Found this at the new Black Dog Web site. Here's a text copy for the
NetScape-less... (I shouldn't think Ken will mind - it clears up a few
things...)
quoted 216 lines A potted history of the "Early" period
> A potted history of the "Early" period
>
> A lot of people have asked what makes me tick over the years. Here
> for the first time, for your edification, and my retrospection, is a
> brief introduction to the world of dogism.
>
> Since an early age, I have known that I was weird. I counted in
> roman numerals when I was five. When you are young, your friends
> don't percieve it as "an intelligence misapplied", you are the "geek
> in the bad fitting clothes". As my friend Ed once said "You're not
> the only one with problems". He's right. You pick yourself up, and
> do what you can.
>
> To escape my fate, I joined the navy in a niave attempt to "see the
> world for free". I saw a quite a bit of the world, sailed a few of
> it's oceans, and retraced most of homer. Luckily I didn't have to
> kill anyone, not that I would really want to. The exchange was that
> I left "normal things" behind in some way. The regime featured
> revolving timescales based around different routines, there were no
> fixed day lengths for weeks sometimes.
>
> As a consequence being on dry land has never seemed "real" since.
>
> In 1984 I was living in Denmark, and i had a weird dream that
> culminated in me painting the image of the egyptian god anubis on a
> freshly plastered white wall. It's realism freaked me out. I guess
> this was the first time that symbolism had popped up in such a big
> way, though having read jung, i had always been aware of strange
> syncronicities. I decided to read all that I could about everything,
> I wanted to carry the library of alexandria around in my head,
> niavely. With hindsight, this was my "white light, new age" period,
> when I really thought that the ancient wisdom could change the world
> if applied in the light of new understanding and technologies.
>
> Anyway, I was able to sharpen up my astral skills, and luckily had
> observed the "messiah complex" in an unfortunate friend, so knew
> what to look out for (more or less).
>
> Denmark also had an excellent library system, where you can get
> pristine copies of old hard to get or even deleted records from the
> 60's and 70's in mint condition. They have the biggest dub reggae
> collection I have ever seen, and it was all free loan. Superba.
>
> My friends in england during this period, despite being accomplished
> musicians, failed to secure any deals from record companies, and had
> to either give up and get bad jobs that they didn't enjoy, or eek
> out a less than full life on the state welfare system. The music
> business, and life in general, can be cruel like that.
>
> I "woke up" to the possibility that I could produce music myself in
> 1987, and having been allowed to hang out in Uncle Jim's JAMs
> Kitchen at his Benio Residence, also called "Trancentral". Jim and
> Bill went off to do their thing with the KLF. And Some. Prior to
> this I had only engineered for some my friends bands. I loved music,
> but couldn't play traditional intstruments. With technology, things
> changed.
>
> The vibe at the time was "house IS a feeling", we were getting the
> _coolest_ cuts from chicago and detroit, the tempo hadn't yet risen
> above 120bpm, and everything was chill and easy. Slow Acid was sex
> itself. Gay clubs were the most fun and adventurous places to hang
> out then, their mix of fun, enthusiasm, and great music changed many
> peoples lives and perceptions. Anyway..
>
> I got (more) into computers, got an amiga, and started producing
> freeware demos featuring artwork that had been done in house, and
> little jingle type tunes that could be distributed on floppy disks.
> Feedback from these was encouraging. The computer press got behind
> us...but we were limited to what we could fit on a disk, so we
> decided to make our own records, twenty five minutes of music, and
> some striking cover designs.
>
> The Black Dog formed in 1989 after placing an advertisement for a
> keyboard player in Music Technology magazine (now called "The Mix").
> Ed phoned up, struck up a conversation about how he had had his
> tapes played at warehouse parties (they weren't called "raves"
> then). We met and started working. We didn't have much money or
> gear, because the bank had refused to loan us anything. The tunes we
> produced were strange, even for us, at that time.
>
> A few months later, Ed brought Andy around, and he stayed. Andy
> Staid?
>
> We tossed several names around and settled on "Cheeba Smarties" for
> a week, until I suggested a name that I had been given in a dream,
> "The Black Dog". Despite the initial reticence, & after allaying
> their fears that the image was NOT AT ALL RACIST, it stuck. Other
> people liked it too.
>
> Finished our first 4 tracks, and tried to secure a deal with "Black
> Market Records". We had hoped to get Mr Fingers to remix one of the
> tracks, but in a bizarre transatlantic telephone call, he heard the
> mixes, and said, and we quote "nah, that's TOO weird for me".
>
> Desperation and the rent set in, so we went to see "Big Life" (big
> larf) records, they giggled a lot, called our material "Soundtrack
> Stuff", and completely missed the point.
>
> Exasperated, we decided to hire in as much equipment as we could,
> and try to record a new four track EP, with the idea of releasing it
> ourselves. People obviously didn't understand us, or the way our
> music worked, so it looked like we were on our own, and that we had
> to "do it ourselves". We recorded the "Virtual EP" in a weekend,
> from beginning to end. And with much trepidation, pressed up the
> first 1000 12 inchers. We hired a van, and spread them as far and
> wide as we could. Luckily, the people at the grass roots level, the
> underground record shops, were more tolerant, and the it shifted
> pretty quickly. Some shops even took a WHOLE box (25 records) which
> was amazing after the lack of "official" response we had met with.
