Whats been happening over the last few years?

An Introduction
 
Its pretty strange coming back to this site and bringing it up to date and quite a lot has happend in the last 3- 4 years. Take a seat it may take a minute or two.

First off an apology to anyone who has visited the site knowing we were playing somewhere, trying to find out what was going on only to find it 'stuck' in 2002! I must confess I was a bit embarassed every time I saw the ticker across the bottom on the screen proclaiming out next gig was at The Air Balloon in Dec 2001, but it has taken until now and a forthcoming gig at The Rising Sun in Reading before I have finally been shamed into action. The reason?- simple - their web master offered to link to this site from our entry on the site's 'Whats On' page, so I had to do something!

Incidently the gig at The Air Balloon was not particularly memorable, we had to use the house PA which unsettled the usual routine, the pub probably expected us to bring a big following, while we expected the pub to have a good regular audience and on the night the crowd was small but enthusiastic. The pub was once the premier pub rock venue in Portsmouth but sadly was in decline when we played there. I'm told it was torched a few months ago but can't be pulled down as it's a listed building, and nobody is prepared to renovate it. They could not even get that right!

Personnel Changes
 
There have been one or two since Richard left. First up Sukh took over a Lead Guitarist and (again its odd writing this just weeks after he has emigrated to the States) did a brilliant job for over three years. His flashier style was a marked contrast to Richards more laid back approach and luckily he picked up the set quite quickly. Gigs at The Royal Oak came and went, the set evolved slowly but continued to feature songs for Val with Geoff taking the mike on numbers like White Wedding and Chasey.

The central focus of the group was to change again at the end of 2002 when Val decided to leave the Dogs. After a lot of discussion we decided to look for a male lead vocalist, and fortunately we didn't have far to look as one of Geoff's work contacts, Nigel Dams, promptly joined in January. For the next four months the group worked hard on reconstructing the set and in May of that year we returned in triumph to the stage of the Royal Oak. However more changes were just around the corner when Nigel announced that he was going to have to leave due to commitments elsewhere, and so the search for a vocalist started once more.

Step up Jules Cracknell.

At the time we placed an ad on MusicianWeb, Jules' former band Blind Bend were going into meltdown and he was looking to move on. At the auditions he was astonishing and it was a no brainer when it came to choose the next lead vocalist. By the time Jules was up to speed towards the end of the year we had only managed 4 gigs in 12 months but had essentially created an entirely new set. 2003 was rounded off by a wonderful gig at The Intercontinental on Park Lane playing to 400 of Jules' workmates at their Christmas bash. A fiendish plot to get Geoff to play Quo's Caroline succeeded brilliantly (Geoff swore he would stop playing if he ever played a Quo number) as the group complete with Rossi and Ozzy style wigs coasted through the song.

The path between "then" and "now" had one more personnel twist as Sukh, who was becoming more dissillusioned at work and was planning to emigrate to a new life in Florida, announced his intentions to leave to a stunned group early in 2004. It took until October 2004 for Sukh to get his visa and in the intervening months Sukh helped us find a superb replacement, Tony Dallison, and between them they overhauled several of the guitar parts to accomodate twin lead guitar parts. Tony made a good friend of Sukh in the short time they played together and was as sorry as the rest of us to see him finally leave for the States.


Tony has really made the lead guitar spot his own in the short time he has been 'solo' and already has a handful of gigs with the Dogs to his name already.


The Dogs are back, and in truth we've never been away, you've been warned!

Richard is off!
 
Richard is finally making the move to France he has been planning for some while. He played his last gig with DDA at the Royal Oak in November 2000, but instead of leaving the rest of the group in the lurch, he has been a regular at rehearsals while Sukh has been learning the set. Over these months Richard's consumption of wine gums has been in inverse proportion to the amount of guitar playing he has been doing. When he reached two quarter pound bags in one evening, we all knew Sukh was ready for the big time. In recent weeks Richard has been using the Fostex 8 track to record some of the set, resulting in an interesting recording of 'Chasey Laine' making it onto Mini Disc.

Colin gets some new toys!
 
Colin Burnes has often complained about the on stage sound he hears when the Dogs are playing live. It is true that as a drummer he didn't get the foldback he deserved, but now the Dogs PA system has been enhanced with the addition of some stand mounted JBL Control monitors, (ain't their speaker brackets expensive) and a wonderful Cyrus amplifier.  Colin now gets the best monitor sound of the whole group - it just shows how caring we are. We did toy with the idea of in ear monitors but when Richard tested them out he felt a little isolated from his guitar sound when he was using them, and so we have resisted the temptation to get all wired up. Interestingly at the gig at the Admiral Drake, James (our #1 fan) pointed out that with all the PA effects units now being housed in an SKB rack, the area round the mixing desk is beginning to look like mission control for a shuttle launch.

The group's Y2K winter holiday schedule will take a large chunk out of the dates available in February and March as Paul and Richard are off to the Dolomites (Stella Ronde) and 2 weeks later Colin The Knob is off the the French Alps (Alp d'Huez). If Colin hadn't faffed about at when the Dolomite trip was being booked, they would have all been going to Italy, but by the time Colin had decided to take the whole family skiing, the chalet was full. Oh well.

Back to the Studio?
 
Over the last few months the set has been quite radically modified. In fact at the Royal Oak on November 19th we will quite probably play a set which does not feature any numbers from the demo tape. This has not gone unnoticed by the band, and Richard and Colin have been talking over the best ways to go about recording the new tape. When will it get recorded? Watch this space.

back to the kennel!