The Dogs D’Amour
In the Dynamite Jet Saloon
1987
China Records

Gloriously wasted barroom blues for singing your heart out to.

1. "Debauchery"
2. "I Don't Want You To Go"
3. "How Come It Never Rains"
4. "Last Bandit"
5. "Medicine Man"
6. "Gonna Get It Right"
7. "Everything I Want"
8. "Heartbreak"
9. "Billy Two Rivers"
10. "Wait Until I'm Dead"
11. "Sometimes"
12. "The Kid From Kensington"
13. "The State I'm In"

For me it’s hard to be objective about the Dogs D’Amour. As a band that was so intertwined with my youth they rekindle many great memories whenever I hear them; though I do honestly believe that the Dogs were one of the few English bands in the late 80s who could have made it big.

Part of the attraction of course was the whole idea of the Dogs. Barroom boozers who were so very English and yet so engaged by all things American. Their sound was a mix of blues and trash and glam and smoke and stones and sleaze, but with a predilection for alcohol and destruction and tragedy and loss. They glorified the gutter and found something uniquely poetic about failure.

Tyla was an enigma who smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish but had the soul of a poet and the clothes of a New York Doll crossed with a cowboy. You always felt an honestly with the Dogs as the dirt was only just below the surface.

Whilst in the Dynamite Jet Saloon isn’t my favorite Dogs album and wasn’t the first (that was the best avoided 'The State we're In' or the fantastic and amazingly ragged 'Official Bootleg album' depending on your view of things) it was probably the most important. I’d not been more overwhelmed by a live band since I first caught the Hanoi Rocks years before and the first time I saw the Dogs at some grimy pub in Nottingham I knew that they were something special. They were actually quite a tight unit in those days, even though Joe Dog looked so laid back he could fall asleep at any point; Steve James oozed cool; Tyla pounded his guitar and crooned and Bam was just all flailing arms behind his kit. I grabbed the ‘Official bootleg album’ soon after which is quite a rarity these days; and there were a couple of singles before ‘Dynamite Jet Saloon’ hit. Even the name was cool. You already knew that the place didn’t exist, or if it did it was likely to be in California somewhere.

The album itself is now available in a number of formats and you should be able to pick it up for a decent price.

Think Arizona, think Texas, think LA, think London, pack your whisky, your cigarettes and your six-gun. Now you’re just about ready. The year is 1987 it’s before Gunners are really big and the LA Strip is more Glam than sleaze, but these guys are more sloppy Stones than glam. Tyla’s voice sounds like it is made of cigarette smoke, it’s a rock and roll Tom Waits, that slurs and stumbles through beautiful words all backed by a bastardized blues based bar band that has tinges of country and punk and good old rock and roll.

Musically the album has aged pretty well, like an old Faces album, it’s definitely not a modern sound but it translates well. You could even call some of these tracks timeless. Lyrically you’re in for a treat too and Tyla would only get better as the years went by

People have compared the Dogs to Hanoi Rocks, Guns and Roses and The Stones at one time or another but really they sound like neither, sure they have the essence of those bands but also bands like the Faces and the New York Dolls also.

‘Debauchery’ that used to open the live set at the time is sleazy, sloppy blues that lays down the template for the album and whilst it was a great live favourite and sets out the Dogs agenda nicely it’s far from the best track on the album.

‘I Don’t Want You To Go’ and the video that went with it was the Dogs at this point in time for me. It’s as infectious as they get this time around and the sort of song that just lives with you. Whilst the song actually made the lower reaches of the charts in the UK being on a minor label never really did the Dogs any favours and without the money behind them it was hard to make any impact on the UK charts which barely contained any real rock music at the time. ‘I Don’t Want You To Go’ is probably one of the Dogs most commercial tunes, though its worth mentioning that the Dogs never really compromised on their sound.

‘How Come It Never Rains’ was a song that had been the Dogs first single and here it was remixed for the album. I can’t even begin to tell you how good this ballad is. I would have it in my top 10 songs of all time without a doubt (though I must admit that I actually preferred the earlier mix which was a little rawer). Tyla made the video himself (again the problems of being on a small label) buy again it failed to get real airplay. Had it got the exposure the Dogs could have gone stratospheric, it’s just one of those songs that really is so good it doesn’t matter what kind of music you are into. I secretly hope that some plastic-faced American Idol or heavily choreographed boy/girl band cover this one day and put a few pennies into his coffers!

‘Last Bandit’ another live favourite and ‘Medicine Man’ sum up the Dogs ethos beautifully, here we see them as gloriously wasted gunslingers in the wild west retired to the saloon for a night of whisky and women. It’s rock and roll that makes you feel good and want to sing along to.

There are a few older tracks on here; the best of which is the classic ode to the English comedian Tony Hancock in ‘Wait Until I’m Dead’ the song is catchy as hell and has Tyla visiting a theme he’d come back to later in the sad demise of our heroes, and the regret at how underappreciated they are: The struggle of the poet in life and the glorification after he’s dead. Beautiful words too.

The album really doesn’t have a bad track and it varies in tone from introspection to straight out good time rock and roll. ‘The Kid from Kensington’ is another cool sing-along classic that lyrically places the Dogs right in the heart of the City. ‘Billy Two Rivers’ has us back in the States with its rousing sing-along.

When this album hit you had the feeling that the Dogs would make it big and disappear into the sunset and all you would hear from them would be the odd postcard from the Sunset Strip. Whilst that sort of happened for a moment later on, the Dogs remain one of those enduring bands from a certain period in time who managed to stay together long enough to leave a big enough legacy of great songs to inspire others and leave people like me to rue the fact that life isn’t fair and that most gems still lay buried under the detritus.

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