Wow, it’s been almost 10 months since I last posted a mix of dog songs! I’m really slacking, especially now that I have a regular bi-weekly radio show again and have been accumulating all kinds of must-share tracks for several running lists of themed mixes.
So I still don’t know a better legal venue other than 8tracks.com for curating and disseminating my compilations online:
If you feel like dropping by to check out my particular brand of freeform radio, I’m DJing on air as The Native Disinformant this Sunday night and every other week from 1800 ~ 2100 Pacific Standard Time. Catch me while you can, via local broadcast or internet live stream. This slot is good for a while, and I won’t be posting archives. What comes from the ether stays in the ether at KALX 90.7 FM.
ESG: Erase You (Puppy to Your Side) [Dance to the Best of ESG, Fire UK (2010, orig. 1991)]. We’ll start with a song that has little to do with dogs, though it does contain the appropriately sassy lines, “[You] think I should jump / like a puppy to your side / Well I got news for you, fellas! / Get real! / I’m gon’ erase you…” Towards the end, there’s some rough barking vocals for emphasis.
Dean Milan: Do It Like a Dog [Unknown album]. I have no words for this… funky little dance number.
George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars: Pepe [Dope Dogs, Cabana Boy/Ka (1998)]. One of the more listenable songs on an otherwise eye-rollingly asinine George Clinton concept album about drug-sniffing dogs who become addicted to their own scores. Despite the kid rapping on this track, it’s still not FCC safe — describes an excretory act.
Yoshimi & Yuka: SPY said ONE [Flower With No Color, Ipecac (2003)]. Yoshimi P-We of The Boredoms and OOIOO and Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto, etc. team up for a most pleasant experiment in ambient noise music. This 9-minute long, meandering track is notable for sampling live Japanese temple dogs about halfway through. Made The Bows react.
Ween: Fluffy [12 Golden Country Greats, Elektra (1996)]. A sincere tune done in the spirit of country odes to good dogs gone.
Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band: Old Tige [Pour L'Amour Des Chiens, Phantom Sound and Vision (2007)]. Satirical and darkly humorous take on the above genre.
Grandpa Jones: Rattler’s Pup [Country Music Hall of Fame Series: Grandpa Jones (1992, orig. 1956)]. Here’s some real country picking, with a more optimistic twist — celebrating the pup sired by a good dog.
Ozzie Waters: I’d Like to Give My Dog to Uncle Sam [American War Songs 1933 - 1947: Hitler and Hell, Trikont (2005)]. German label Trikont had a marvelous series of Flashback compilations showcasing some of the oddities of yesteryear. This maudlin tune was really designed to tug at the heartstrings of patriotic saps. Probably a bit much, eh?
Note: Tracks are hosted on 8tracks.com, which streams each track in full but does not permit downloads and randomizes the track order after the second play. Previous dog song compilations can be found under the category Sound and Music.
Negativland: I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For [Special Edit Radio Mix]. With unauthorized assistance from U2 and Casey Kasem. Those unfamiliar with the story accompanying this mashup might want to look into it. The song in this current form makes it a dog song, among other things. Warning: unsafe for radio play/work.
Magnetic Fields: Fido, Your Leash is Too Long
Frank Fairfield: Call Me a Dog When I’m Gone
Charlie Bowman: … Fox Chase
Webb Pierce: I’m Walking the Dog
Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band: Pour L’amour des Chiens. Something for the Basset Hound lovers.
Jonatha Brooke: Dog Days
Born Petrified: Geraldine. Free download from one-man band here.
To make this post dog-related, let me show you this album cover for the Bonzo Dog [Doo-Dah] Band, The Doughnut in Granny’s Greenhouse (1968), featuring Irish Wolfhounds.
Okay, fine, you can find a larger image in better resolution elsewhere. Or you can locate the actual album and hold it in your hands (ah, the tactile pleasures of a real record store!). Anyway, I have a track from them queued up in the next collection of dog songs. Stay tuned.
I wouldn’t have noticed that Scout had snuck up behind me if not for a glance of her long shadow invading my peripheral vision. Her muzzle was inches from my hand when I turned to look her in the face. Without skipping a beat, she fell back and loped off to the side. Just reminding you that I COULD have taken you down if I wanted, her nonchalance seemed to express.
