release solo album after solo album, and stays busy writing, painting, and touring Eurpoe and abroad with his wife, I think her name is Yellow (?!) or something, and gigging with lesser Flash Metal Constellations-- like Dregen and Ginger, from Backyard Babies and the Wildhearts. GUNFIRE DANCE even tried to reassemble for five minutes, to be his back-up band, some years ago. Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, his truth is marching on. BAM & SHARE righteously try to make peace with the incomprehensible disconnect from their former frontman, by steadfastly concentrating on their own future Flash Metal Legends, BUBBLE powerful pop metalbubblegum trashy thrash radio rock stars that feature BAM'S beautiful and talented wife, who rocks harder than Joan Jett, and Mini-Skirt Mob put together, if you ask me, and a revolving door roll-call of Hollyweird FLASH METAL SUICIDE HOTSHOTS, and Bam's expressed to me an interest in someday collaborating with JIMMY JAMES from the Hangmen and Comatones. You can order their kickass new album and one of Bam's "All My Heroes Are Dead" t-shirts from their website, listed below. Hey, Bam, I'm still gonna need one of them shirts myself, brotha, save me a medium, willya? So the Sadly Beautiful Ballad of Our Beloved DOGS D'AMOUR hangs somewhere in limbo, but the individuals all continue to mine velvet gold with their various spin-offs. TYLA JO DOG BUBBLE DARRELL BATH DAVE KUSWORTH SHE DIDN'T LIKE ROCK'N'ROLL BAD HABIT HOTEL LAST BANDIT THE DOGS D'AMOUR were the fierce and fearless premier kings and forefathers of our whole shadowy FLASH METAL UNDERGROUND, and while they all still labor away, shamefully underappreciated by the dumbfuck masses, their songs are much treasured by half-hearted villains all around the world. God Bless The Dogs D'Amour. LEGENDS NEVER DIE... "It's the way that I am/Be it right, or be it wrong..." -Captain Blood Was A Whore _________________________________________________________________________________________ *Our apologies to glampunk.org for pillaging your old Kerrang! scans. Apologies to Kerrang! too, I guess.
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