“OK, now we’re diggin’ into the archives!” writes Rockin’ Dog Dave Ellison of “Bye Bye Bye,” the latest stellar Dogs single and earliest Dogs recording to join our hit parade.
“This is from the historic Rockin’ Dogs San Marcos Sessions, featuring the earlier lineup of Sam Wilson on guitar/vocals; Dave Ellison on bass/vocals; Jim Meisland on guitar; and Scott Nichols (a k a Scott Slob) on drums.
“In 1982, we had a rented practice room in a metal building in San Marcos, which was owned by Vietnam vet auto mechanics. They used to work on cars in that building all night long. We used to practice until late at night, and they gradually grew tired of our racket and evicted us.
“Before then, however, we rented a mixer and some mics and recorded a demo of our set on a two-track home reel-to-reel deck. We were unable to overdub or mix anything after recording, so we set the levels and went for it … doing one or two takes of all the songs in one weekend, with me as engineer. This was the real raw, live sound we had at that time … amps cranked up to 10, and no distortion boxes.
“In spite of a complete lack of knowledge of recording, I think the sound quality is better than we got at any recording studios we later used.
“I wrote this song, so it’s me singing with Sam on backup vocals. Heavy Heartbreakers influence on this one — like a lot of our songs. Jim Meisland takes the first lead, and Sam takes the second. This is right around the time we played at Headquarters (the show you posted the flyer for) … a good example of how we probably sounded that night.”
More Rockin’ Dogs MP3s:
I wouldn’t call the song stellar by any means… but I love Sam’s guitar sound. If we really wanted it to sound like we did live, we would have had to mix the guitars up much louder… haha.
Awesome, real rock ‘n’ roll. I’ll take gutsy and heartfelt over slick any day. I love the thought of a band raw enough to annoy a mechanic shop.
What Paul said … Sam’s guitar sounds possessed!
Dave E, you did an fantastic job engineering this…it ROCKS!!
Awesome DIY production with crisp, insane guitars…raucous…this is proof that great recordings arise more from spirit and inspiration than from a “correct” recording facility.
Great snotty vocals. Your voice was definitely underutilized in the Rockin’ Dogs, Dave.
Thanks, you guys…
The guys who ran the shop were older biker types who’d fought in Vietnam. They were nice to us in the beginning, but eventually made rules about what time we’d have to stop playing at night. If we ran over by a few minutes (as if we wore watches), they pound on the door and scream like lunatics at us. Whatever they were doing to help them work on cars all night probably had something to do with that.
I guess the equipment we rented to record was pretty good… I really didnt do much more than plug in the mics and set the levels. In those days, Sam used to set the controls on his amp like this: treble, 10 … bass, 0 … volume, 10… plus the rest of the band…and this was in a pretty small room with no baffles or anything… so everything was pretty much bleeding into every mic. I didnt know anything about compression or mics being out of phase, etc. but it came out fine for a demo tape.
This is great!
Was this ever released?
If not this stuff should be.
Kinda Berlin Bratts…..Jones.
I dig!
Glad you like it… The song Tropically Hot by The Berlin Brats was a big influence on us.
Dave: I love that song”Tropically Hot”. Yeah the guitar on “Bye Bye Bye” rang that bell for me.
I was in a band that covered & recorded Tropically Hot.
It’s a mouthful, lots of words…but very fun to sing.
So no release?
7″?
Wow, your band played Tropically Hot? It’s one of my favorite rock and roll songs ever. Im sure its hard to sing, especially if you try to get that weird yelping sound in your voice. I cant make out all the words, but I love the line “what I got for you, you cant buy in no store… ’cause I’ll bite your apple right down to your core” They have that and two other songs on their myspace page. One of them is Psychotic… the one they did in Up In Smoke. I actually rented that movie once just to see their 10 second clip… that was before youtube of course. What other songs did your band do?
But no, the Rockin’ Dogs never made a 45. Maybe someday soon there’ll be a Che Underground compilation though…
Dave: If ya want I will type out those Lryics for ya? Maybe even send ya burnt cd of our cover, I am proud how it turned out.. We never released that song, or the whole 2nd album we recorded for that matter.
So Psycho! I gotta check out that myspace page.
I still have not done a myspace page for myself, need to get on that.