Perhaps I exaggerate, because I was thrilled to meet my first wolfdog by chance, up close. Though she wouldn’t let me get within arm’s length, she let both Bows surround and sniff her, just as they would greet any normal dog. I had a hard time reading her body language. According to her owner, she is gentle and even obsequious. He probably couldn’t get away with walking her at a public, off-leash park if she showed even a hint of aggression!
Inspired by this encounter and a recent reading of Brett L. Walker’s Lost Wolves of Japan (review hopefully forthcoming), I rifled through my music collection to compile a short mix of songs about wolves — my “gift” of music to you, dear reader, in the absence of any holiday spirit.
If 8tracks.com didn’t randomize everything after the second play, this would be my ideal sequence:
Iron & Wine: Wolves (Song of the Shepherd’s Dog) [The Shepherd's Dog, Sub Pop 2007]. Cryptic lyrics compel me to take the title at face value.
Paul Kantner & Grace Slick: When I Was a Boy I Watched the Wolves [Sunfighter, Grunt 1971]. A Jefferson Airplane side project.
Arborea: Wolves [Red Planet, Strange Attractors Audio House 2011].
Devendra Banhart: Mama Wolf [Cripple Crow, XL 2005]. Bleeds into your veins like magic or epiphany: “I know what to call you now.”
Cat Power: Werewolf [You Are Free, Matador 2003]. “Nobody knows, nobody knows / How I loved the man as I teared off his clothes.”
Hunting Lodge (feat. Roselle Williams): The Wolf Hour [Nomad Souls, S/M Operations 1984]. The most terrifying song I’ve heard in a long time — truly the audio equivalent of being ripped apart by wolves and left for dead.
Amon Düül II: Wolf City [Wolf City, United Artists 1972]. Has the least to do with wolves of any song on this list.
TV on the Radio: Wolf Like Me [Return to Cookie Mountain, Interscope 2006].
Oh Land: Wolf & I [Oh Land, Fake Diamond 2011].
Florence + the Machine: Howl [Lungs, Island 2009]. This goes sort of by request to Johnny Pez, who suggested a different song by the same artist for a dog-oriented mix. Instead, I found this track to be more appropriate for this theme.
Blitzen Trapper: Furr [Furr, Sub Pop 2008]. “And I lost the taste for judging right from wrong…”
The Cramps: I Was a Teenage Werewolf (with false start) [Songs the Lord Taught Us, Illegal 1980]. This contains bad words, for those concerned about such things.
Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs: Li’l Red Riding Hood [Silly Songs, K-Tel 2002 (originally 1966)].
After we adopted Bowpi, I had been steeled for some potential destruction, given the breed’s reputation. Instead, “She’s been an absolute angel,” I cooed to others. No accidents, no fuss, and no need to be crated — in contrast to her previous life, we found no need to keep her in her box.
At the outset, other Basenji people would warn me not to be lulled into a false sense of peace during our honeymoon period. Those devil horns would sprout, they warned — just give her personality some time to emerge.
10 December 2011
Well, over a year and a half after we adopted her, she FINALLY wrecked something she wasn’t allowed to shred — the napping pillow I kept in the back seat of the car.
Looking at that face, I can’t say I scolded her too much. I just stuffed the other end of the pillow back into the case, told her not to do it again, and left it where she found it.
I’m pleased to know that even though she is a mature little lady, she still possesses a healthy naughty streak. And I think I can trace this mini fit of destruction back to a reason. Lately, Bowpi has become increasingly anxious during the ride. Perhaps because we go to the park almost every day, the luxury of routine has heightened her anticipation, such that she’s added some new vocabulary to her range of self expression:
She must have started fixating on that corner of my pillow to cope with the sheer AGONY of remaining patient for fifteen whole minutes. Only when she had worked the threads loose and was audibly tearing at the pillow did I realize that was how she had been biding her time in the backseat.
Frankly, I’m glad it was the pillow and not the car upholstery!
