“Bad Dog” – from the new album “Dog Days” by Chandler Travis, with special guests the Chandler Travis Philharmonic & Three-O, and the Incredible Casuals.
Well, we got a puppy in March, and named her Quintron (aka Quintron the Dragon, Qwendolyn, Skinny Evil Burro, Quinny, and the Scourge of Harwich); she has demanded (and even sometimes received) our full attention, especially during her current “terrible twos” phase, a living nightmare that we’re told may not last more than a year or so. (Second thoughts? And how!- just ask our cat!)
Despite her halting, unsteady embrace of house training and her constant indiscriminate perforating (covered in greater detail here in my latest dog saga, “Bad Dog“), we have to admit she’s pretty cute, a trait she shares with a long line of history’s greatest mutts, many of whom I’ve lived with personally, gotten to know pretty well, and even chronicled in song from time to time over the last few decades. A collection of dog songs was more or less inevitable, and here it is, 12 songs covering the joy, the heartbreak, the agony and the ecstasy of owning a pup (and being owned by one.)
You may have heard a couple of these- the tracks by the Incredible Casuals and the Philharmonic, for instance, date back 20 years or so (and hey, isn’t that Big Al Anderson on guitar with the Casuals on “Get That Stick”?); but there’s at least five tracks that make their debuts here, plus a few others that fall well outside the mainstream.
Plus, each song on “Dog Days” is accompanied by a vintage photo of the actual canine personality that inspired it- wonder no longer, folks, these are the guilty parties! Think of your delight as a different, individual, weird-looking dog photo pops up on your car stereo for each song, making it that much harder to concentrate on your driving!