"Sorry for not having sent anything for a long time, but I've got a pneumonia and I was feeling really bad. I’ll send you the end of the interview as soon as I'm back in France." That’s from an e-mail I received in the last week of September from Dominique Laboubée, founder, singer, and lead guitar player of the Dogs, fathers of French rock and roll. We had been working on an interview by e-mail for most of the year – he was uncomfortable with the idea of doing it by phone since he was concerned about whether his English was good enough, and I had a lot going on, so progress was pretty slow. A little over two weeks later on October 9 he was gone, passing away in a Worcester, Massachusetts hospital while on the first US tour his band had ever had a chance to do after nearly 30 years of existence. The interview – not that it was that important in the overall scheme of things – was left incomplete. This story attempts to make amends for a missed opportunity to do something commensurate with the contribution that Dominique made to rock and roll music.
 

It was a brief set of six or seven gigs in New England and New York, supporting Rick Blaze and The Ballbusters – a good enough band on their own, but certainly nothing even remotely comparable to the stature and influence of Dominique’s group. Yet he was delighted with the chance to go and probably never even considered where his band should be positioned on the bill. He was going to play America, and that was good enough for him.
 

It’s a little eerie now listening to the lyrics of this song, "Satisfied", from the 1988 album A Million Ways of Killing Time. Lots of bands write lyrics like this, but in the case of the Dogs, it seemed quite a bit more believable. After all they started years ago in 1973, and when "Satisfied" was written it was about the half way point of the band. They’d never had any break through success, though they were widely acknowledged as THE band that showed the French that they could make rock music as vital as the best that appeared anywhere else. The USA had the Stooges and Ramones, the UK had the Pistols, Damned and Clash, Australia had Radio Birdman and the Saints. France had the Dogs, and they didn’t have to concede a thing.

I first heard the Dogs on the Beggars Banquet punk compilation Streets, which was released in England in 1977. Amid tracks by better known bands like the Lurkers and Members, the Dogs "19" sounded perfectly at home. But there was no buzz about the Dogs in those days and there were no further releases with export distribution that would draw attention back to that track. I forgot about the Dogs in the blizzard of all the other late 70s punk bands.

In the mid 1980s I began to hear about a lot of great French bands. It was hard to find records by any of these groups (this was pre-internet, and information spread only through fanzines). But the Closer and New Rose labels managed good US distribution deals, and they brought a lot of those records to the US. And as I read about these bands, one name surfaced over and over again as a key influence – the Dogs.

One day I was killing time digging through the used bins in a local record shop – one not known for carrying a particularly hip selection – and stumbled across copies of the first two Dogs lps for some ridiculous price like $1.99. I snapped them up, and in the next few months I listened to both of them almost daily. At that point they were already 4 years old or so and there were several other Dogs albums that had been released since, but these two, Different and Walking Shadows were such clearly great records that my attention was totally held by them for a long time. Eventually I searched out all the rest of their lps, and while certain records in their later work might seem a little soft by comparison, I’ve found the quality of songwriting and playing to be consistently outstanding. There’s not a record among them that doesn’t grab my interest the minute it starts playing even now.

But the Dogs themselves started fully ten years before my personal discovery of those two great albums. "I was a punk before I knew that the word " punk" existed!", said Dominique in the e-mail interview. "I discovered music listening to my sister’s records: French singers of the sixties (sometimes doing covers of U.S. or British hits), the Beatles and the usual stuff. The Kinks, the Rolling Stones, the Who, etc."

It’s not so surprising to an outsider that they’d heard these bands, since the British Invasion dominated international pop culture in the 60s, but the Dogs clearly went far beyond those groups in a very short amount of time. It’s hard enough to find the underground in the US or UK, but how could it happen in France where in 1973 there was no rock and roll tradition at all? Not so hard, replied Dominique: "I discovered bands like the MC5, Alice Cooper, the Stooges and the Flamin’ Groovies in French magazines (Rock and Folk, Best, etc.) very early. It was 1971 and I was 14. The best reviews and articles were written by Yves Adrien in Rock and Folk; he was using the word "Punk" every two or three lines in ‘71-’72! There were also some good record shops in Rouen (my hometown): "Record Shop" in the 60’s-70’s, and "Melodies Massacre". Lionel Herrmani started Melodies Massacre in ’72 and was the Dogs’ manager and producer from ‘77 to ‘81."

"Don’t forget Marc Zermati’s "Open Market" in Paris, where you could find Flamin’ Groovies’ original Sneakers for example, as well as bootlegs, ‘60s garage, US release, etc. (Zermati launched the Skydog label, which put out some great punk records in the late 70s – singles by the Groovies, Damned, MC5, etc. The label is still going, and recently they’ve released records by Thee Michelle Gun Elephant in Europe - Steve) Marc Zermati was the Dogs manager from ‘84 to ’89 and produced the Dogs’ Three is a Crowd CD in 1993."

A French friend of mine named Luc who’s been a rock and roll fan since before those days (and actually saw the Sex Pistols in Paris in their first incarnation!) confirms the fact that although France had very little in the way of a commercial rock and roll scene, there was a small but rabid group of fans following underground music. There was nothing at all about rock music on the TV or radio or in papers and magazines – the music that was generally heard was classical French singers in the vein of Frank Sinatra or Barry Manilow. "But there were two small magazines dealing with rock", says Luc. "So if you were interested in it you were bound to read them each month - Best and Rock & Folk, yep, it was entitled Rock & Folk for having been created in the 60s in hippy times, and the publishers have some humour because they still hold on to the same moniker today."

"See what I mean: either you weren't interested at all in rock and you didn't know about Eagles, ELP, Fleetwood Mac, Yes and the Pistols; or you were interested, and then you were necessarily aware of all of them, the latter being the hottest item around. Another case of less information being better information."

And then there was the Velvet Underground, another huge influence. "Zox (Francois Camuzeaux, the first Dogs bassist) made me listen to the Velvet as soon as we met in 1971", recalled Dominique. "I’ll never forget the day I heard "I’m Waitin’ for the Man", "Sunday Morning" etc. on Zox’s little Teppaz. Believe me, it was very unusual, in 1971, in Saint Valery en Caux (a place on the seaside in Normandy where we used to go for summer holidays) to find a 14 year old bass player who was a real Velvet Underground fan! I turned him on to the Stooges, MC5, and Alice Cooper and we started a band with my mate Mimi on drums. (Mimi and me met at the age of 6 on holidays in Saint Valery.) I didn’t know that I’d make a record someday with John Cale!" (Many years down the road, the Dogs were the backing band for an album by the female French singer Louise Feron entitled L’Ivresse des Profondeurs on Virgin France, and Cale was the producer.)

