The Best of Electric Velocipede

by John Klima

  The Dog Biscuit is probably the most important Dogrog component and the one that determined what type of music the dogs would play. The dog places its paw through a hole in the block and can play basic tunes by sliding the block up and down the neck of the guitar. Nigel didn’t realize it at the time but he had just revolutionized music.

  “The first song I taught the dog was “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog” by the Stooges. I stayed late at the office for a week with Tiny and we went over it and over it. But he caught on fast.”

  The guitar-playing dog went down well with not only Nigel’s son, but also with his boss at Gibson, John Peters, who was at the birthday party when Tiny’s musical prowess was unveiled.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” he says, speaking to me from New York, his excitement still sounding fresh over a decade later. “You have to understand nobody had seen anything like this before. A dog playing guitar? You’d be locked up in the nuthouse. But there it was right in front of us. That dog stood there and played that Stooges song all the way through. And with attitude too.”

  Peters was quick to see the potential of this new novelty where Thomas had not.

  “He saw it as a one-off. A kinda neat little trick. But I turned to Nigel and told him to get working on a prototype because I knew every kid in America would want one of these things.”

  The Paw Pick/Dog Biscuit sets were out for Christmas but it was only three months later when Thomas released his book, Teach Your Dog Guitar that sales really skyrocketed. That summer all over America children and adults pored over the step-by-step guide. Some bookstores reported irate customers demanding refunds but the majority showed perseverance and by September the phenomenon had attracted the attention of the mainstream media, looking to lighten its usually dour output. But after its few months in the sun it seemed to most people that it was just a cute trick and nothing else. Even three years later when the first records with dogs playing on them came out the public could just about muster up the interest to yawn. “How Much Is That Doggy In The Window,” “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “Hound Dog.” How many dog-related cover versions would the public buy? The answer was not many. But as is usually the case something was bubbling underground.

  “The big record labels were afraid of it,” says Paul Rose, who has been running Dogrog nights in London for the last two years, “they weren’t ready for the technology and didn’t know how to react to it. So their reaction was to dumb it down, turn it into a second-rate joke, make a quick buck. But Dogrog is a raw form and real creative people have seized it and made it their own far away from the dictates of the majors.”

  In a New York jaded with culture, a journalist jaded of everything walks into a bar. He’s just finished work; bored out of his mind he’s decided to go for a drink on the Lower East Side. He sits at the bar and orders a whiskey. As the bartender’s chatter begins to fade his ears tune in to the music coming from the back room. It sounds like a live band but more guttural a sound he couldn’t imagine.

  “Local boys?” he asks the bartender.

  “You could say that,” comes the cryptic reply, “it’s five dollars. Four if you have a dog with you.”

  Laughing at the wit of the barman he pays the five dollars and steps into his first Dogrog show.

  “I was amazed,” Brian O” Connor tells me,” I’d been to hardcore punk shows, metal shows, whatever-you-want-to-call-it shows but this was beyond that. There were about a hundred and fifty kids and about thirty dogs all packed into this tiny space. Dogs were running around in circles barking, dogs fighting, dogs having sex. Then there was the sound. The most incredibly raw music I’ve ever heard. The guitar shook you up, a pure animal sound, and the singer was doing things with his voice that a human just cannot do. And where’s the sound coming from? Three dogs onstage and a drummer. And then there was the smell. You know that doggy smell right? Yeah you know when you’re at a Dogrog show.”

  What he’d stumbled upon was an underground dog group who would come to define the term Dogrog and whose time playing obscure bring-your-own-dog gigs in bars on the Lower East Side seemed about to be over. A dog group like no other that had original material and no cheesy cover versions, that gigged constantly and had built up a small but loyal following, whose manager/trainer passionately believed that dog music could potentially become the biggest-selling music in America. That group was Neuter.