>
> Repressed another 1000 due to popular demand. And then another 500
> for "export" to Germany and the Netherworld. Some people in europe
> obviously liked the Black Dog Sound. Bless 'em.
>
> We still get email from people who like the roughness of that first
> EP, and many more from people trying to track it down and find a
> copy. I got one from America, where a guy had "seen it" in his
> dreams like a grail vision or something, but when he got to his
> local shop, they had all gone. He must have seen the last one being
> sold. Bummer, eh.
>
> Anyway, with a modest success under our belt, it was easier for us
> to ignore the "establishment" and persevere at our own methods of
> music making, and indie type distribution.
>
> A few months later, we started on the new project. The age of Slack
> EP. Indulgence set in, and sadly, it was less than it should be.
> Quirky, and uptight it may be, but a "dancefloor burner" it wasn't.
> Some brave DJ's still play it (big up to them), but not many. Just
> 1000 of this one were made, and we barely managed to get our money
> back for the next project. It taught us a valuable lesson for the
> future. Nobody made any money at this point, we were begging from
> our friends, doing everything we could to keep our heads above the
> hypothetical water.
>
> The third "Black Dog EP". We were on a roll now. We could write
> music that moved us much quicker than before, and soon had a whole
> bunch of new material. We decided to put out a six track EP. This
> gave us the most bass for DJ's, and most importantly, more tracks to
> listen to.
>
> We were using Greyhound distribution then, a company that was doing
> the "van business" for us. We are greatful for the help that they
> gave us in the early days promoting our dogism in holland, belgium,
> and the more understanding countries that weren't totally hypnotized
> by hardcore, but one day, some arsehole (danny) informed us that he
> had melted 500 of the EP because he "didn't have the shelf space".
> He then went on to call me a "Cold Bastard" when I had the audacity
> to ask for our money back.
>
> We were wiped out financially, and couldn't afford to repress.
>
> Luckily help (of sorts) was at hand in the form of Wayne Archbold. A
> DJ friend (mark broom) introduced us to him. He was full of
> enthusiasm for our sound, and said that he was starting up his own
> label called GPR. He was, and is, a likable character who has been
> around in dance music since the beginning. We pitched our tent next
> to his, and started work on our next EP for him, the "Parallel
> Squelch" EP. Amazingly, this sold 7000 copies. We were literally
> "over the moon".
>
> Warp and R&S Records also became interested in us at this point.
> Renatt paid for us to use his "techno island" studio for a week.
> Amazed at the sheer amount of equipment available, and the smooth
> crisp sound, we produced some of our most poignant tracks there.
> With much magnitude renatt let us keep the tracks to fulfill our
> recording comittment with GPR, possibly with the view of "picking us
> up" later, but if so, he never did. I would like to express many
> thanks to Renatt and Sabine for their generosity. The tracks saw
> light of day on our "Vantool" EP, and more recently on the GPR
> "Parallel Compilation Album".
>
> Sadly, the germs of the split manifested while working in Belgium.
> Ed and Andy wanted to work on light jazzy material, and ken wanted
> to start writing "things that mattered". At that point, there was
> still room to accomodate all of our styles within "The Black Dog"
> provided no one's ego got too large.
>
> Sadly, the situation got worse. Wayne being a small label, couldn't
> afford to pay large advances, and the little we got didn't go very
> far between the three of us and our equipment needs. All of us had
> to get part time jobs. It was a horrible period. Ed and Andy ended
> up virtually giving their best material away to every leech with a
> label just to pay the rent. You still see those tracks touted round
> the "compilation album" circuit today...and there's nothing we can
> do about it. We don't see a penny from their sales.
>
> Wayne from GPR introduced us to Muff Winwood from Sony (he was Led
> Zeppelins manager for 12 years, and we had big respect for him) with
> a view to Sony helping us out with distribution, or maybe even a
> "full on" deal. Sadly, try as we might, we couldn't convince him,
> and he went off to sign "SunScreem" instead.
>
> We recorded the "Temple of Transparent Balls" album for GPR.
> Originally, we were going to call it "The temple of transparent
> walls" A reference to an inscription which had purportedly been
> found on a shard of phoenician pottery well before the invention of
> glass. Anyway, being severely disillusioned with the music industry,
> we changed the "Walls" to "Balls", a miracle even jesus would be
> proud of. The ToTB is in fact, yep, you guessed it, SONY HQ.
>
> This was to be our last project with GPR, our commitment fulfilled.
> Those nice people at Warp records take care of us after that, and
> released "Bytes" our first album on the concept tip. Receiving the
> royalty cheque was nice. Getting paid at last after 4 years made it
> worth it. A lot of people obviously bought the album and liked it.
> Thanks to them for that. We paid back what we had borrowed from
> people to live, and blew the rest on equipment for the new sound
> that we had in mind. And none on drugs, no. :)
>
> "Spanners" you will probably have heard, ken is busy on new
> material, and as ever, reading books. The rest has probably already
> been written about, so this is where this part of the histories
> ends. Thankyou for reading.
>
> Peace.
--
|| [CiM]
|| s.walley@uea.ac.uk
||
http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/~u9323899/