Although they were young teenagers, that first Dogs lineup played some gigs around Normandy in 1973 covering their favorite underground tunes and adding a few of their own originals. The lineup was Dominique on vocals and guitar, Paul Peschenaert on second guitar, Francois Camuzeaux on bass, and Michel Gross on drums. Their first gig was at a casino at St. Valery en Caux. It was a formative era for the group – they still regarded themselves more as fans of rock music than as musicians and would continue to do so for some time to come. They feasted on opportunities to see whatever cool bands came to France, traveling to Paris to see the New York Dolls at the end of the year, for example.

By 1974 they were playing around Dominique’s hometown of Rouen, about halfway from Paris to Le Havre on the English Channel. A key gig was a battle of the bands at the Golf Drouot, a place that had hosted touring groups as far back as a Gene Vincent tour in 1963. Here they paid homage by covering Vincent as well as the Pretty Things, but added plenty of their own material. The gig was attended by Philippe Manoeuvre of that same Rock and Folk magazine that had influenced Dominique so much in the previous few years, and he was knocked out but what he saw. The resulting rave review gave the Dogs a big boost and made them a recognized quantity on the French scene.

This period was the heyday of pub rock in the UK, and there were many links into France from that scene. The term pub rock describes an approach to playing live more than a musical style – many pub rock bands drew on groups like The Band or southern California country rock influences. But the phenomenal rise of Doctor Feelgood from the backwoods of Canvey Island at the mouth of the Thames River to UK chart toppers gave the style a new focus: hard, gritty, energetic and r&b flavored rock. In their wake came bands like Graham Parker and the Rumour and Eddie and the Hot Rods, and the new direction wasn’t lost on French groups. In France, bands like the Little Bob Story (who had several early records released on London’s Chiswick label) were already playing music based on the same influences as the Feelgoods, and although the Dogs were younger and had more recent influences, they were affected as well.

I asked Dominique about those pub rock bands, and he recalled: "In 1974 and 1975, I saw the first French dates of Doctor Feelgood, Eddie and the Hot Rods, and Ducks Deluxe and it really gave me a lot of energy. Doctor Feelgood were the best on stage, really wild, really impressive. After the New York Dolls and the Groovies, it was one more good reason to play Rock and Roll. Pub rock influenced me in a way of keeping on making short songs with really fast tempos, but that’s what we had been doing from the beginning. As an example, the song "Here Comes My Baby" on the Dogs’ second record was written in ‘73 and it’s a really short and fast one."

"We were never "influenced" by Little Bob Story (Bob is much older than me. Plus, he’s from Le Havre and we are from Rouen - the difference is 90 kilometers, and a few years), but Bob gave us the opportunity to play support for him in Le Havre and Paris in 1974 and 1975. One of the best concerts we played was the "Rock and Roll Christmas 1975 in Le Havre with Bob, the Snakes and the Tyla Gang. Bob is a very good friend, and we’ve played a few dates together not long ago."

The pub rock connection is probably more noticeable in hindsight, since the Dogs evolved into something that could be called the ultimate pub rock band during the 1980s. It was a direction that fans of their harder late 1970s material didn’t always care for too much, but taken in the context of pub rock, the material makes a lot of sense.

Back to the chronology, hard times were about to hit the Dogs. Given how young they all were at the start, it was perhaps inevitable that the band couldn’t hold together that long, and the pressures from building fame took their toll.

"At the end of 1975, we had been contacted by a guy called Larry Martin", said Dominique. "His real name is Jacques Godebarge and he’s French. He was a mythoman, pretending to have played guitar on Led Zeppelin albums and that sort of thing! He wanted to fire my friend Mimi and replace him by a session drummer, and to produce a Dogs single on Savannah (the famous French hippie Pierre Barouh’s label). I didn’t like the guy and I didn’t like the label, so I said no and after a last gig at the Elysees Montmartre in Paris in January 1976, the band split."

"Zox and Paul joined Larry Martin Factory (Larry Martin’s band). I remember that they were really enthusiastic about recording in a big professional studio with lots of technology, and becoming "pro" bass and guitar players. I wasn’t like that. I preferred to record in a smaller studio, if it was with the right producer and on the right label. It was a big waste. We should have waited a few months more and released something on Marc Zermati’s Skydog label or Melodies Massacre. So in February of 1976 there were only Mimi and me left. I met Hugues in June 1976 and that’s another story."

The new bassist was a fellow student whose full name was Hugues Urvoy de Porzampac. At the time Mimi and Dominique asked him to become a Dog he’d been playing for a week and the only songs he could play were the Shadows of Knight’s "Oh Yeah" and Brownsville Station’s "Smokin’ In The Boys Room". But he was energetic and enthusiastic, and he fit in well. So the Dogs retreated to the rehearsal room for a little re-tooling.

(Luc filled me in on a little interesting side history here: "Urvoy de Porzampac is definitely an aristocratic name and I believe the family's nobility is authentic. French are crazy about aristrocracy so a lot of aristocrats are actually self-proclaimed, or were named Dupont ou Durand, like your Smith or Jones, only a couple of generation ago. This doesn't mean the family was rich but it means some standing, at least culturally speaking. The point is, the Dogs were not a working-class band: as far as I know Dominique's family is upper middle-class, his mother being the owner of a large drugstore in Rouen.")

Across the channel, punk rock was re-tooling the face of music altogether. Because of difficulties with shows being banned in London, many UK punk bands made their way to France for gigs. The Mont-de-Marsan festival was one show that particularly lives in punk rock legend, featuring some of the classic bands of the era. But there were many more cross channel punk excursions that have gone forgotten. Dominique saw many of these, and he remembered them fondly.

"We were like that before 1977, but a lot of punk bands really influenced me", he said. "The Ramones (one of my all-time favourite bands), the Clash (I saw the first French Clash concert in Rouen in 1977 and it was incredible), the Damned and, of course, the Heartbreakers. Don’t forget the Buzzcocks – that’s exactly what I like: songs with a fast tempo, lots of guitars, and a strong melody. Those times were really exciting. We used to go to a lot of concerts. Listening to all those bands gave me ideas and inspiration."

"There were two Mont-de-Marsan festivals. One in 1976 and another in 1977. The 1976 festival was more pub rock than punk with bands like the Tyla Gang and the Hammersmith Gorillas. The only real punk band was the Damned. They were great, really young and wild, destroying everything on stage. The 1977 festival was more punk, and there were many more people, with bands like the Clash, the Damned, the Police (with the first line-up), Chelsea, the Jam (who refused to play for reasons of timing!) At both festivals, there were a lot of French bands and they were awful, except Little Bob and Bijou."

