The Ties Of The Bulldog Breed

“The nature of the universe probably depends heavily on who is the actual protagonist. Lately I've been suspecting it's one of my cats.”― Wil McCarthy

In the dark world of the boring record collector, there exists a language that only few know…a bootling, if you will, made to communicate music styles and compare sounds of bands that few have heard of, that fewer really know, that even fewer care about.  While always attempting to side-step the pitfall clichés of the record collector, I cannot avoid them…for I am and have always been one.  And with that, I start this newsletter with a revelation: Holy crap--T2 was the follow up band for some of the main members of Bulldog Breed! Amazing!

So how did this great, super-niched epiphany occur? It started with my digging up the first T2 record, It'll All Work Out In Boomland, finding it in a mixed-up box of records in the basement (I spend a lot of solitary time down there pondering just what to do with all the vinyl I have no room for in the family living areas above). T2 was one of those early 70s proto-heavy rock bands…with tastes of post-hippy-death psychedelia…who shared dank London stages with Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Zior (more bootling). Their debut record is a fantastic example of the genre, with standout track No More White Horses showcasing the kind of guitar riff that would find its way into SO many heavy metal bands to come (all 8+ minutes is a beautiful trip).

The T2 record stayed on the turntable for a few days, playing and replaying it enough for me to pull up their discogs page to see if there was any other release worth searching out. For those who don’t know, discogs is a flawed but best-in-show record selling website that by its nature has collected the information about most of the records it sells and links various members of bands to their other bands. And it was on the T2 website that I realized that two members of T2 were in the UK psych band Bulldog Breed. I knew Bulldog Breed from their record Made In England that came out in ‘69. While I agree with Richie Unterberger’s Allmusic review that the record is very flawed, it has some classic tracks of the period like Paper Man, I Flew and Eileen's Haberdashery Store (which I think is a foreshadowing of the ‘90s band The Strapping Fieldhands [more bootling]). But what I did not know is that Bulldog Breed came out of another band called Please which came from another band Neon Pearl…all mostly featuring the same T2 rhythm section Peter Dunton on drums (who also played guitar and keyboards) and Bernard Jinks on bass.

The discovery led to a late night of deep internet searching and listening to these bands that were completely new to me. It continually amazes me that after all of this time of digging deep into the psychedelic musical idiom, that there are still treasures to uncover. Many treasures.

Neon Pearl

The story starts with our heroes Dunton and Jinks going to Germany in 1967 after forming Neon Pearl and securing a club residency there. Their sound was a wondering, dark forest brown and green paisley one, filled with jamming guitar interplay, harmonium insights from guitarist Nick Spenser and meandering melodies, that can be heard from the recordings unearthed in recent years. After playing around the country, not making too much headway, they moved the band back to England where they unsuccessfully tried and make a go of it, eventually morphing into the first incarnation of Please with Adrian Gurvitz on guitar. Neither band had any commercial releases. Gurvitz went off to form hard psych outfit The Gun (whose first record is a killer) and Dunton did a stint with ex-In-Sect band The Flies, a more poppy “in-sound” combo, writing and playing on some classic Mercybeat recordings that actually got released, including the killer Magic Train, before leaving to reform Please with Jinks, Flies vocalist Robin Hunt and Neon Pearl guitarist Rod Harrison. Dunton double-duties on drums and keyboards in this version of Please, with a sound that is tighter than Neon Pearl, more saucy with the organ playing a lead voice to Hunt’s vocals. This incarnation actually recorded a lot of material, including an early version of No More White Horses, almost releasing a single on United Artists, We Aim To Please (a groovy psych number). You can hear most of their recordings on three recently released records, 1968-1969, Circus Days and Seeing Stars. Still without finding an audience, Dunton again left Please to join Gurvitz in forming The Gun while the rest of the band formed The Bulldog Breed (just to reunite with Jinks later, with Keith Cross¹, in T2). Confused? Well…I was just enough of a deep diving music crazed geek to painstakingly draw-up a family tree of all of these bands (see at the bottom of the newsletter).

Bulldog Breed

What does this all mean? For most people, absolutely nothing (and thanks for reading). But for me…and the friends I have since texted with: a new super small frontier of unheard sound has emerged—a black hole on the tip of a pin which has sucked in a gaggle of undiscoveries from a musical era that I love. I am not the only one who has championed this music over the years…there are other psychedelic journeyers who have found and written about these groups. Yet, while much of the music from these bands has been issued over the past decade or so, it is still obscure enough to be only known by a few (much of it not on the streamers)…to be relegated to the bootling language of the record collector. It is a story of a forgotten music scene of a group of players that flowed in and out of each others’ musical lives during one of the biggest periods of musical exploration. Within the scene there is an even more compelling story of two inspired musicians, a drummer (and guitarist/keyboardist) and a bass player, who for three or four years formed band after band, each with a vision that played off the sounds of their day, with their own unique progressive style, evolving, trying to break through the noise of all the other players and bands around town…which they did end up doing with their most inspired band (T2’s first record charted in London), even if for mere moments (which was hampered by a major record manufacturing snafu), even if obscured by the blow-out successes of the bands that came up around them: Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Cream and the other great drum/bass team, Fleetwood Mac.

