The Best of Electric Velocipede (17 page)

The Dogrog Phenomenom

Richard Howard

P
erhaps the most interesting development in Popular Music in the past ten years has been the rise of Dogrog. For those of you who have been living in a monastery for the last decade, I’m referring to loud, fast, abrasive rock music played by domestic dogs. The continuing credibility of a form that has its roots in novelty records aimed at children is shocking to say the least.

Animal music probably started in earnest in 2009 with the forming of a group called the Menagerie. The cutesy cartoon cover of their self-titled CD shows a monkey on keyboards, an elephant on drums, a wolf on bass and a crocodile on guitar. On the inside of the CD cover we see the animals in the studio although it’s not certain how much playing was done by the Menagerie themselves. Industry insiders assure me that the actual animal input was minimal and that the recording was chiefly made with session musicians and samplers.

Having said that there’s no doubting the innovation on display. Covering the guitar with raw meat and having the crocodile attack it created the guitar solo on “The Grumpy Song.” The result sounds like Pete Townshend at his raucous best. “The Stomping Song” contains the sound of the elephant stomping on the studio floor and is truly terrifying. Stewart Angle’s performance as the monkey singer is also amazing throughout. But despite some interesting ideas it’s plain to see why this project sank without trace and is of little interest to anyone over nine who isn’t a pot smoker. Indeed the forefather of Dogrog claims to have never heard the Menagerie, let alone plagiarized their idea.

Nigel Thomas, head of Research and Development at Gibson USA first had the idea of dogs playing music when he bought his son a Labrador for his birthday. His son was a devoted punk rock fan and had been playing the guitar about six months.

“I was daydreaming at work and I thought to myself that it would be cute to teach the dog how to play a tune on the guitar to give Kenny an extra surprise on his birthday. Nothing too complex but you know, a recognizable song. So I went down to the workshop and started messing around and what I came up with was the Paw Pick, which is basically a kind of leather mitten with a guitar pick stitched into it, and the barre chord block which became known as the Dog Biscuit. This was a block of wood which, when you attached it to the guitar, could slide up and down the neck. The inside of the block was carved so that when pushed onto the strings it made a barre chord.”

The Dog Biscuit is probably the most important Dogrog component and the one that determined what type of music the dogs would play. The dog places its paw through a hole in the block and can play basic tunes by sliding the block up and down the neck of the guitar. Nigel didn’t realize it at the time but he had just revolutionized music.

“The first song I taught the dog was “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog” by the Stooges. I stayed late at the office for a week with Tiny and we went over it and over it. But he caught on fast.”

The guitar-playing dog went down well with not only Nigel’s son, but also with his boss at Gibson, John Peters, who was at the birthday party when Tiny’s musical prowess was unveiled.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he says, speaking to me from New York, his excitement still sounding fresh over a decade later. “You have to understand nobody had seen anything like this before. A dog playing guitar? You’d be locked up in the nuthouse. But there it was right in front of us. That dog stood there and played that Stooges song all the way through. And with attitude too.”

Peters was quick to see the potential of this new novelty where Thomas had not.

“He saw it as a one-off. A kinda neat little trick. But I turned to Nigel and told him to get working on a prototype because I knew every kid in America would want one of these things.”

The Paw Pick/Dog Biscuit sets were out for Christmas but it was only three months later when Thomas released his book,
Teach Your Dog Guitar
that sales really skyrocketed. That summer all over America children and adults pored over the step-by-step guide. Some bookstores reported irate customers demanding refunds but the majority showed perseverance and by September the phenomenon had attracted the attention of the mainstream media, looking to lighten its usually dour output. But after its few months in the sun it seemed to most people that it was just a cute trick and nothing else. Even three years later when the first records with dogs playing on them came out the public could just about muster up the interest to yawn. “How Much Is That Doggy In The Window,” “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “Hound Dog.” How many dog-related cover versions would the public buy? The answer was not many. But as is usually the case something was bubbling underground.