I asked Dominique about some of the other French bands of the time, because there were a few other than the Dogs and Little Bob Story. The Stinky Toys had a UK single called "Boozy Creed" and also released a UK album, and a band called Telephone had some fairly rocking records.

"One of my favorite French punk bands was Bijou", he replied. "They had a ‘60s look and their sound was really sharp. They played their own material, but also a lot of covers of French 60s hits. I didn’t like Telephone; they were trying to be a French copy of the Rolling Stones. The Stinky Toys and Asphalt Jungle were just Parisian poseurs. They were funny, but they really couldn’t play."

While hanging out at the Melodie Massacre music store in Rouen in 1977, Dominique met Jean-Yves Garin and recruited him to be the Dogs second guitarist, restoring them to a four piece line up. Dominique recalled that shop fondly. "Melodies Massacre on rue Massacre in Rouen opened in 1972. It was in the old part of the city amongst 13^th century houses and gothic churches. The shop was small but attractive – a real gold mine. Lionel Herrmani was the best friend - and the best record dealer - you can imagine. He was a real Dylan freak, like my friend Eric Tandy, who started to work at the shop in 1974."

"Lionel was an old friend of Philippe Garnier (now one of the most famous French rock-critics), who had the same kind of shop, called Crazy Little Thing, in Le Havre. Lionel had a lot of contacts in the US and the UK, so when pub rock started, something was really happening, and Melodies was certainly one of the best shops in France, along with Music Action and the Open Market in Paris."

"Between 1972 and 1984 this guy turned hundreds of people onto good music. Like I said before, it was a very exciting time. It was no more looking back and looking for records from the past. It was like "something is happening NOW" and every day we discovered new bands."

As a sort of entry point for people crossing the channel from England, Le Havre was perhaps a natural place for rock and roll to penetrate France. The town had a long tradition of sailors smuggling in records and other items that would raise more interest among the authorities. Being on the road from Le Havre to Paris, Rouen was likewise naturally situated to become the next foothold in the line. So finding the best French record stores in towns that superficially seem like they should be secondary in importance to Paris is perhaps not at all strange. But back to Melodies Massacre…

"In March of 1977, Lionel said he wanted to do some advertising for the shop, and asked me to write a song about Mélodies. It was just after the Wild Man Fischer promotion single for Rhino. We tried some of Eric Tandy’s funny lyrics on a Kinks-like riff, but it was obvious that the Dogs material was much better. The new Dogs really started in October 1976 with Mimi, myself, Hugues and (a little later) Jean-Yves Garin on guitar, and we already had some songs of our own. So the idea slightly changed, and Lionel decided to release a Dogs single on his own Melodies Massacre label."

"We recorded in June of 1977 in the basement of Lionel’s house, on a 4-track TEAC tape recorder with an old 2 track Revox for the mix, and a few Shure mikes. None of us knew anything about recording. 3500 singles were pressed. Some were distributed by Skydog, some by Lionel himself. The record sold very quickly, and we had some good reviews in the French press. It was the first French punk single to be released on an independent label."

The single had three tracks – "No Way", "Nineteen", and "Charlie Was A Good Boy". The first two of these pump with a Chuck Berry style of rock and roll dragged kicking and screaming into 1977. The guitar races like mad with heavy touches of that Johnny Kidd and the Pirates kind of sound. The band are clearly tight and skillful even if the recording is raw – the songs are filled with nifty guitar flourishes and killer interplay. "Charlie" mines a different vein – perhaps reaching to the Velvets side of their influences, it’s slower and darker with big echoing guitar chords providing a memorable signature. Due to their inexperience in recording, it took quite a few takes to get the vocals right, and in that time, Dom’s usually smooth voice went quite hoarse, so it has the toughest vocal sound of any Dogs record. Without question it was the best French punk rock single of the 1970s.

"Nineteen" was the song that appeared on the Beggar’s Banquet compilation Streets. Knowing how provincial the British are about their rock and roll, it struck me as surprising that the Dogs could even get considered for this. After all, the UK press at that time was in general dismissive of anything that didn’t originate in their country. I asked Dominique about the track, and whether it helped them make any headway in Britain.

"Lionel was on good terms with the guy from Beggar’s Banquet", he replied. "This guy (I don’t know his name) was a wholesale record dealer before he started his label. So when Lionel told him he was making a single, he asked for a song. It was very unusual for a French band to have a song on a British compilation (and it still is). As you say, the British think they are the only ones to play good music. Imagine what they could think of French bands! The Streets LP is the first Beggar’s Banquet record. Actually, Streets didn’t change anything for the Dogs in the UK. We had two small good reviews in Sounds and the NME that looked nice in our pressbook, and that’s all. We didn’t play in England until December of 1982 when we did a 15 date tour playing support for Doctor Feelgood."

Meanwhile, the band were soon heading back to the studio for their next record, a 12" ep called Go Where You Want To Go. "The first single sold very quickly", said Dominique, "So Lionel had money for a second record. Not enough money for a full LP, so we found an in-between solution: 5 songs on a 12". For the first time, we went into a professional 16 track studio in the suburbs of Paris. We spent 48 hours recording and mixing - no time to waste! I still like this record. The sound is a little bit better than on the first one, but it’s still rough and sharp. We had a lot of good reviews in the French press, and played more and more concerts in France and Belgium. 3500 copies of this record were pressed, and they sold very quickly too. Our two first records are collector’s items now."

Go Where You Want To Go definitely does have a more professional production than the single, but it doesn’t sacrifice a thing in terms of energy and punch. It starts with the rocking "Teenage Fever", a song that would’ve been a worthy companion piece to either "Nineteen" or "No Way" on the single…racing, ripping punk rock with lots of great guitar interplay and more Chuck Berry influenced solos over the top of muted chugga-chugga rhythm chords. Next up is the title track – slower and moodier but like "Charlie Was A Good Boy" having a signature guitar hook that makes it instantly recognizable. "Here Comes My Baby" is another blazer in the mold of "Nineteen" – it was subsequently chosen for inclusion on the compilation Skydog Commando. "My Life" is a touch less frantic in pace, but it’s still rocking punk of the first water. And then there’s the closing "You’re Gonna Lose Me" – man what a song! Terrific anthemic guitar licks, a killer dropout chorus hook, the works.

Shortly after Go Where You Want To Go was released, Jean-Yves Garin left the group. A biography on the Dogs Connection website say that he began to find that playing in the Dogs was too time-consuming, and decided to leave the group. Contradicting this view is an article by Jim Wylie in the Australian fanzine Shakin’ Street from the mid 80s, where the story is told that the Dogs had an opportunity to open for the Jam in June, but that Jean-Yves couldn’t get time off from his job. When the band played the gig without him, he decided to quit in response. Whatever the reason, it was a serious loss, robbing the band of the guitar interplay that made the first two records so interesting. The Dogs would make many more great records and write lots of great songs, but that unique guitar sound wouldn’t appear again. Garin seemingly dropped completely out of music and has not been heard from on record since.

