Dog
Meat Records
The following article originally appeared in
Noise For Heroes #19 in the summer of 1990.
This is the third in
a series of articles about Australian independent labels. Although fanzines rarely seem to
feature labels, they're a critical factor in getting the music from the bands to the
listeners, and the vitality of independent music is nearly as important as the presence of
good bands in keeping the spirit of real music alive. In addition, many independent
labels, including all the ones that have been featured in NFH to date, have a very
specific vision of what they are trying to accomplish. This fact tends to bond their bands
together, so that the story of the label actually becomes the story of a collection of
bands with a common thread, whether it be Bruce Griffith's desire to put out records by
bands that don't sound like anything else on Aberrant, or Doug Thomas fiercely supporting
his local music scene with Greasy Pop, or Dave Laing and his passion for raw, intense
passionate rock and roll.
Operating out of
Melbourne, Dave is presently working on his second record label, called Dog Meat records.
His first label, which he has now retired, was called Grown Up Wrong! The goals of both
were similar; Dave wanted to be involved in independent music and saw this as a way he
could contribute. "There certainly were and still are plenty of other labels around
ready to release any half decent Australian band that comes along", he says modestly,
"So it wasn't a matter of no one else doing it." In addition, he felt that
although there were plenty of independents around, there were none with the particular
vision he had for a label. Dave's inspiration for his labels were the French Skydog label,
which put out records by the Flaming Groovies, Stooges and MC5 in the mid 70s when nobody
cared, and labels like Bomp! Records and Bonafide in the US. The key feature of these
labels? "Whether it be a record label or a group I really dig someone who's doing
something against the grain, against the flow of things", says Dave. "Those
labels like that which I thought had real guts, doing things against the grain, and a real
integrity, real single mindedness of vision, that was the inspiration behind Grown Up
Wrong!"
Grown Up Wrong!
debuted in 1986 with a single by one of the first Melbourne bands with a sort of Birdman -
Stooges - 60s sound. They were the Gas Babies, friends of Dave's who recorded two songs
with a four track recorder, one of them of cover of "Heading For The Texas
Border" by the Flaming Groovies, one of Dave's all time fave bands. The production
was real raw and basic, something that is a trademark of many, though not all, Grown Up
Wrong! and Dog Meat releases. This raw production was to some extent a conscious reaction
on Dave's part to the fact that within Australian independent music it was becoming almost
required that all releases had an incredibly high production standard, and if you didn't
have a lot of money you weren't seen as competitive. "This was the time when every
second release, especially out of Sydney, was produced by Rob Younger or Chris
Masuak", says Dave. "Nothing against them, they did some great work, but I think
it was very restrictive on a lot of bands, and I liked the idea of releasing something
that had been recorded on a four track or even on a cassette. It was real raw."
It was nearly a year
to the second release, a mini lp by Melbourne's Penthouse Paupers, a Stones-y r'n'b band
that Dave describes as "in the mold of Charlie Pickett and the Eggs or getting back
to the 70s Groovies. Good songwriting, a bit underdeveloped as far as the way they played
as a band, but they definitely had potential." The Paupers lp was quite well
produced, although it maintained a strong feeling of energy never the less. But at this
point, Dave went out on a limb for a really raw record, the Survivors Worse Than
Perfect. This one opened his eyes to how different his vision of good music was from
that of a lot of other people.
"The Survivors
were a Brisbane band from 1977-78. The bass player, Jim Dickson, went on to the Passengers
in Sydney, one of the early Phantom Records bands, and he was in the Saints for a short
period, and then he was in the Barracudas, an English band who throughout the 80s were one
of my favorite bands. I'd gotten onto the Survivors through my work at Augogo; we dealt
with a shop in Brisbane where the Survivors' drummer Bruce Anton was working, and just
talking one day about the old days with him he mentioned that he had a real good tape, and
I half jokingly said well let me do a record, and he said yeah, yeah, yeah. Neither of us
thought it would happen until sometime later it basically did; I started working pretty
closely with Jim Dickson and we got the whole thing happening. He took the cassette into
Studio 301 EMI, cleaned it up a bit, got it cut, and sometime later, probably a year or 18
months in the making, that came out. That got a really strange reaction...most people who
heard it thought why the hell did you release that? That sounds like shit. But I thought
it was a pretty cool record. It had a real high energy to it, and it was a good period
piece, really. It really captured the energy that was happening back then, and so what if
it sounded raw, you know? My way of thinking with releases like the Imperial Dogs and the
Survivors is, sure, soundwise it's not what it could be but that's all there is and better
to have that than not have those bands, because no matter how small their place in rock
history, I reckon it was an important place, so apart from being good records to listen
to, there's also a sort of historical thing there and I don't think that's a bad thing for
a record to have."