  “Neuter to me are the epitome of rock ‘n’ roll,” Lemmy of Motorhead tells me. “Everyone’s talking about Dogrog. There’s no Dogrog. It’s all rock ‘n’ roll and when it comes down to it no man can be more rock ‘n’ roll than a dog. He shits where he wants, fucks what he wants, bites who he wants. The day I saw Neuter I knew the human contribution to rock ‘n’ roll was over.”

  Clive Cousins, a New Yorker, formed Neuter in 2017. A customs dog trainer and lifelong music fan he claims to have had the idea for Dogrog long before the Gibson products hit the shelves. He sits across from me in his living room in New Jersey in a smart suit puffing a cigar, looking every inch the music mogul.

  “Music mongrel,” he corrects me, in the first of many dog-related puns he will inflict on me over the course of the interview.

  “Back then I was training customs dogs. We have to train them to work in noisy environments. A young Labrador called Toddy was placed with me. Being a music fan I liked to take my dogs to rock concerts for noise training. One of the first I took him to was Metallica at the HSBS Arena in New York. Toddy didn’t even flinch. You could tell he actually enjoyed it. That put the thought in my head. Of course when he was rejected as a customs dog because of his temperament I decided to hang onto him. Then a few months later when I saw the Paw Pick and Dog Biscuit set in a shop window I knew I had something.”

  He began training Toddy immediately and he drew up an outline for what he wanted the group to be. Funny cover versions were out. Most dog groups did “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog;” his group would do “Search and Destroy” or “TV Eye” if indeed they did a cover version at all. He wanted his group to have credibility. Driving around the kennels and shelters of New York looking for recruits to complete the group he came up with the name Neuter.

  “I’d heard people saying it at the shelters when they were showing me the dogs. Telling me that this one has been neutered, this one needs neutering ye know. It’s just one of them words the meaning of which would strike fear into man or dog. And that’s what I wanted my band to provoke. Fear and exhilaration.”

  His rounds of the shelters and kennels were to prove very fruitful. Whacker, an English Bull Terrier was about to be put down until Clive recognized his potential.

  “Yeah he’d bitten about four people at the shelter alone. They were gonna put him to sleep. I know some people, don’t wanna say too much but yeah I got him off.”

  Whacker was given the spot as front man (or dog) and the bass playing role fell to Scruff, a Kerry Blue discovered at the same shelter. Clive says the group seemed to gel almost instantly.

  “It’s just that one-in-a-million thing. The Beatles had it, The Clash had it, The Who had it and Neuter have it. Scruff had never seen a bass before but as soon as he entered the rehearsal room that was it. He bounded right up to it and started licking it like it was his favorite bone. He actually chose to be bass player. And teaching Whacker to sing was a joy. His range is unbelievable. The depth of emotion in this dog’s voice is incredible. He can sound tender on a song if you want him to but if you want him to sound pissed off he really sounds pissed off.”

  Eschewing Nigel Thomas’ training techniques altogether, Clive’s were based on his customs dog training experience; but to this day he remains tightlipped about the details. An old Alesis drum machine was used for rhythm and Clive set about teaching the dogs the rudiments of rock ‘n’ roll or, as it came to be known, Dogrog.

  “It was Whacker himself that came up with the name.” Clive explains, “I was trying to teach him to say ‘dog rock’ and that’s how it came out. He seemed to love say
ing that over and over so it just stuck.”

  Neuter played their first show in a bar in New Jersey three months after forming. No mean feat when you consider that their set contained ten original songs and only two cover versions. Originals such as “Distemper” and “Bite the Hand” set them apart from their canine peers and pointed to a way forward for the music.

  “The only contemparies Neuter had were these ex-show dogs onstage doing twee versions of ‘How Much Is That Doggy In The Window,’” says Brian O’Connor, “then along comes Neuter and it’s like rock ‘n’ roll rebellion all over again. Everyone who saw a Neuter show was either completely disgusted or completely blown away.”

  “The hardcore kids loved us,” says Clive. “The Lower East Side. That whole scene really took to us. We started the bring-your-dog thing. Them shows were crazy. Dogs running around getting to know each other, people dancing. Hardcore as a genre had become stale and it was a much-needed tonic. People had fun at shows again. Great times.”