The group carried on as a three piece without Jean-Yves, but they had other troubles as well, since drummer Mimi (Michel Gross) was called up for compulsory military service, a year long commitment that would only let him play with the band on occasional weekend leaves. In spite of these two major impediments, things were still looking good for the band, as they signed a major label deal with Phonogram that would lead to their first full length album. In the meantime, they continued playing sporadic gigs in France, including a big festival called French Rock Mania at the Palais de Sports in Paris. Fans at that show were given a single with a track by each of the bands, including "Gotta Tell Her" by the Dogs (later included on their Different album). As a gimmick, the show was recorded and a compilation album of bands from the concert was pressed during the night after the gig to be available in stores the very next day. Two Dogs tracks appeared on that record, "I’m Real" (also recorded for Different) and a strange cover of the John Entwhistle-penned Who oddity "Boris The Spider".

Dominique recalled signing the record contract and recording the Different album as follows: "After the success of Telephone, the big record companies were looking for French rock bands and Lionel easily got us a deal with Phonogram, with himself as producer. I think that Barclay and Polydor were interested too. We had a small advance to buy decent equipment. Until then, except for my Rickenbacker and a small ‘68 Fender Princeton amp, our equipment was miserable. We bought a Gretsch drumkit, a Rickenbacker bass and an Ampeg bass amp, a Fender Twin Reverb and a ‘56 Gibson Les Paul Junior. We spent 4 weeks in a 16 track studio in the country near Angers, in France. This LP is much more "pop" than the two preceding records. I had written some ballads and mid-tempo songs. It was not like 1977 – we were not supposed to prove anymore that we could play really fast."

"Lionel wanted this record to be pure and "honest", that’s why there are not too many overdubs or double tracking. It really sounds like what I was into in 1979: little bits of everything, British ‘60s, US garage bands and ‘77 punk. We had good reviews in the press, but because of the cover (deliberately very ‘60s), people who didn’t know the band before categorized us as a ‘60s mod revival band and that was not exactly what we were. Let’s say this record is the pop side of the Dogs. Walking Shadows would be the "dark" side...".

Different definitely IS more pop than previous Dogs records and it doesn’t rely on a barrage of rip-roaring fast songs, but it’s still packed with cool songs and interesting ideas. "Words" adds a harmonica to make a garage-y feel and in the verses drops the guitars down really low to favor the bass line. "More From You" has a wonderful bridge riff that makes the song unforgettable. "Stranger Than Me" is a mid-tempo track with a chiming guitar lick and a melancholy vocal. "(I’m Gonna Learn To) Live With It" uses a shimmering guitar riff over the top of a very basic tom-tom beat. "The Greatest Gift" has a real Flamin Groovies kind of sound, recalling the Byrds-like guitar feel from "Shake Some Action" without quite reaching the hall of fame status of that song. "Gotta Tell Her" and a cover of "Nobody But Me" show that the Dogs could still do the fast and furious thing when they wanted to. The original Phonogram album included a cover of "Fortune Teller" which somehow was dropped for the Closer Records reissue a few years later. Overall it’s an excellent album that could have been fabulous if the playing and arrangements had married the set of songs to a logical progression from their Go Where You Want To Go style.

At the time of its release, much was made of the cover art for the record. Dominique had wanted the lp to be self titled, but the record company policy was that all albums had to have titles for cataloguing purposes. The compromise is that the name Different appears only on a badge that Dominique wears on the cover photo. It’s not even on the record spine. A more serious problem was that the cover featured a photo-studio shot of the band that according to some evoked a 60s mod image, but by any standard was out of sync with late 70s sleeve art values for the audience that was most likely to appreciate the band. The cover probably also led the sub-consciousness of many of the critics who reviled the album as too sixties derivative, a claim that seems hard to substantiate today. Strangely, the pictures on the album were taken by a young Jean-Baptiste Mondino, later to become a much sought after professional photographer who has done album covers for Prince and Madonna and even shot the latter’s wedding.

Unfortunately, this is the point where we had left the interview when Dominique departed for the fateful US trip, which is a real shame since his responses were making a very interesting story out of the Dogs’ tale. From here on I’ve had to resort to secondary sources to provide the plot.

The band had their first national tour to support the Different album, also playing small to mid-sized in Switzerland and Belgium. Later in 1980 they recorded their second album, Walking Shadows, a record that is such a strong reaction to the criticism of the first album that it’s easy to assume that the two were released in the reverse sequence from what actually did happen. "It’s the wild side of our music, and it’s really representative of what I had in mind in 1979 and 1980", said Dominique in that Shakin’ Street feature. The melodic Rickenbacker guitar of Different is replaced by a harder Gibson sound and the bass has a unique rumbling feel that’s way up front in the mix and really drives the songs along. The sound here is nothing like their two Melodies Massacre records, but it’s hard hitting and intense never the less. It leads with three rapid fire rockers in "Secret Life", "Boy" and the stunning "Algomania", which builds a dark intro riff into a huge wall of guitars feel propelled by Hugues’ ringing, melodic bass lines.

My friend Luc, who shares my opinion of the greatness of Walking Shadows, shared this piece of information about "The Disfigured". ""The Disfigured" is more than loosely based on a short story Barbey d'Aurevilly, a Normandy writer belonging to the dandy movement along with writers or characters like Bloy, Baudelaire, Orsay, Brummell, Wilde. To understand what we are talking about, imagine a US band writing a song based on a Nathaniel Hawthorne's story - Barbey d'Aurevilly was as concerned with catholicism as Hawthorne was with puritanism. As far as I know, Dominique had a BA in literature, which means he did a three year stint at the university, most probably end of the 70s – this emphasizes the point about the Dogs not being a working class band."

The album was released in October of 1980, featuring a cover whose design has many elements in common with the Go Where You Want To Go ep – a black and white photo, blown up type-writer font text and a generally punk-ish air. It was accompanied by the Dogs first French language single, "Cette Ville Est Un Enfer" / "Trouble-fête". Played back to back with the album, it’s hard to believe that these were recorded at remotely the same time, as the single lacks the fire or the intense mood that the album has – in fact the A side feels like an early U2 single to me. The flip is faster, but it’s pretty pedestrian as a song – it was originally written for a French punk band called the Olivensteins and according to Luc is loaded with puns and tongue in cheek attitude, although this is lost on a non-French speaker such as myself. It was released in two different sleeves – one an uninteresting text-only sleeve for a promo issue and the other using the theme from the album.