At roughly the same
time, Dave started working on another project, a record by Boston's Primitive Souls. This
band included two members of another of Dave's all time favorites, the Real Kids. Again it
was the Augogo connection that got him on the track; a mail-order customer from Boston who
knew of his love for the Real Kids sent him a cassette of a live radio broadcast of the
Primitive Souls. A few more letters netted Billy Borgioli's phone number for Dave,
"so I sat up late and called him up and introduced myself and said if you've got any
studio stuff I'd love to do a record. And he just said there and then yeah, we've got a
few tracks that we did in a little demo studio just for radio play, they're just sitting
around doing nothing, so send us $150 to finish paying off the studio and they're yours.
So I was pretty rapt with that, and to date that's still one of my favorite records that
I've done. I think that Primitive Souls twelve inch ep is just a fantastic, fantastic
record, and it's really pissed me off that it didn't get much response, but I guess the
Real Kids never got that much of a reaction from anyone so maybe it wasn't too surprising.
It's a real shame." Dave rates the Primitive Souls record as his favorite Grown Up
Wrong! release although it's one of his worst sellers.
Next up was a single
by Sydney band the Sweet Ride, more friends of Dave's who played a Hitmen styled rock that
sold "really badly" in Dave's estimation. This was quickly followed by a mini-lp
by Thrust, which is pretty wild Hard-Ons type rock and roll somewhat different from the
sort of thing Dave seems to normally favor, but still very good.
After that was one of
the better known Grown Up Wrong! releases, the Third Time's The Charm mini-lp by
the Lazy Cowgirls. "I'd written to them after their first album had come out and
never got a response, and then I wrote again just prior to Tapping The Source
coming out. Their first album, even though it was badly recorded and stuff, that really
knocked me out, so by the time Tapping The Source had come out they'd agreed to do
a twelve inch ep with me. Again that took a fair while to get happening, so it came out
six months after Tapping The Source or whatever. That was a really good thing to
do; they were really good guys to deal with, and of course they've gone on to be a fairly
popular band relative to the level that most of these bands are working on. The Cowgirls
are pretty much my idea of the ultimate rock and roll as far as what's existing at the
moment. They've just got such an incredibly powerful sound, great songs. Just everything
about that band is spot on."
The connection with
the Cowgirls opened up a whole batch of new contacts, resulting in records by Crawlspace
and Clawhammer and subsequently many records that have been and will be released on Dog
Meat.
The best Aussie band
Dave has done has to be Bored! Dave had known Dave Thomas for a couple of years; he'd been
playing in the coastal town of Geelong for a couple of years under various different names
like White Noise and Sister Ann, with a sound that owed a lot to the Radio Birdman,
Stooges scheme of things. They'd recorded a single when they were still White Noise which
was at one point going to be the second Grown Up Wrong release. That single never happened
because Dave was concerned that the band's total lack of recognition combined with their
lack of stability would make the single fairly unviable, though he rates the recording as
"really hot in a really snotty teenage Stooge punk sort of way...lots of hot
wah-wah".
The band became
Bored! when John Nolan arrived to play guitar, and from then on the band took a big step
up, and after seeing them a few times as Bored!, Dave offered them the chance to do the
first mini-lp. "I was up in Sydney at Sound Barrier when they recorded that first
ep", he says, "and I was just blown away with what they were doing. It was just
so cool. And I'm still really happy with that record."
But after 11 Grown Up
Wrong! releases Dave took stock of what he had done and felt a bit fed up by the whole
thing. He wasn't getting the response he was hoping for with the label, and the bands
weren't getting the recognition that he felt they deserved, and he decided to give up the
label.