T2

The world of music is littered with forgotten stories of such musicians, sometimes uncovered later to acclaim if their music was recorded and preserved. Their legacy is left in the hands of the record collector…the deep diver…the holder of the ultimate minutiae of musical knowledge and their friends of that same tribe and language. With the Internet, there is a tool for discovery and promotion of the rarest tracks of bygone days and the ability to share them widely, sometimes pushing through to even bigger audiences. Remember, The Velvet Underground sold less than 2000 initial copies of their first record…Big Star less of their debut. Both bands now sit as some of the most influential and revered in history. There is always room for the next 50+ year overnight success.

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Introducing Gravel Springs

In surprising personal news, this past week included the announcement of a drony, ambient record Luther Dickinson and I have been making these past 5 years. Our band is called Gravel Springs (the street Otha Turner lived on) and the record will be out on October 25th. I will write more about it around the record release, but until then the first single, Regal Scotch Glass Blues, has dropped…with a video! Very proud of this.

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Just What Is The Mars Institute?

My friend Harmon Shragge is circling the two American continents by boat. He is writing extensively about the journey…right now in the northern northern parts of the world…and it is FASCINATING to get to see the Islands…the small towns….through his eyes. I recommend his blog about his trip…especially these weeks in glacier country. They recently landed on Devon Island which, in Harmon’s words, is “the largest uninhabited island on Earth” and “presents the single largest continuous area of barren rocky polar desert on Earth.” To quote Harmon’s fellow sailor Randall, “The topography (of Devon) is so similar to Mars…that Nasa has established a Mars training program” on the island which is called…yes…The Mars Institute. (UPDATE: The Mars Institute’s website stopped working for some strange reason. Click here to check out another that discusses the work.)

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Wilson Pickett, The Gentrys, James Carr among Memphis Music Hall of Fame's class of 2024

Hard to believe that Wilson Picket is JUST getting into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame. Those Atlantic Records he released are all classics…help him be wisped in the same breath as Otis Redding. Spooner Oldham, who played organ on Picket’s records including Mustang Sally and (gulp) the great When A Man Loves A Woman (whoa…can you imagine having that one as bragging rights) when he was kicking around Muscle Shoals is also getting one. Oldham was a songwriter too, who worked with Dan Penn who co-wrote one of the greatest songs of all-time, At The Dark End Of The Street, sung iconically by James Carr—Carr is also getting inducted. Talk about a great music scene…

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Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux review – savage with a sensitive side

“Gauguin’s wild 1888 visit to Arles came to an end when Van Gogh hurled an absinthe glass at him — then came at him with a razor...”

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The Most Valuable Releases Sold on Discogs in August 2024

I mean…LEAF HOUND! Damn! Growers Of Mushroom! Pretty damn good early 70s heavy rock. For $8100? Nah….but it is one of those that I would be fine owning!! The third most expensive LP, The Sahib Shihab and the Danish Radio Group….I feel like I just saw that one recently. Given it sold for $5000+, I racked my brain little to figure it out where…is it in a local bin for $1? With that kind of money being thrown around, Little Phil and the Night Shadows seems almost doable for $3000+…and then you wake up and realize that ain’t a thing at all. Nirvana…Misfits…Eric Dolphy…Metallica. Plenty of vinyl you can buy for a hell of a lot of green…

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Five Minutes with the Coppola Siblings at Villa Zegna

“…the tradition in art is the sort of master-apprentice relationship. So, some renaissance painter that has an apprentice come and clean his brushes or whatever, that process of doing menial things. Interestingly, the master gets an incredible boost from the being exposed to youth…that tradition in art, filmmaking, painting, whatever it may be, of the older generations and the younger generations feeding off each other.” 

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2024 National Book Awards Longlist for Fiction

No matter how much one reads…there is still so so so much more. So much greatness out there…

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Omega

By: Leon Weinmann

You were dreaming the end of the world again,
fluttering—the myriad blackbirds, a living smoke

spiraling through dark sun over Patmos,
and this time, waking, you were convinced

that art is the purest form of venery, a coupling
of cruelty with want, there, in those shambles, the crux

where meaning bleeds and is carved into its form, worlds
end, the word, trapped in the mouth, catches

a world already dead, the shutter, blind
to us now, captures only past, just as

in music the echo follows what it should precede, and how
lastly, even today this crowded street could end, its air

palpitant for the last time with all its gold and hectoring
flies, shit and meat, the intimate smells,

all the familiar barking of blood and trade,
and all you could say about it is that it was.

For days after, you could not pray, fearing God’s
name on your tongue would swallow him,

dead in the pit of your knowing,
the words in your skull arrows piercing

you in silence, dumb-show martyr,
and you wept, knowing yet not knowing

what to do, and that, you realized, was despair.
Then one day, when even the memory of hope had left, you stood

in the empty square, watching the broken fountains
drown in leaves, the ruined houses smoke,

and you did the only thing there was to do,
for you, for all of us: begin again, again,

gathering bravely in your fist the chaff,
the dry burnt words to measure absence.

1. My friend Geoffrey Weiss reminded me of the killer record Keith Cross was a part of post-T2: Board Civilians by Keith Cross & Peter Ross