The Dogs again toured France to support Walking Shadows, and at one point in the tour they were shooting the breeze with a fan named Antoine Masy-Perier (whose hyphenated name according to Luc indicates that he’s yet another member of the gentry) when Dominique mentioned that he’d like to add another guitarist. Antoine had been a huge Dogs fan for several years, and he’d learned to play guitar and played in French bands The Snipers and the Gloires Locales (the latter being a Rouen band involving the Tandy brothers – more on Gilles Tandy later. The Snipers had a mini-lp on New Rose called Alligator and also at least one single, while Gloires Locales had a 4 track ep on Melodies Massacre). He quickly volunteered to join up, but his introduction to the band was slow – only a few songs in each set at first. Although he was gradually integrated more fully into the band, his appearances on record were apparently pretty limited, and if the Shakin’ Street piece can be believed, he didn’t play on any lp until Shout!, even though the credits for several earlier lps include his name.

In the summer of 1981, Phonogram decided to drop the band, but they were quickly signed by CBS/Epic. With hardly a beat skipped they began recording their third album, this time using a London studio with an experienced rock producer in Tony Platt, whose resume included AC/DC. The resulting Too Much Class For The Neighborhood is a fine rock and roll record, but the production is pretty standard stuff. As a result, whereas you’re unlikely to ever hear a record that compares sonically to Walking Shadows, Too Much Class has to stand or fall strictly on the merits of the songs.

Which is not a bad thing, because the songs are mostly solid. The sound swings back towards the feel of the Different album; brighter, poppier and more optimistic. The title track opens, and it’s got a little of that dark feel, but then "Home Is Where I Want To Be" is a happy love song with that Byrds/Groovies guitar jangle. A cover of the old standard "Train Kept A Rollin’" continues a trend that began on the first album: Dogs covers often seem lackluster compared to their own material. "Hesitation" has a haunting feel with big power chords ringing out. "Poisoned Town" rocks hard with a "let’s hit the road" theme. "Shakin’ With Linda" is another pop treat and was released as a single with the non-lp instrumental flip side "Dog Walk". After the throwaway "Wanderin’ Robin", "The Most Forgotten French Boy" has a nice, wistful feel to it and jangles nicely. "Gone Gone Gone" is a garage stomper with loud harmonica bridge pieces – one of the best tracks on the album. "Death Lane" IS the best song on the album with a killer climbing riff that would have felt at home on Walking Shadows.

To support the album, the band again toured France, Switzerland and Belgium, playing 35 dates whose highlight was a Paris gig with the Fleshtones at a time when that band’s popularity was peaking. They then headed to England for a 15 date tour supporting Doctor Feelgood, where their reception was apparently disappointing. Back home in France things were better as the album sold 25,000 copies and interest was high enough that they were asked to appear on French national television, where they played several songs off the lp live.

By 1983 there was a strong scene in France supporting rock and roll in the style that the Dogs were playing. French labels Closer and New Rose were championing many similar bands (many of them not French, but from the UK or the US). The UK fanzine Bucketful of Brains was becoming a champion of this kind of sound, and led by groups like the Cramps and Fleshtones the international garage revival was starting up. The Dogs fit right in, and their records began to show up in mail order catalogs and even in some hip record shops in the US. But somehow they never quite broke through to the point where they had releases outside of France. Their records remained more difficult to obtain than many other bands that were nowhere near so worthy.

In summary, Legendary Lovers is an outstanding album, and anyone who’s been enthralled by mid 80s Australian garage rock bands would find this to measure up to the best work out of that scene. It’s loaded with classic tunes and great playing. Others certainly thought so…in fact a very good Swedish guitar rock band liked it so much they named themselves for the album.

1984 was a quiet year for new material from the Dogs, but there was no lack of record releases. Closer Records obtained the rights for the first two albums and reissued them. Then the single of "Secrets" was released, with a French version of the song on the flip. A second single followed that, with the French language "Mon Coeur Bat Encore" on the A side with "Down at Lulu’s" on the flip. This single was produced by Jeff Eyrich, who would later do Died Pretty’s Every Brilliant Eye album and had worked with the Plimsouls and the Gun Club. The two French songs on these singles beg the question of why the Dogs didn’t record more in their mother tongue, especially given that their home country was the only place where their records were coming out. Curious as it may seem, there was an unstated sentiment in France at the time that legitimate rock and roll had to be sung in English, and most French underground bands made a strong effort to sing in English even if they were barely able to speak the language. The French singles were almost certainly an effort to broaden appeal to people who weren’t die hard rock fans and didn’t share this prejudice. It doesn’t appear that they were successful.

Later in 1984 the Dogs did another big European tour, this time expanding beyond French speaking countries to cover much Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands. Sweden in particular was a fertile ground for the Dogs’ brand of music at this time, with a garage explosion of their own taking root with bands like the Nomads, Shoutless, Pushtwangers and Wilmer X leading the way.

In 1985 the band was ready to record another album, but found themselves without the money needed to do what they regarded as a proper job of it. According to the article in Shakin’ Street, the head of the French division of CBS Records had left the label and no one had been slotted to take his place. None of the ex-chief’s former subordinates were willing to put their necks on the line by authorizing money for the Dogs to record. But at the same time, Swedish and German representatives of the label were clamoring for a new album to capitalize on the interest generated by the Dogs tour earlier in the year.

Desperate to make something happen, the band took on old friend Marc Zermati as manager, and he came up with the idea of proposing a low cost, live-in-the-studio album that could be recorded for the money that CBS normally budgeted for a single. With some arm-twisting, he convinced CBS/Epic’s French hierarchy of the merits of this scheme and in April 1985 the Dogs booked into Rockfield Studios (the Dave Edmunds owned studio where Radio Birdman recorded the Living Eyes album and where the Flamin Groovies made many of their records) to make the album Shout!.

With no money to pay an outside producer, the band and Zermati handled production chores themselves. Dave Edmunds’ drummer Dave Charles engineered the record, but otherwise it was a total Dogs effort. The band set up and played live, and in 6 days they had an album. It’s not that unusual a thing these days for records to be made this quickly, but in that time, for a band recording on a major label, it was a pretty quick turnaround.

Shout! is packaged to give the feel of a live record, and there’s canned applause dubbed in between tracks. The record is a little long on covers, with the Nerves’ "One Way Ticket", the Miracles’ "Shop Around", the Animals’ "When I Was Young" and a medley of 3 Isley Brothers songs including the title track. The six originals aren’t up to the standard of songwriting on Legendary Lovers, either, but they’re not bad. "Hey Belinda" and "Good Morning Do You Love Me" are bright poppy songs and "A Different Me" and "I Wanna Be With The Boys" are good rockers. Yet overall the album is a bit of a let down given the high standard the band had set for themselves, and it seems that a lot of Dogs fans began to turn their interest elsewhere at this point.