After six months of
reflection, he reconsidered. The starting point for his revived interest was that he came
up with a new label name, Dog Meat. "Once I had the new name I liked it a whole lot
better", he says. "There was nothing on Grown Up Wrong! that I didn't like, and
I still like all that stuff, but maybe some of that stuff just didn't quite fit into what
I was in the long run looking at doing. One of the things I didn't like about the Grown Up
Wrong! name was the fact that the Johnnies had used that name for their second album, and
that sort of took away whatever made that name special. Grown Up Wrong! came from a
Rolling Stones tune off their second album. Dog Meat I think has much more impact as a
name; it's got a better sound to it. A lot of people think it's sort of hardcore sounding
or something like that, but in fact it's taken from a Flamin' Groovies tune from 1971 back
in their real raw and high energy sort of period, which is my favorite period of them and
pretty much my favorite period of any band."
Dog Meat has only
been going since early 1989, but already the catalog exceeds that of Grown Up Wrong!,
including lps or mini lps by Antiseen, Jeff Dahl, the Imperial Dogs (a raw, live recording
of an LA band from 1974-75), Bored, and the Varmints, Billy Borgioli's latest band. There
have also been a few singles, and it appears that singles are the wave of the future for
Dog Meat, as it has proved to be a very difficult and expensive proposition to push lps
for Dave. He tells the story of the initial release of the Cowgirls' Third Time's The
Charm, which was an exclusive for his label, and how he tried to get distribution of
it for the west coast of the US, which would logically be the best place to sell it since
it's the Cowgirls home turf. He went to the biggest west coast indie distributor,
basically told them to name their price for the record, and received an order for 17
copies. For the entire west coast of the US. Stores and fans wrote him saying they
couldn't get the record, yet the distributor wouldn't budge. Eventually they did reorder,
but the story is typical of the difficulty getting Dog Meat records into US import bins.
Europe is a bit easier, but it's still a struggle. The Jeff Dahl lp has been another
source of frustration...it's one of Dog Meat's best sellers, but still is at a
pathetically low level considering how great a record it is.
"Having done the
Jeff Dahl record in particular I realized that having that as an exclusive Australian
release and trying to sell it to the rest of the world as an Australian import just wasn't
really viable" says Dave, "and from that position I wasn't really able to
exploit the full potential of the record. Hence I've gone ahead and licensed that to an
English label, Shakin' Street, and a Spanish label, Impossible Records. Basically the
situation with that record was that when I approached Jeff it was going to be an ep with
three or four new studio songs and a couple of live tracks. Once I sent him the money that
just sort of blew out to a full album, and of course I wasn't going to say no to a full
length album, but I learned something from that experience, and in the future I won't be
approaching overseas artists or American groups or whatever to do albums on an exclusive
basis.
So next up for Dog
Meat is a batch of singles in fairly limited edition and exclusively available on Dog
Meat. The limited nature of the singles is not a product of any desire to create sham
collectors items, since Dave feels strongly that there's little point in putting out a
record if the people who want it can't get it. Rather the limited release quantity is a
means of minimizing stocks of records sitting around waiting to be sold. The plan is that
if the singles sell well, the quantities of succeeding singles will be increased. Dave
sees this as a winning situation for both him and the bands; his financial exposure is
reduced and the bands get recognition in Australia and a bit of help to their world
profile, especially since Dog Meat gets fairly good distribution in Europe.
In the near future
you can be looking for a pile of Dog Meat singles, including a live one by the Lazy
Cowgirls with two non-lp songs from the Radio Cowgirl sessions, singles by Jeff Dahl, the
Devil Dogs, Thee Headcoats, and a Geelong outfit called the Dirty Lovers who Dave compares
to the Kingsmen with an exceptionally sloppy Johnny Thunders on lead guitar.
It's very interesting
to compare Dave's outlook with that of Doug Thomas of Greasy Pop. Where Doug has found
that singles are a sure way to lose money, Dave has found exactly the reverse. A lot of
this springs from their view of the role of their labels; Doug is a fierce promoter of
bands from his hometown, figuring that if he doesn't put out their records, no one else
will, while Dave is out to find the brand of gritty rock and roll he loves where ever he
can. I asked him to comment on the difference in attitude.
"You've got to
realize that Adelaide is a very different town to what Melbourne is", he replied.
"Melbourne is a lot closer to Sydney in that there's a lot of labels here and even if
it wasn't me doing a Bored! record then I'm sure someone else would be doing them.