“The big record labels were afraid of it,” says Paul Rose, who has been running Dogrog nights in London for the last two years, “they weren’t ready for the technology and didn’t know how to react to it. So their reaction was to dumb it down, turn it into a second-rate joke, make a quick buck. But Dogrog is a raw form and real creative people have seized it and made it their own far away from the dictates of the majors.”

In a New York jaded with culture, a journalist jaded of everything walks into a bar. He’s just finished work; bored out of his mind he’s decided to go for a drink on the Lower East Side. He sits at the bar and orders a whiskey. As the bartender’s chatter begins to fade his ears tune in to the music coming from the back room. It sounds like a live band but more guttural a sound he couldn’t imagine.

“Local boys?” he asks the bartender.

“You could say that,” comes the cryptic reply, “it’s five dollars. Four if you have a dog with you.”

Laughing at the wit of the barman he pays the five dollars and steps into his first Dogrog show.

“I was amazed,” Brian O” Connor tells me,” I’d been to hardcore punk shows, metal shows, whatever-you-want-to-call-it shows but this was beyond that. There were about a hundred and fifty kids and about thirty dogs all packed into this tiny space. Dogs were running around in circles barking, dogs fighting, dogs having sex. Then there was the sound. The most incredibly raw music I’ve ever heard. The guitar shook you up, a pure animal sound, and the singer was doing things with his voice that a human just cannot do. And where’s the sound coming from? Three dogs onstage and a drummer. And then there was the smell. You know that doggy smell right? Yeah you know when you’re at a Dogrog show.”

What he’d stumbled upon was an underground dog group who would come to define the term Dogrog and whose time playing obscure bring-your-own-dog gigs in bars on the Lower East Side seemed about to be over. A dog group like no other that had original material and no cheesy cover versions, that gigged constantly and had built up a small but loyal following, whose manager/trainer passionately believed that dog music could potentially become the biggest-selling music in America. That group was Neuter.

“Neuter to me are the epitome of rock ‘n’ roll,” Lemmy of Motorhead tells me. “Everyone’s talking about Dogrog. There’s no Dogrog. It’s all rock ‘n’ roll and when it comes down to it no man can be more rock ‘n’ roll than a dog. He shits where he wants, fucks what he wants, bites who he wants. The day I saw Neuter I knew the human contribution to rock ‘n’ roll was over.”

Clive Cousins, a New Yorker, formed Neuter in 2017. A customs dog trainer and lifelong music fan he claims to have had the idea for Dogrog long before the Gibson products hit the shelves. He sits across from me in his living room in New Jersey in a smart suit puffing a cigar, looking every inch the music mogul.

“Music mongrel,” he corrects me, in the first of many dog-related puns he will inflict on me over the course of the interview.

“Back then I was training customs dogs. We have to train them to work in noisy environments. A young Labrador called Toddy was placed with me. Being a music fan I liked to take my dogs to rock concerts for noise training. One of the first I took him to was Metallica at the HSBS Arena in New York. Toddy didn’t even flinch. You could tell he actually enjoyed it. That put the thought in my head. Of course when he was rejected as a customs dog because of his temperament I decided to hang onto him. Then a few months later when I saw the Paw Pick and Dog Biscuit set in a shop window I knew I had something.”

He began training Toddy immediately and he drew up an outline for what he wanted the group to be. Funny cover versions were out. Most dog groups did “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog;” his group would do “Search and Destroy” or “TV Eye” if indeed they did a cover version at all. He wanted his group to have credibility. Driving around the kennels and shelters of New York looking for recruits to complete the group he came up with the name Neuter.

“I’d heard people saying it at the shelters when they were showing me the dogs. Telling me that this one has been neutered, this one needs neutering ye know. It’s just one of them words the meaning of which would strike fear into man or dog. And that’s what I wanted my band to provoke. Fear and exhilaration.”