By early 1986, the record label had gotten their org charts in order and once again the Dogs were given the full budget to make an album. In February the band schlepped back across the channel to London to record More More More at Townhouse studios with the production tag team of Bob Andrews (from Graham Parker’s backing band the Rumour) and Colin Fairley, who had worked as a sound engineer for Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe at various times.

According to Wylie’s article, Dominique was concerned that the Dogs were falling into a rut of making the same kind of album over and over and they wanted to break away from that and update their sound. Apparently unsure of how to best do this, they made the commonplace and often disastrous error of abdicating responsibility for deciding what to do in favor of their production team, giving Andrews and Fairley full authority to decide which songs to use and how to arrange them. Unfortunately, the slicker production failed to attract new punters and for many existing fans whose interest was already wavering from Shout! this lp closed the door completely.

In retrospect it’s not so clear why this should have been the case, since More More More doesn’t sound bad at all today. But one has to remember that it came out in 1986 in the middle of an international upsurge in garage bands playing tough edged, guitar fueled, Nuggets influenced rock. That was ground the Dogs had been marking with their scent for over a decade, and they were looking for something new – a classic case of a band ahead of its time. Today More More More sounds perhaps a bit mellow, but it’s got some strong songs and does what the Dogs always did so well…cast a mood with their music. "Somewhere In Heaven" is perhaps the best example of this, with an evocative guitar riff and a lyric about a guy whose girlfriend has died. Wylie found this song to be a bit maudlin in his article, and while he may be right, it’s certainly a little haunting listening to these words right now:

Then of course there’s the title track, which also seems disturbingly relevant now:

"Is It The Wind" is a terrific song with a slinky, oozing guitar line and a tribal drum beat – it’s primetime Dogs material without a doubt. "Poison In My Heart" has a strangely oriental feel to it and lots of typically inventive guitar work. "Waiting For A Miracle" (not the Comsat Angels song!) has an almost disco beat to it and some nice sax parts. "I Love Music" starts like a remake of Buddy Holly’s "Peggy Sue" and the music is strong throughout, but it’s a pretty empty lyric topic. Most of the rest of the material is pleasant but not top Dogs material.

Later in the year the Dogs teamed up with a friend named Gilles Tandy to make a record called La Colere Monte. Tandy had been in the French band the Olivensteins. The songs on this album are all sung in French by Tandy, and the album was released by New Rose records under his name, but Dominique and Antoine both contributed heavily to the songwriting and the guitar sound and overall atmosphere is strongly reminiscent of the Dogs (though with Tandy singing in French instead of Dominique in English there is at the same time a marked difference as well).

The Dogs were quiet for the next couple of years. Bassist Hugues left the band and was replaced by Christian Rousset, who’d played in the Normandy band Tupelo Soul – another group with one mid-80s album to their credit. A greatest hits package called Shakin’ With The Dogs was released and Dominique worked on a side project with Louise Feron, writing the music for a single for her called "Tomber Sous Le Charme" that would sell over fifty thousand copies on Virgin Records France in 1988. But on the Dogs front things weren’t so good as CBS/Epic dropped the band.

Fortunately the New Rose connection established with the Gilles Tandy record paid off in the form of a new deal, and in the fall of 1988, the Dogs finally released another album, A Million Ways Of Killing Time. Although by this time the band had lost the attention of much of the international underground rock press likely to spread the word about it, it’s actually a fine return to form. It starts with a strong rocker in "I Wanna Win" and continues with the stirringly dark "In The Shadow Of Love", a track that sounds like a lost number from the Walking Shadows sessions with a brilliant repetitive walking riff. When I mentioned how much I liked this song to Luc, he was even more emphatic: "Yes yes yes !!! One of my three favorite Dogs songs. What I love here is a feature also appearing on the opening track of Walking Shadows: the song starts with a riff a lot of guitarists would kill for, and logically, the song should be built around it. But as Dominique was prolific, from there he goes to another riff, which is just as great as the first one. And the first one only ever appears again in the outro!" The title track is a jangling ballad with a great mood. "Lovers Again" recalls the guitar theme from the Rolling Stones "Mother’s Little Helpers" – another superb rocker. "Hear My Train Comin’" is more nifty guitar work with maybe a little too much reverb, but still a fine song. "Satisfied", the song quoted at the start of this article, has a bright and optimistic feel despite its poignancy. Adding piles of gorgeous solo work doesn’t hurt, either. Then there’s a killer version of Wreckless Eric’s "(I’d Go) The Whole Wide World" – the best cover the Dogs ever did. It’s got a huge drum sound and swooping guitar fills that make the chorus into a monster. The closing "Something Magic" manages to merge the rhythmic feel of the Supremes’ "You Can’t Hurry Love" with a tough, rocking garage rock sound – a terrific song. Now a five piece group, the band made a video for this track and accompanied it with a CD single – their first appearance on disc.

As good as this album was, it didn’t draw much attention, and the band went into a long period with little new activity. In 1989, the first two albums were reissued on CD. Michel (Mimi) Gross left the band and was replaced by another Tupelo soul member in Bruno Lefaivre. Mimi had been Dom’s friend and bandmate for 16 years, and now Dominique was the only original Dog left.

Building on the success of their single collaboration, in 1990 Dominique wrote the music and the Dogs were the backing band for an entire album by Louis Feron, with John Cale as producer. Dominique flew to New York with Cale for the mixing. The songs are all in French, and Feron, a breathy sort of chanteuse as a singer, makes the proceedings have a very different feel from a Dogs record. Luc thinks of the Louis Feron record as a "Dogs record with a different singer", but, conceding that the language barrier may alter my perception, it doesn’t feel that way to me. The playing is far more mellow and laid back, and there are lots of synthesizer washes. To my ears it sounds like music made for a totally different sort of audience and purpose than the Dogs’ records are geared towards. According to Luc: "The idea was to crack the market. Let's say that I consider that the album to be a compromise between Dominique's aspirations and marketability, and it is as good as a compromise can be. And the lyrics are better, though getting at the same literary vein as 'Disfigured' - I think Louise had also been a student in literature, maybe she had a PhD or whatever. Maybe this does have an influence on my opinion. And also, this one of the few records in my collection that my wife has ever paid any attention to. Stop laughing, scoundrel ya."

Antoine also was getting involved in side projects, playing with a group called Tony Truand (Luc helps me out again with some French background: "That's another of those tiring gainsbourgrian pun so frequent in French song and rock: this reads and sounds like it means "Tony Mobster" but can be read as well as "Tonitruant", which translates into "thundering", something the band is not. These days, Antoine is part of Ukulele Club of Paris, a much tongue-in-cheek and loose collective dealing with vintage party music, or whatever.") In 1992 shortly after the Dogs had contributed a cover of "I Wanna Be Loved" to a Johnny Thunders tribute album, Antoine left to work full time with Tony Truand.

