Get Your Woofing Dog Off Me
Woofing Debut 🐶
An interesting and amusing debut single from The Jerks a band from West Yorkshire released in 1977 on their own label 'Underground Records'.
Note the bit of Iggy Pop 'I wanna be your dog' at about 1min 18 seconds cheekily woven into the track.
Pretty fast and basic D.I.Y. punk at its early best and also a nice debut from them obviously interesting other labels at the time.
Woofing Band & Formation
They were formed in West Yorkshire in 1976 and were:
- Simon Snakke - Vocals
- Charles Menotti (Charles Acid) - Bass
- Paul Gilbert - Guitar
- Andy Cave - Drums
Unlike many of the punk bands at the time most of them held onto their real names instead of traditional punk 'aliases'. They supported acts of the day such as XTC, Generation X and Sham 69 to name but a few and played at venues in London such as The Vortex Club.
Woofing Cool
They signed to another minor label 'Lightning Records' (later to become Laser Records) and released their second single 'Cool' in 1978. The label was brought up by a subsidiary of the major 'Warner Brothers' Label.
This track incorporating some synth work by Jonny Best and replacing original drummer with Kelvin Knight (aka Kelv Issue).
They were to release one more single in 1980 called 'Come Back Bogart' before they called it a day.
Woofing Opinion🐾
As so often small bands and labels got taken over by major labels and the sound and independence often became watered down to mainstream level in an attempt by the big players to 'push units' over individualism. So many times smaller bands and labels produced so much better quality material when they remained as smaller outfits, most times it seemed as soon as the major began to take over most bands folded due to the 'must push record sales to make money ethos' kicking in. In a way it is not surprising, after all the bands were often small, experimental as were the labels, they were always supposed to be a bit 'niche' and a bit 'unique'. However, I suspect the lure of fame and fortune drove a lot of bands and also the inability for the minor labels to compete drove the 'Major Labels' to succeed, but also sucked the life out of the drive the independence and D.I.Y. ethos in the music business, to some degree perhaps it has caused the music situation to be as unimaginative, bland, mainstream and watered down as it seems today, but hey! it's just an opinion😉
More Woofing Information & Thanks
Woofing Video Source Thanks
Woofing Photo Thanks
Photo by Jason Jarrach on Unsplash