Adelaide is a bit different in that it's pretty much isolated from where Melbourne and
Sydney is, and Melbourne and Sydney are pretty much where all the labels are based. So
there's truth in what Doug says. However, I'm probably not as loyal to my city as Doug
is...I don't think that the local music scene or whatever is worthy of support just by
virtue of it being local. There's a lot of really sucky bands around, real shit bands,
that are getting support from public radio stations or whatever, just because they're
local bands. They're encouraged because they are local bands. Some of these bands should
be fucking shot, basically. So yeah, I'm not one of these people who's just into
supporting the local thing."
"On the other
hand, one of the reasons I think I like to release things like the Cowgirls, Antiseen, or
whatever, is because I think there's a gap to be filled in the local music scene. There's
just no one in this country making music like those guys are making, and very few people
are really listening to that sort of stuff. What I was saying earlier about local bands
spending a lot of money on their recordings and stuff; that's sort of spilled over into a
mentality where what is considered to be underground music here is more often than not
very safe and very conventional pop or rock. Possibly with a fair amount of competence and
sophistication, but certainly not underground in any truly revolutionary or exciting sense
of the word. I guess a case in point of that would be the Trilobites, who when they put
out their first couple of singles, they were fairly highly touted. They were good singles
and people thought they were an out there, exciting rock and roll band. I think they've
since shown their true colors. They're just an incredibly mundane sort of band; a run of
the mill, doing nothing exciting rock band. Bands like the Trilobites are like a prime
case of that; they're one of my pet hates, basically; just your average rank suburban, do
nothing of interest sort of band. And the only reason they were ever doing anything that
was of interest to anybody was that they grew up in Sydney where it was very easy to be
influenced by great music because of the influence of Birdman and all that. If they'd
grown up anywhere else they would have been just as likely to be influenced by JJ Cale and
be playing "Cocaine" or something like that. Maybe that's not quite fair, but I
can see a bit of that in them."
"I think
basically that in the overall scheme of things here there's a real lot lacking; there's
very few groups that are doing real raw, gut level emotional sort of rock and roll stuff
like the Cowgirls. That's not to say there aren't bands doing real gut level powerful
stuff. There are bands like a lot of the ones that Aberrant have released; Venom P.
Stinger, King Snake Roost, bands like that, but I guess I'm into a more traditional rock
and roll form."
"There was a
time in the mid eighties, and even early eighties, when those qualities were quite
prevalent in a lot of Australian groups. There was the Scientists, the early Lime Spiders,
the New Christs, the Rifles, when they started off the Gurus even, even the Johnnys when
they started off were real good. But along the way a lot of those sort of qualities got
watered down through overproduction or whatever. So hopefully some of these records that
I'm releasing are making that sort of spirit available out here. I guess I'm trying to
shove it in people's faces. Obviously it's not working too well, but what the hell. Keep
trying."
Following this Dave
talked for a long spell about what qualities he looks for in a band. I found all of it to
be real interesting...like reading some old Greg Shaw article or something, but after his
long discussion he finished by saying that he thought he sounded like a pompous old rock
critic talking and PLEASE could I not make him sound like that in the article. (Don't
worry Dave, they're too busy thinking that about ME!)
But in a fairly large
nutshell, Dave says that the ideal Dog Meat band in his mind would be someone like the
Lazy Cowgirls, the early Saints, the Real Kids, the Flaming Groovies, or the Stooges. The
qualities he sees in these bands are that they have their own sound, great power, real
soul, and a way of doing things that's against the grain of what everyone else is doing.
"The Stooges
were a lot more than what a lot of people seem to think of now days", says Dave.
"The Stooges are such a commonly listed influence, but a lot of people haven't really
gone and actually listened to them, and people think that they were just another one of
these wild and long haired rock and roll bands, but there's such a depth in their music;
it's loud, it's wild, it's incredibly experimental, and it's got as much soul as any old
blues record. The Stooges basically were the greatest rock and roll band EVER!"