That band of mine was all over the place. Most of the stuff we recorded we wrote, but we did cover live DMZ, 13 Floor Elevators, Q65, Outsiders, Litter, Gene Clark, MC5 and some some other shit.
Kind of as a joke we called our selves a proto punk revival band.
The band was called “Sonic Love Affair” but most people called the band “S.L.A”..
There is a myspace page for the band, but since we broke up i don’t think anyone still runs the space.
dylan… yeah I’d love to hear your band, especially your cover of that song. There’s a link to my myspace page on the blogroll… can you send me a message through that?
The other song on their page is called No Time For Romance… also pretty good. The song Psychotic was moved to the Mau Maus’ page for some reason (same singer) …but it’s obviously the Berlin Brats.
Dave, this is another great tune by the Dogs. I love your sound on this. You guys rocked!
Man, the Mau Mau were one of my favorite LA bands. I saw them a couple of times up there. I used to have a Mau Maus tshirt that I wore all the time. Hahaa I thought I was the only person on earth that had heard of them. Dylan, I’d dig hearing your band’s cover of the Berlin Brats.
Okay, you guys should all watch this video, I think it says it all and quite elegantly on the theme of recording technology (and plus it’s a great song by a (once) great band):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe5PaIa0SX4
Dave R: Hopefully Matt will read this and send me your email address and I will forward you the mp3. unless Dave has your address he can send it to you.
I would like you to hear more of my music also because you and I really dig alot of the same bands, plus you are in Africa, that is so cool.
Man, I just got Dylan’s tune. Those guys rock! I vote to include them as a related band and post that mp3 up here as well. Dylan, can we post it to the website? You guys sound like the NY Dolls.
I’ve been asking our young friend Dylan to give us just a little taste of his musical prowess for public consumption.
Dylan: Dave Rinck himself would like you to join the Che Underground playlist. Resistance is futile! 🙂
Oh, and btw — where’s my copy, dude? I want in on the party!
I agree--Dylan’s band rocks.
Check it out here:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=4492019
“Dirty Kids” is all about OB--the pier, Newport Avenue, even Buford’s . . .
I am blushing. LOL! Thanks!
I had a short stint in the bay area 2002-2004. I saw SLA and the vocalist looked familiar and I couldn’t place the “where” or “when”.
And now the pieces fit! Another ex-San Diegan! I saw more ex-san diegans in SF still living up there everytime i was in the city! Dylan, i’ve seen your band at Parkside and I salute you!
Tony: No shit! Wow! I wish we had talked.
That is my brother, Jim Meisland on Guitar. I was 10 yrs old when he was doing this stuff….. He’d love to see this…
Hello Roseann… Welcome! I don’t know if I ever knew that Jim had a sister. That’s him playing guitar on this song (the guitar on the left side)… we recorded the other three songs after he left the band, but I think he filled in playing bass on those.
Let him know about this site if you can…. It would be great to hear from him.
Hey Dave,
Jimmy was a good musician, who I felt contributed greatly towards giving “The Rockin’ Dogs” that rich wild sound. If I remember correctly he played a dark brown Ibanez guitar. Thanks for posting the links to “The Rockin’ Dogs” mp3’s… hey would you ever consider releasing a “Rockin’ Dogs” retrospective? My personal favorite “Rockin’ Dogs” songs are “Red Blue Dress” and “Candy Rock” It’s fun to remember back on those days…yourself, Sam, Jimmy Meisland and Scotty Nichols (AKA Scott L*#) certainly did make some great music. I’m glad that I was able to see so many of your practices at the storage unit. The time “The Rockin’ Dogs” played at The Headqua(r)ters was a memorable show… so was the show at Saigon Palace. Could possibly that blurred photo of your band taken from the side angle be from the Saigon Palace show? That sure was a funky place, with strange mirrored walls and ceilings… and that wonderful scent of being in a tropical paradise, oh yes!… Rock ‘N’ Stroll SD man!
Hey, Jim lives in the middle of no where in Iowa. He wanted me to give you his number. He wanted to get a recording of the old stuff. Is that okay?…. He is still jamming and making music…He is still awesome.
Let me know.
Roseann… if you can send Jim’s number to: cheunderground@gmail.com
and ask Matthew (the creator of this site) to pass it along to me, that would be awesome.
John, you’re really good at remembering details (like what kind of guitar someone played). Hopefully there will eventually be a good compilation available of the Che Underground bands.