  It was one such show at hardcore venue ABC No Rios that turned the media spotlight on this strange new subculture for all the wrong reasons. Neuter had just put the finishing touches to their debut album (simply titled Dogrog) and decided to play an all-ages, bring-your-own-dog show at the venue. Halfway during the set, a seemingly rabid Toddy abandoned his guitar and launched into the crowd, savagely attacking members of the audience.

  “I was bitten on the leg and arm,” Arnold Willis tells me, still a dedicated Neuter fan, “but it was a cool show. Neuter rule.”

  Clive managed to calm Toddy down enough to begin the fourth number, “Scratch in Peace,” but this time it was singer Whacker who bolted from the stage. Seven people received bites from Whacker before he attached himself to the leg of twelve-year-old Lindsay Evans.

  “He humped her leg, basically,” said an anonymous onlooker. “Members of the audience threw water on the dog to try to calm it down but by the time Clive managed to prize the dog off Lindsay was hysterical, her leg covered in blood and dog semen. It really was a crazy scene man.”

  “If it was any other dog it would be put down,” Mrs. Evans tells me from her home in Queens. “But because he’s famous he’s allowed to stroll around like nothing happened. The damage that dog has done to our little girl is irreversible.”

  “Oh please! It’s the complete opposite,” counters Clive. “I was walking through Central Park just last week and a dog tried to hump my leg. I shook it off and continued on my way. Did I start screaming about trauma? No. Am I campaigning to have the park closed down? No. Dogs get excited. It happens. But when it’s a famous dog in the realm of music people overreact. People like to condemn the music. Because it’s young people having fun. Because it’s seen as anti-establishment music. But I can’t talk on this too much, it’s in the hands of the lawyers now.”

  The furor surrounding the Rio’s gig gave the usual moral guardians a cause to get behind. One Catholic priest who based his sermon on the harmful effects of Dogrog claimed that Lucifer, having once taken the form of a serpent to try to tempt man from the right path, was now appearing as man’s best friend to subvert him from a godly life. Later he admitted never having heard the music.

  If he had listened to it he’d have heard a young group coming to realize the extent of its powers. Dogrog is a rock rennaisance every bit as vital as The Stooges, My Generation, and Never Mind the Bollocks. It was rumored that the guitar on the album was actually recorded by Sex Pistol Steve Jones, but at the time he was in Hollywood starring in a remake of the 1988 comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

  “I wish it was me on that record,” Jones says, “the guitar sound on that album is the best I’ve ever heard. Really raw. Like the old days ye know?”

  Whacker’s yelps and barks truly send a shiver up your spine. One minute he’s howling almost imploringly, the next he’s at your throat barking insolence in your face. Clive Cousins may not have invented the Paw Pick or Dog Biscuit but as producer on Dogrog he has defined the genre, raising the standard for what a dog group can achieve.

  The album entered the charts at number one and held the position for four weeks. For a recording made mostly by animals this was unprecedented. Neuter appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, Cream and all the major music publications. Imitation groups sprang up everywhere in the aftermath.

  “The copy dog groups,” puns Clive, “ah I don’t mind. It’s kinda flattering in a way.”

  So what next for Neuter? It’s been two years since Dogrog, how much longer do we have to wait? Clive shows me the artwork for the new album, but when it comes to the music he’s a little more cagey.

  “It’ll be worth the wait,” he assures me.

  The artwork is sure to spark controversy but Clive assures me the artwork and title were thought of way before the infamous Rio’s show. It’s entitled Neuter This and features a caricature of guitarist Toddy gesturing to his penis. Tasteless some would say?

  “Well we changed the cover from Whacker to Toddy so as to be sensitive to the girl Lindsay and her family but everything else. C’mon. Hey it’s rock ‘n’ roll what else can I say.”

  I ask Clive if he thinks the future of Dogrog might lie in a more experimental approach rather than the same old dog ‘n’ roll formula perfected by Neuter. I show him records by new art dog groups such as Poisoned Puppies and Dog Tags, and ask him whether this is the direction that the new Neuter material will take.