His rounds of the shelters and kennels were to prove very fruitful. Whacker, an English Bull Terrier was about to be put down until Clive recognized his potential.

“Yeah he’d bitten about four people at the shelter alone. They were gonna put him to sleep. I know some people, don’t wanna say too much but yeah I got him off.”

Whacker was given the spot as front man (or dog) and the bass playing role fell to Scruff, a Kerry Blue discovered at the same shelter. Clive says the group seemed to gel almost instantly.

“It’s just that one-in-a-million thing. The Beatles had it, The Clash had it, The Who had it and Neuter have it. Scruff had never seen a bass before but as soon as he entered the rehearsal room that was it. He bounded right up to it and started licking it like it was his favorite bone. He actually chose to be bass player. And teaching Whacker to sing was a joy. His range is unbelievable. The depth of emotion in this dog’s voice is incredible. He can sound tender on a song if you want him to but if you want him to sound pissed off he really sounds pissed off.”

Eschewing Nigel Thomas’ training techniques altogether, Clive’s were based on his customs dog training experience; but to this day he remains tightlipped about the details. An old Alesis drum machine was used for rhythm and Clive set about teaching the dogs the rudiments of rock ‘n’ roll or, as it came to be known, Dogrog.

“It was Whacker himself that came up with the name.” Clive explains, “I was trying to teach him to say ‘dog rock’ and that’s how it came out. He seemed to love saying that over and over so it just stuck.”

Neuter played their first show in a bar in New Jersey three months after forming. No mean feat when you consider that their set contained ten original songs and only two cover versions. Originals such as “Distemper” and “Bite the Hand” set them apart from their canine peers and pointed to a way forward for the music.

“The only contemparies Neuter had were these ex-show dogs onstage doing twee versions of ‘How Much Is That Doggy In The Window,’” says Brian O’Connor, “then along comes Neuter and it’s like rock ‘n’ roll rebellion all over again. Everyone who saw a Neuter show was either completely disgusted or completely blown away.”

“The hardcore kids loved us,” says Clive. “The Lower East Side. That whole scene really took to us. We started the bring-your-dog thing. Them shows were crazy. Dogs running around getting to know each other, people dancing. Hardcore as a genre had become stale and it was a much-needed tonic. People had fun at shows again. Great times.”

It was one such show at hardcore venue ABC No Rios that turned the media spotlight on this strange new subculture for all the wrong reasons. Neuter had just put the finishing touches to their debut album (simply titled
Dogrog
) and decided to play an all-ages, bring-your-own-dog show at the venue. Halfway during the set, a seemingly rabid Toddy abandoned his guitar and launched into the crowd, savagely attacking members of the audience.

“I was bitten on the leg and arm,” Arnold Willis tells me, still a dedicated Neuter fan, “but it was a cool show. Neuter rule.”

Clive managed to calm Toddy down enough to begin the fourth number, “Scratch in Peace,” but this time it was singer Whacker who bolted from the stage. Seven people received bites from Whacker before he attached himself to the leg of twelve-year-old Lindsay Evans.

“He humped her leg, basically,” said an anonymous onlooker. “Members of the audience threw water on the dog to try to calm it down but by the time Clive managed to prize the dog off Lindsay was hysterical, her leg covered in blood and dog semen. It really was a crazy scene man.”

“If it was any other dog it would be put down,” Mrs. Evans tells me from her home in Queens. “But because he’s famous he’s allowed to stroll around like nothing happened. The damage that dog has done to our little girl is irreversible.”

“Oh please! It’s the complete opposite,” counters Clive. “I was walking through Central Park just last week and a dog tried to hump my leg. I shook it off and continued on my way. Did I start screaming about trauma? No. Am I campaigning to have the park closed down? No. Dogs get excited. It happens. But when it’s a famous dog in the realm of music people overreact. People like to condemn the music. Because it’s young people having fun. Because it’s seen as anti-establishment music. But I can’t talk on this too much, it’s in the hands of the lawyers now.”