Ha! Ha! Urg!!

In common with a number of other little cans in this locked down crate of an island kingdom, I have been having a few more drinks than usual. Not wanting to shop frivolously I have been exploring the darker, seamier, less trodden corners of the 1537 drinks cabinet. Unnamed local booze that great uncle Bulgaria bought us back from Greece a decade ago, spiced rum*, limoncello … you name it; some of which tastes nice, some of which is N-A-S-T-Y, some of which you could clean carburettors with – all of it highly flammable, all potent.

All of which puts me in mind of my very favourite dipsomaniac doggies, again.

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The Dogs D’amour Straight, the band’s last real LP to my mind, came out in 1990**. I remember it was greeted with a bit of a shrug and seen as a bit of a loss of momentum. We were all too hooked by the punch and oversized glamour of GNR at the time and the Dogs’ romantic rotgut troubadour tales/tails just didn’t chime so strongly, I guess. Plus the Dogs had issues.

The sleazy electric shuffle Dogs D’amour peddled was fuelled on misadventure, both alcoholic and romantic. Lead singer/artist Tyla very definitely lived it liked he sang it, swiggin’, slummin’ and strummin’. However, there are only so many times you can dive deep down into the bottle to chase your muse only finding your own hideously distorted reflection in there. Maybe that’s when you end up swopping oenology and onanism for more clandestine chemistry, possibly no coincidence that Straight is dedicated to the late great Stiv Bators.

Straight up, Straight is not a great LP but, just like that overly lubricated gentleman at the bar wearing the grubby black velvet dinner jacket, encrusted with something you’d rather not think about, it can suddenly lurch into your field of vision and make perfect sense; just stay down wind of it.

Let’s get all arbitrary on your asses here, Side 1 of Straight is pretty poor, Side 2 is pretty darn good. The first side veers from revved up filler^, to self parody ‘You Can’t Burn the Devil’ is the band’s rueful, regretful, rubble strewn brilliance reflected back at you in the urinal. Not good.

Ripping it open and up with the gleeful ‘Back On the Juice’, Side 2 is like that glorious slap of cold air when you finally leave the bar. As advertised on the back cover Jo Dog does let rip with his ‘hell fire guitars’ and the whole mood lifts. A mood carried on by the ultra confident, fervent ‘Evil’, a country-tinged rocker featuring a great vocal performance by Tyla.

The single I remember, that I bought, that persuaded me to buy gig tickets was ‘Victims Of Success’, a number with a massive, brilliant chorus that totally overshadowed the perfunctory verses. It still sounds great to me today and was even better live. The video was predictably rubbish.

Straight hits an absolute apex with ‘Flyin’ Solo’^*, a great grim tale about your woman sliding back into her smack habit, with something of the atmosphere of the Stones’ (massively underrated) Undercover about it. There’s a smear of emotion and pain here that you don’t find anywhere else on the LP, a bit more friction than fiction. The re-recording of ‘Heroine’ that closes the LP makes a similar point too, but wrapped around a break up.

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At their best the Dogs D’amour were superb – rollicking, romantic, ruined. No matter how twisted they got there was always a winning sincerity about them. As one of the greatest writers of our times once wrote,

‘Just because this drunk you met an hour ago, with the three-day stubble, soiled black velvet jacket and a sour mash smell slurs the marriage proposal, doesn’t mean he didn’t mean it.’

Straight only gives us that for one side, umm, straight. The production by Ric Browde isn’t always the best, sounding a little hollow and echoing at times, but I do wonder how much he had to work with during these sessions. Never start a sentence with the word ‘but’, but the second side of this album is worth every penny and, more importantly, your time.

I always love the way that the LP title has always been Straight with no punctuation, as printed on the spine and record labels etc. but always Straight??!! in the artwork, almost like the Dogs D’amour were trying to tell us something…

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Now having spectacularly failed to learn a single lesson from Straight, I’m back to check out that unlabelled bottle of what I think may be my aunt’s homemade sloe gin at the back of the cupboard, it’ll probably blind me for 48 hours and make me doubly incontinent, again, but hey, I’m back on the juice.

991 Down (where the empty bottles roll).

*why had I never discovered spiced rum before?

**30 years ago?! a depressingly long time ago, which makes my reach a palsied, shaking paw towards the whiskey glass beside me.

^to distract from a bit of a drop in quality tunes. I’m talking to you ‘Cardboard Town’ and ‘Gypsy Blood’^^.

^^only Dio is allowed to sing about gypsies.

^*not an ode to female self pleasure.