Although Dave thinks
that the worldwide rock and roll scene is healthier than at any time in years, he says
that in Australia things "pretty well suck, at least on a general level". He has
kind words for a number of Aussie bands, however, including Joel Silbisher's (ex-God) new
band Hoss, which includes two Seminal Rats (another Laing favorite), the Cosmic Psychos,
the Sunset Strip, the Splatterheads, the Psychotic Turnbuckles ("their records maybe
a little too throwaway...") and the Philisteins, who he fairly raves over: "Sort
of sixties based, but within that 60s sort of genre they've got a very distinctive and
very individual sort of sound. Great song writing, singing, really great lead guitar, and
I think the thing I really like about them most is the mood and the attitude of all their
songs. They might be sixties, but they're not a pop band...they're not sort of "Hang
On Sloopy" or anything like that, it's the real dark side of 60s rock and roll. Some
of the real killer sort of Pretty Thing's songs they'll do live. "Can't Stand The
Pain", stuff like that. They do a couple of songs by Arthur Lee's Love. Just an
incredibly well chosen set with the covers they do and some originals that are very much
in the league of those great covers they do."
But getting back to
bands on Dog Meat, the future seems to be brightening a little. Although Dave doesn't get
the support within Australia he'd like, it is improving. The Bored! records sell
consistently well, and he's done reasonably well with the Jeff Dahl record and the
Cowgirls mini lp as well. It's clear that his level of involvement with the label has
grown steadily from the Grown Up Wrong! days; in addition to the singles mentioned
previously there's the new Bored! mini-lp Take It Out On You, a 7 song 12" mini album
from the Red Planet Rockets, a new Sydney band, with Sly J. from the Splatterheads, Carl
from the Space Juniors, and Natt, an original member of the Mothers. Dave is enthusiastic
over their sound, which he describes as "50's rockabilly with some sort of real noisy
blues ad a bit of hillbilly twang in there. Real good songs and a good chunky sound. It's
really great to hear that sound coming out of Sydney out of three people who are coming
from a post-hardcore sort of thing." Much later this summer will be a mini lp by
Pennsylvania's Original Sins including a remix of their "Just Fourteen" single,
some tracks that were included as a bonus on their last CD, and some new tracks.
More singles coming
further out by Boston's Johnny and the Jumper Cables ("that's Kenny Highland; he's a
legendary Boston figure, though he's not originally from Boston, but that's real
aggressive, hard rocking sort of stuff."), Slickee Boys guitarist Kim Kane with his
new band, Date Bait doing the Groovies' "Dog Meat", Boston's Varmints, and the
Creamers. Also in the pipe are two compilations, one a batch of real raw and crude tracks
called Thanks For Making My Stumps Bleed which began as a project of God's Joel
Silbisher to pull together tapes of way underground Melbourne bands but has grown into a
world wide sampler, and another big double compilation that features something like 27
bands doing Troggs covers. "I guess you'd call it a tribute album", says Dave,
"But I don't like the term tribute. It reeks of Dick Clark or Shanana or something.
The concept of the album isn't to pay tribute to the Troggs; that's more a by-product of
what it is. The Troggs were an incredible band, and they had something in their sound and
their nature that I think a lot of bands since have knowingly or not picked up on. Whether
you're talking about the Stooges, who really had a primal, crude sort of nature, or the
MC5 who had a similar thing and actual made their debt to the Troggs apparent by covering
"I Want You" on their first album, while renaming it "I Want You Right
Now" and taking songwriting credit for it, but it's essentially the same song. And I
thought it would be a good idea to get a bunch of contemporary bands who were in someway
or another following along those same lines. So the bands lined up so far for that are
Antiseen, Bored, the Fluid, Date Bait, Kings Of Oblivion, the Boys From Nowhere,
Mooseheart Faith, the Philisteins, Thee Headcoats, the Devil Dogs, the A-Bones, the
Honeymoon Killers, the Dwarves, the Tommyknockers, the Varmints, the Telltale Hearts, the
Morlocks, the Pandoras, the Psychotic Turnbuckles, and a whole bunch of others. The title
is Groin Thunder, taken from a term that Lester Bangs used to describe the Troggs
music in the legendary 25,000 word rave that he wrote on the Troggs in 1971 in the pages
of "Who Put The Bomp?" So that's the big one...I'm looking at trying to have
that out in August. It should be a real good fun record."
So it's quite a plate
full of Dog Meat that we're looking at, and maybe with a little luck people will pay more
attention to the piles of great records Dave Laing's remote little label is putting out.