Clicking on the link above should take you to an audio player where you can listen to the following in no particular order (the playlist is randomized by 8tracks.com after the second listen):
Underdog theme song (classic ditty from the TV cartoon)
Matthew Dear: Dog Days (nouveau disco that has nothing to do with dogs except one word in the title)
Yoko Kanno & the Seatbelts: Doggy Dog II世 (from the Cowboy Bebop limited edition box set with extra freejazz sax)
UFO or Die: Dog Wave (feat. members of The Boredoms doing their psychobabble shriek-out thing)
Bob Log III: Wag Your Tail Like A Dog in the Back of a Truck (one-man-band wonder from Tucson, Arizona)
Othar Turner & the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band: Granny, Do Your Dog Bite? (only in Mississippi!)
Nina Nastasia: A Dog’s Life (folksy lyrical indie sweetness)
Burial: Stolen Dog (silken London dubstep, off the “Street Halo” EP which currently ranks in my top 10 releases for the year)
Is the art of the mix a wasted effort now that the world has Spotify?
Clicking on the title above should take you to an audio player where you can listen to the following in no particular order:
Okkervil River: Dead Dog Song
Afrosound: Dog, Cat
Ozzie Waters: I’d Like to Give My Dog to Uncle Sam
Richard and Robert Sherman: No Dogs Allowed [Snoopy Come Home soundtrack]
playsoundz: Doggie Don’t, Doggie Do
Sugar and the Spices: Do the Dog
The Dillards: Old Blue
Red Foley: Old Shep
I guess 8tracks.com playlists are embeddable on tumblr blogs, but alas, not on WordPress.com hosted sites. Therefore, you’ll have to make do with this awkward format. I’ve got a long list of dog songs and access to lots of awesome music, so this is going to turn into a semi-regular feature.
The Doggy Daddy is guarding the homefront, along with the Two Bows, while I’m on my way to the opposite side of the country for an academic conference on Asian popular music.
To commemorate this most auspicious occasion, here’s a clip you can add to your YouTube jukebox queue. The song is “Doggy Dog,” by Japanese composer Yoko Kanno (菅野 よう子) and performed by the Seatbelts. It appears on the Vitaminless EP (Victor Entertainment, 1998) soundtrack to the anime Cowboy Bebop.
Some albums are so good, they’re worth buying more than once.
I already have A Silver Mt. Zion‘s debut LP He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms (Constellation Records, 2000) on CD. However, a vinyl copy in good condition was recently spotted at a local record store, and since I had left the packaging for this album back at my parents’ house on the other side of the country (along with boxes of other possessions that I’m sure they’ll be happy to be rid of, should I ever return!), I thought it was worth the $8 for another copy in another format. Constellation Records is a label that takes great care in its packaging, and each release is best appreciated in its entirety.
Only recently did I learn that the album was dedicated to the memory of bandleader Efrim’s dog, Wanda, who was dying of cancer while the album was recorded and finally passed away while he was on tour with his other group, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I’m assuming that’s a picture of her on the album insert, above.
The scribbled out mistake, the unmasked blot reprinted intact, reads like the equivalent of the penman getting choked up mid-scrawl. Like it was a hard sentence to write. Like there was so much more that yearned to be expressed in that terse dedication, but the writer started, became reticent, then finished with the tritest phrase that would do its job, unadorned.
Or maybe the dedication was an afterthought. Maybe it was acknowledging the overcast mood that loomed over the album from its very inception. Maybe it has just as much to do with loss and regret as it does with love for a life endowed with meaning, even when you can’t control when fate might strike. As someone who sometimes has to be away from home and from my beloved pack for extended periods of times for international research and conferences, I sympathize with the pain of not always being (t)here. If this was Efrim’s spiritual send-off for a death he could not be physically present for, I can only remark that it was done with true grace and emotion. And the album, which was already so wintery and sobering to begin with, just intensified in gravity.
Here’s the second track, “Sit in the Middle of Three Galloping Dogs”. I love the way it builds and creeps up on you to swallow you whole, so near the pensive beginning of the album. Sublime.
You can sample some other tracks by clicking the album link above to go directly to the Constellation Records website. Tracks 4 and 5, “Movie (Never Made)” and “13 Angels Standing Guard ‘Round the Side of Your Bed” are a powerful one-two gut punch that is broken up by a flip of the record on the vinyl version.
The Bows were completely at peace in the sonic clouds of tracks 7 and 8, paying their own respects, in a way, to someone else’s fallen canine muse.
Photos from 5 March 2011
Good music inspired by what was surely a good dog.