  “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” he quips, plainly offended at the suggestion.

  “But every dog has its day,” I counter, pointing at the records. Then the most disturbing thing happens. Clive Cousins barks at me . . .

  How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth

  Rachel Swirsky

  Part One—The Apocalypse of Trees

  During the first million years of its existence, mankind survived five apocalypses without succumbing to extinction. It endured the Apocalypse of Steel, the Apocalypse of Hydrogen, the Apocalypse of Serotonin, and both Apocalypses of Water, the second of which occurred despite certain contracts to the contrary. Mankind also survived the Apocalypse of Grease, which wasn’t a true apocalypse, although it wiped out nearly half of humanity by clogging the gears that ran the densely-packed underwater cities of Lor, but that’s a tale for another time.

  Humans laid the foundation for the sixth apocalypse in much the same way they’d triggered the previous ones. Having recovered their ambition after the Apocalypse of Serotonin and rebuilt their populations after the Apocalypse of Grease, they once again embarked on their species’ long-term goal to wreak as much havoc as possible on the environment through carelessness and boredom. This time, the trees protested. They devoured buildings, whipped wind into hurricanes between their branches, tangled men into their roots and devoured them as mulch. In retaliation, men chopped down trees, fire-bombed jungles, and released genetically engineered insects to devour tender shoots.

  The pitched battle decimated civilians on both sides, but eventually, infested and rootless, the trees overwhelmed their opposition. Mankind was forced to send its battered representatives to a sacred grove in the middle of the world’s oldest forest and beg for a treaty.

  Negotiations went slowly since the trees insisted on communicating through the pitches of the wind in their leaves, which astute linguists played back at 1,000 times normal speed in order to render them comprehensible to human ears. It took a day for a sentence, a week for a paragraph, a month for an entire stipulation.

  After ten years, a truce was completed. To demonstrate its significance, it was inked in blood drawn from human victims and printed on the pulped and flattened corpses of trees. The trees agreed to cease their increasing assaults and return forevermore to their previous quiescent vegetable state, in exchange for a single concession: mankind would henceforth sacrifice its genetic heritage and merge with animals to create a new, benevolent sentience with which to populate the globe.

  After the final signatur
es and root-imprints were applied to the treaty, the last thing the trees were heard to say before their leaves returned to being mere producers of chlorophyll was this: At least it should keep them busy for a millennium or two, fighting among themselves.

  Part Two—The Animals Who Lived as Men

  Mankind, as history had known it, was no more. The new hybrids wore bodies constructed like those of mythological beasts, a blend of human and animal features. They scattered into the world’s forests, deserts, jungles, and oceans, where they competed with unmixed animals for food and territory.

  If some ancient legends were to be believed, men were only returning to their ancient roots as dolphin and lizard, raven and grizzly bear. Other traditions would have been appalled that man had cast himself down from his place at the apex of the chain of being and been consigned to the lesser links below.

  Intellectuals became the whale men, who kept their faces, but lost their bodies for the streamlined shape of cetaceans. Their sentience blended with the intelligence already inhabiting those massive, blubbery forms. They indulged in abstract philosophy as they swam through the ocean depths in a silence created by the first absence of shipping lines in five hundred thousand years. Pilots and acrobats became glider men, acquiring huge eyes, wing flaps, and nocturnal habits which served them well as they arrowed from tree to tree in forests that echoed with their eerie, sonar calls. Eight-armed crab men spent their days skittering up and down beaches dancing for the gulls; spotted jaguar men skulked through forests; cold-blooded turtle men inched through years; flattened stingray men lurked on river bottoms, awaiting unwary travelers.

  For the first twenty thousand years, mankind peacefully coexisted in all its forms. After that, the buried genetic contribution of the human mind bubbled to the surface.

  “The treaty is an outgrown shell to be discarded,” young crab men gestured defiantly with their third and sixth arms. Crab matrons clacked their claws in outrage, but who could control the youth?