There are stories that Dominique was having serious drug problems around this time. He was hanging around with some show business figures and had more or less relocated in Paris, reportedly living with Dani, an extremely minor figure of the 60s French song scene and reputedly a heavy drug user. When the Dogs finally returned as a three piece with the dark and dangerous sounding Three Is A Crowd CD in 1993, the lyrics would seem to confirm the tales. Recorded in Paris and released on Skydog Records, this disc is very difficult to find here in the United States and even in France. It opens with the ambiguous song "The Price of My Sins", which goes:

This song moves along at half speed with a big walloping drum sound, and it’s almost frighteningly intense – the darkest song the band ever did. The subsequent "Super Friend" is a melancholy track in its own right, but it feels like summer pop after "The Price Of My Sins". "Back From Nowhere" is a classic Dogs rocker with defiant lyrics about recovery from addiction. "Today Sounds Like Yesterday" has a rockabilly beat and a cool tune but its throwaway lyrics about loving rock’n’roll aren’t too satisfying. The fact that there’s yet another "I love rock’n’roll" track in "Noise Therapy" shows that lyric ideas were in short supply. "Skydogs" is a powerhouse instrumental that really burns neatly. "19 Again" is another good rocker with lyrics about recovery:

"The End Of The Game" is a fine ballad about how all Dom’s friends had disappeared and all their dreams had ended – an especially sad song now. It was subsequently released as a CD single paired with their track from the Thunders tribute. Then the album closer is an intense, burning version of the Stooges "I Wanna Be Your Dog" that’s a logical bookend for "The Price Of My Sins".

Amazingly enough, this album was produced by Colin Fairley, who’d also been in on their More More More record. The two results couldn’t be more far apart in tone and temper. Three Is A Crowd might have a few songs that aren’t first water Dogs material, but overall it’s a very impressive album and if you like music that lays out emotion, this one will do the trick.

From 1994 until 1999 there was little Dogs activity and it seemed to people outside France like the band was done – there were no new records and there was no news. Dominique dabbled in record production and appeared with a few friends in various shows. In 1996 they added Laurent Ciron on guitar and began playing gigs and working on new material. They increased their live workload in 1997 and in 1998 they began recording a big pile of songs that would ultimately be released in two different CDs. Volume one of these two discs came out in October 1998 and is called Four Of A Kind. The first thing that strikes you upon playing it is how big and full the sound is – it’s the Dogs with 21^st century production and studio facilities. As with Too Much Class For The Neighborhood years earlier, this is a two edged sword – helping in some ways but in others making the sound feel less unique and more like everything else.

The opening "Dreadful Times" is a superb rocker with slashing guitar and swooping pick-scrapes that make it take off like a rocket. After the slightly awkward title track comes another great rocker in "Dead Girls Don’t Talk". "Professional Liar" has a nifty drop-out/drop-in guitar style and a kind of Nomads feel. "Back On The Horse" has a real Doctor Feelgood sort of rocking r’n’b air to it, and then "I’m Bad" covers a Kim Fowley song that lifts the signature chords to Steppenwolf’s "Born To be Wild" and adds some cool Hammond organ to make a solid garage rocker. "(All I Want Is Some) Action" is another blast with layers of harmonica and lots of tough guitar. The record closes with a nice ballad called "I Won’t See You Anymore". But that’s not the end, because strangely enough for a CD that’s only 35 minutes long, there’s also a bonus disc with just one song on it: a French language track called "Jenny Jane" that’s the coolest thing in the package. It’s got a motoring bass line that walks up and down the fretboard and some Jerry Lee Lewis styled piano fills that give it a 50s feel.

The Dogs ramped up their touring activity in 1999 in the wake of the CD, doing thirty dates – not a lot by the standards of most serious bands, but more than they’d been doing. Then in October of 1999 they released the second package from their marathon sessions of the prior year, this time called A Different Kind – Four of a Kind Volume Two. Once again it’s a two disc set that probably could have been one. The first CD has nine songs including newer live takes of "Walking Shadows" and "I’m Just Losin’ That Girl" that have good sound but lack the atmosphere of the original studio versions. (Luc is less forgiving: "Come on; they are plainly embarrassing! I am saying so because, as the French tongue has it, qui aime bien châtie bien – the one who loves is the one who castigates".) There’s also a version of "Jenny Jen" with the same instrumental track as the single version in volume one but with English lyrics and a new title: "Never Stop". Most of the other songs have less fire than the tracks on the previous volume. "The Story Of The Dogs" is yet another "I love rock’n’roll" song, but I still have a soft spot for it because of the way it testifies for a whole bunch of great French bands that came after the Dogs started and were strongly influenced by them, like Fixed Up, the City Kids, the Shifters, the Backsliders. I can't think of another case where a band did a song praising the bands they spawned – it’s a neat touch.

"Back To Bali" remembers a good vacation time with another ironic twist of timing given the recent nightclub bombing there – a pleasant rocker but again lacking fire. "Rock’n’Roll Lesson No. 1" is pedestrian as a tune, but has the right message: do it for fun / do it for kicks. The main disc is really fairly thin by normal Dogs standards.

Disc two has four French language songs, and for a Yank like me they have to stand on the merits of the music with no help from lyrics. And on that count they’re OK but certainly not up to the normal standard. Luc however likes the track "La belle Saison", saying "That one is quite nice, with lovely lyrics about a lazy sod who explains that he won't get out of his bed before the summer is there, no way, so his girl-friend has to live with it. Her name is Marie-Caroline, a first name which is deliciously old-fashioned."

Over the period from 1997 to 2000 the Dogs had recorded many of their gigs, and in 2001 they set to work sorting through the tapes and mixing down the multi-track masters for a double live CD called Short, Fast and Tight. The resulting release is very professional sounding – really too slick to properly capture the true energy of a live gig, but it still works very well as a package because the choice of songs is so good – a collection of 29 great tracks spanning most of the band’s career. Released in August, it was the last CD the band ever did.

It starts with a fine take of "Death Lane", and then after a few tracks from the last two CDs, returns to the classics with a vengeance – first their old stage fave cover of "Fortune Teller", then "Little Johnny Jet", "The Most Forgotten French Boy", "One Way Ticket", "Good Morning Do You Love Me", "Home Is Where I Want To Be", with a few newer songs and covers like the Stones "Little Girl" to spice things up. On the second disc, "I’d Go The Whole Wide World" is a romping, stomping great version with superb backing vocals. "Too Much Class For The Neighborhood" rocks quite a bit harder than the original, and the pairing of a cover of "When I Was Young" with "19 Again" works great.

