THE DOGS D’AMOUR - ‘Dynamite China Years’

As a band, The Dogs D’Amour had a bit of a Marmite effect – you either loved them or didn’t get what they were about. Yes, they had their own distinctive image, but while others were focussing more on their image or were arguing over who could shred the best, The Dogs D’Amour charted their own course and produced a body of songs within rock music which few others have matched. This is all the more surprising, as they were a band who lived as hard as they played and whose early reputation may have prevented some from giving their music more of a chance.

 

But for those who did listen, the effect was in most cases instantaneous and the reward lifelong. Influenced more by the Faces, the Stones, Mick Ronson and Be Bop Deluxe than what other bands were doing at the time, and based on the unique street poetry songwriting style of Tyla, they created wonderful tales and songs of love, heartbreak and loss to be enjoyed best with a drink or bottle in hand and to be sung lustily and loudly. In doing so, their drunken and sometimes melancholic melodies have become part of us.  

 

With a collection of songs extending far beyond the timeless ‘How Come It Never Rains’ and including ‘How Do You Fall in Love Again?’, ‘Firework Girl’, ‘Satellite Kid’, ‘I Don’t Want You To Go’, ‘Wait Until I’m Dead’, ‘Last Bandit’, ‘Billy Two Rivers’, ‘Drunk Like Me’, ‘Heroine’, ‘Errol Flynn’, ‘I Think It’s Love Again’, ‘Comfort of the Devil’, ‘Bullet Proof Poet’, ‘Angel’, ‘Gypsy Blood’, ‘Victims of Success’, ‘Back on the Juice’, ‘Scared of Dying’ and ‘Put It In Her Arm’ they were formidable and it’s not hard to see why. And these songs barely scrape the surface of their output.

The boxed set includes no fewer than 102 songs, spanning 6 hours and 6 minutes of listening time.

 

Four of the albums were recorded with the ‘classic’ line-up of Tyla (vocals and guitar), Jo ‘Dog’ Almeida (guitar), Steve James (bass) and Bam (drums); with others (including Tyla and Dave Tregunna) playing bass on the earlier ‘(Un)authorised Bootleg’ and then the late Darrel Bath taking over guitar from Jo Almeida on ‘More Unchartered Heights of Disgrace’.

So, now for the detail. The CDs are packaged in a solid cardboard clamshell box featuring new artwork from Tyla. The first 6 CDs are packaged in sleeves reproducing the original album artwork. CD 7 (‘Singles, B-Sides & Rarities’) is packaged in the original album artwork for ‘King of Thieves’ (the US version of ‘Errol Flynn’ where the name had to be changed due to legal issues) and CD 8 (‘Even More Singles, B-Sides & Rarities’) is packaged in the original artwork for the ‘I Don’t Want You to Go’ single. The box also includes sleeve notes based on a recent interview with Tyla spanning the Dogs’ career and some interesting moments from the inspiration provided by Tony Hancock to his unlikely auditioning for Wishbone Ash.

In terms of the CDs themselves, the ‘(Un)authorised Bootleg’, ‘Graveyard of Empty Bottles’ and ‘Straight??!!’ are as they were previously released. ‘In the Dynamite Jet Saloon’ and ‘Errol Flynn’ are included here in their extended CD versions containing additional tracks beyond the original vinyl releases and ‘More Unchartered Heights of Disgrace’ comes complete with 5 bonus tracks culled from the Japanese version and their CD single and EP of their great cover of the Small Faces’ ‘All or Nothin’.

14 of the 16 tracks on ‘Singles, B-Sides & Rarities’ are live recordings including the non-album track ‘Kirstin Jet’, with ‘King of Thieves’ and ‘Ugly’ providing additional studio tracks. And ‘Even More Singles, B-Sides & Rarities’ is mostly a mixture of alternate versions (7”, 12”, edit and acoustic) including a number of non-album tracks - ‘As the Poppies Fall’, ‘Things He’d Do’, ‘Never Had a Girl Who Would Die For Me’ and ‘Heading for the Target of Insanity’. As a simple glance at Discogs will confirm, multiple versions and formats of singles were released in different markets with different songs featured during their time on China Records and these two additional CDs are taken from these releases.

 

While not re-mastered as such, the mastering undertaken when putting this collection together does, to my ears, make some of the songs sound a bit louder and more defined.

Yes, there was already the earlier 5-album ‘Original Album Series’ release in 2016 which provided a cheap and accessible way into their music, but, to me, that failed at the first hurdle as it didn’t include the stonkingly good (yes, I did just use “stonkingly”) ‘Graveyard of Empty Bottles’ which converted me instantly from someone who had dabbled in their music to a devoted fan. Okay, some may argue this was released as a 10” mini-album, but an album it was and its omission from any retrospective is a major oversight and lack of understanding about their work.

 

Shorter compilation albums can have their uses as introductions or pathways to bands’ music, but most by their very nature and the limited number of songs which can be included are very selective and also miss many great songs which really should have been included. In contrast, comprehensive releases like ‘Dynamite China Years’ provide the best means of accessing and understanding bands’ bodies of work.

 

To use the words of Rich Davenport who wrote the sleeve notes for this collection, “the albums collected in this box represent a period in which the Dogs blazed a colourful, chaotic trail, amid an increasingly faceless morass of third-generation US hair bands”. I couldn’t agree more. The Dogs stood out at the time and over 35 years later their songs still stand out today and sound as wonderfully raucous, heartfelt and melodic as when they were written.

 

Regardless of your reference point – only familiar with a few of their songs, curious to hear more, an established fan with all of their albums, a fan of boxed sets or a completist, there is much for everyone here and the ‘Dynamite China Years’ provides a great tribute to their musical legacy.

 

Essential listening – everybody needs this in their collection.

 

The ‘Dynamite China Years’ can be bought through all of the usual outlets. And for those of you who like your music more personalised, Tyla did have a limited number of signed pre-orders and bundles available directly from Shop - Tyla’s Art Tavern • Villains Merch. While these have now sold out, I understand that more may be made available in response to demand.

 

GMcA