That brings us to now. Two days ago as I write this, on October 22^nd, Dominique was buried back in France with a mass in a 12^th century cathedral in Rouen. I never met him, but it’s clear from the words in his songs that he loved playing in the Dogs more than anything else he’d ever done. By accounts of many people I corresponded with via e-mail to get information for this story, he was a very nice guy and easy for fans to talk to, with no airs in spite of his near legendary status in his own country. Dogs lyrics for the past ten years deal frequently with the theme of growing older and the fear of losing the dream of being able to play music in his band. No one wants to die – even those tortured souls who take their own lives only do it because the act of living seems even less appealing – but I suspect that Dominique would have thought that there were many worse ways to end than passing away while on tour with his beloved band. There’s no question he knew he was very ill when he left, yet he did it anyway.

Probably not very many American rock and roll fans are aware what was lost this October. To me Dominique Laboubée was an example of much of what’s best in rock and roll, someone who played out of heart and passion and did it on his own terms. He leaves behind a legacy of almost thirty years of outstanding music – let’s hope that record companies can see fit to keep it available, and maybe in years to come, the Dogs will be given at least some of the credit that they are due.

As one last closing touch, as part of my effort to get perspectives on the Dogs I exchanged a few e-mails with Christian Houllemare, a Frenchman now living in Australia. Christian has first rate underground music credentials through years of playing bass for Australian bands like the Happy Hate Me Nots and New Christs, but he began his musical career fronting a French band called the Bad Brains (not to be mistaken for the US hardcore band) and was deeply influenced in his formative years by the Dogs. He took the time to write down his own heartfelt perspective on the band, which I’ve reproduced below:

"There were only two great French Rock’n’Roll bands in the late 70's and I was lucky enough to have one in my hometown (Little Bob Story, in Le Havre) and the other one 100 km away (the Dogs, in Rouen). I remember that around 1977, when I was still a teenager and not long after I started going to gigs, I’d bought a ticket to go see some young English band called the Jam who had just released their first album. (We were also lucky enough in Le Havre to have a great import record-store called Crazy Little Thing – the type of shop where you’d walk in to buy a Beatles album and walked out with the MC5 instead. Crazy Little Thing also managed to organize gigs by the most exciting new bands of the time.) My older brother recommended that I’d catch the support band as well, a group from Rouen called the Dogs, as they were in his view right up my alley. He could not have been more right…their choice of cover-versions read like some dream juke-box listing: "Pushing Too Hard", "Gimme Danger"…, and their own sharp, short and fast songs sounded just as good. The front man sang in English (a must! – don’t ask…) and played guitar in a style that was seldom heard in those dark days of the fretboard-wank plague, wearing his influences proudly on his sleeve but managing to never fall for clichés.

"I mean, it was exciting enough to start seeing British bands I could relate to, but these guys were from up the road! I was hooked from the word go and the next day I rushed to the import record store and bought their 1^st single. The EP followed soon after, the first album Different and then the amazing about-face that was Walking Shadows (the gig they played in Le Havre for its release was the best I’ve ever seen them perform, pure energy and sheer class).

"I somehow felt a bit let down by Too Much Class For The Neighbourhood at the time (in the annoying possessive way of the true fan) even though it included Dominique’s best songs so far: "Too Much Class…", "Hesitation", "Death Lane", and "The Most Forgotten French Boy" (and its catch line "Do you really want to be like me?" – which as singer-songwriter-front man in the (French) Bad Brains I took VERY personally!). I also recall my friend Stéphane turning up on my doorstep with a fresh copy of Legendary Lovers the day it came out and the two of us staying up all night playing it over and over until we concluded at dawn that it had to be declared the Dogs’ masterpiece. Around the same time, one of my pet US bands of the time, the Slickee Boys, released their version of "Death Lane" as if to remind me of who was boss.

"I got to meet Dominique on the Barracudas’ Meantime Tour, the Bad Brains being the support band, when he filled in for a missing Chris Wilson on a couple of dates. One morning he sat at my breakfast table and proceeded to tell me how much he enjoyed our band’s previous night performance. Once I managed to explain after what seemed like an awfully long time that my silence was not due to a lack of interest in his opinion but to a complete loss of speech due to being too overwhelmed by his attention he laughed out loud about it, proceeded to make me at ease and then we talked for a couple of hours (well, I mainly listened). Despite his verging-on-arrogant facade (I think the first time I ever saw the word "cocky" it was used to describe the Dogs) Dominique turned out to be a most charming and supportive person and I walked on air for a couple of days. From this day on every time we ran into each other, usually at gigs in Paris, he would break away from his omnipresent entourage and come and say Hi. Had the Bad Brains not folded soon after the release of our one and only record (on which the Dogs’ influence is pretty obvious, especially in Nito’s guitar sound and playing – we pretty much met and started the band because of our shared interest in "Les Dogs") we were actually thinking of asking Dominique to produce the next one. All through the 80’s, after I’d left France for Australia, I kept hearing Dominique’s legacy in most of the material of the wave of rock’n’roll bands that seemed to appear all over France around that time.

"When I joined the Happy Hate-Me-Nots in Sydney one of the first questions Paul Berwick asked me was if I knew about this French band that appeared on a 1978 British compilation called Streets, their track "19" being incidentally the best of the album. "Do I know them?" I answered, "They probably have a big part of responsibility in me ending up here with a bass guitar in my hands!!!" Paul always wanted to do a cover of "19", except we couldn’t work out the lyrics. I was supposed to pick Dominique’s brains about it when I’d see him next but I never got to catch up with him on any of my visits back to the homeland, even on the New Christs’ tour where I was kind of expecting him to show up.

"Which means that the last time I saw him was at a gig in his hometown of Rouen just before I left France, about 17 years ago. There were about 50 people in the room, most of them US students there to check some new band from Georgia on their first European tour (their name was REM, and the next time I saw them was in Sydney 10 years later in front of 10,000 people!). We had a chat, I told him how much I loved the last album ("Legendary Lovers") and we wished each other good luck. Now he’s gone and I wish I had another chance to remind him how important he was to some people, and how I’d noticed his influence on not only many bands but on a lot of good bands as well. I like to think he was the kind of person who would have appreciated such comment. Maybe tell him also about his small but dedicated fan-base in Australia which he probably never knew about. Just in case he could use some support, trying to return the favour for all he’d given me over the years. Then again, this was a guy who seems to have managed to time his own death as the perfect ending to his rock’n’roll life…

"The most forgotten French boy? Maybe. Too much class for the neighbourhood? Definitely, Dominique. Even an old so-called fan like me had to learn about your death to realize how much of a part of my life you were…"