Garbage Days Revisited #38: Slaughter & The Dogs - "Do It Dog Style" (1978)

"When you're gonna sink so low/That's when you wanna have another go..." - Slaughter & The Dogs - You're A Bore

I've often said in past editions of both Sounds From The Junkshop and Garbage Days Revisited that the best rock 'n' roll, whether it comes from the midwest diners of the '50s, the garages of the '60s, glam rock, punk rock or anything since, is something deeply primal. It's the sort of thing that makes you want to neck a beer, howl at the moon and headbang along until your neck snaps. And that's, to me, what makes Slaughter & The Dogs arguably the great unsung heroes of '77 punk.

The group were there right at the beginning of punk and were straight out of the gate with the Buzzcocks in the first wave of Manchester punk although as their name (half Bowie's Diamond Dogs and half Mick Ronson's Slaughter On Fifth Avenue) suggests, their roots actually lay in glam rock a couple of years earlier. Their first single Cranked Up Really High was released on infamous Manchester indie Rabid with none other than Martin Hannett producing. Similar to a northern Damned (right down to the group having a vampiric lead singer in Wayne Barrett) if they'd been influenced by the New York Dolls rather than the Stooges, it's a froth-gobbed 200mph stock car pile-up of a song and is still one of my favourite early punk singles ("Gettin' high on glue and cocaine/Jabbin' things into my veins/A Lucifer lord is holding my hand/I'm pushin' pills to a rock 'n' roll band!"). The group would sign to Decca that summer after being regular performers at the infamous Roxy club in Covent Garden over the first half of the year and put out a second single Where Have All The Bootboys Gone? in the autumn.

I'm gonna be honest, and it's not a popular opinion, but I've never been a particularly big fan of the Bootboys single - it's been cited as one of the first Oi! singles (and as I mentioned in the Angelic Upstarts GDR, I've always considered oi to be a bit of an unfairly maligned genre) but it just doesn't sound anything like the rest of the group's output - to my ears, the B-side You're A Bore is the far superior cut here with its Thunders style riff from Mick Rossi and Barrett's snarled vocals. It sums up the heady mix of glam rock and punk snottiness that informed a lot of the band's best stuff and is pretty much an essential listen.

The group would put out a couple of further singles (including a great punked up cover of the old bubblegum pop classic Quick Joey Small) before Do It Dog Style, their debut album, surfaced in early 1978. I'd argue that it's one of the first proper glam-punk crossover albums - yes, it's got the scuzzy energy of punk but there's a gleeful Dollsy sloppiness to it especially Mick Rossi's guitar style - it's telling that the other two covers on here are of the Dolls' Who Are The Mystery Girls? (the group also had a B-side called Johnny T just to really ram the point home!) and the Velvet Underground's Waiting For The Man.

It's the originals that make up the best moments on this album though - the gloriously unhinged Victims Of The Vampire and the breakneck Boston Babies are two absolute 24 carat glam-punk classics and they even manage to carry off a ballad in some style with Since You Went Away (though being a bunch of Dolls devotees they can't help but speed it up and whack a guitar solo on the outro!). All in all, it's a great effort, a real lost '77 classic. Barrett and Rossi are both on superb OTT form throughout while the rhythm section of Zip Bates and Mad Muffet keep things tight at the back to ensure the whole thing doesn't fall apart under the weight of its own exuberance.

Unfortunately the good times wouldn't last for S&TD - none of the singles or the album charted and by mid-'78, the group would have been dropped by Decca. Soon afterwards, Wayne Barrett left to go and live in Spain and the group were no more. The remaining members would attempt to carry on under a variety of guises including changing their name to the Studio Sweethearts (for the power pop single It Isn't Me) and everyone from Billy Duffy to Morrissey passing through the band at various points. Barrett would eventually return in late '79 with the group becoming Slaughter & The Dogs once again but he'd leave once more after one double A-side which coupled a cover of the old Motown classic You're Ready Now with a studio take of the old live Roxy favourite Runaway.

Rossi and Bates would eventually put a new line-up together in 1980, shortening the band name to Slaughter (not to be confused with the ultra-histrionic hair metal group of the same name from a decade or so later), bringing in ex-Eater drummer Phil Rowland and ex-Nosebleeds singer Ed Garrity (aka Ed Banger) for a second album Bite Back. It's a much more straightforward rock album than Do It Dog Style but it's still got a good few good 'uns on it such as the pounding opener Now I Know, the Stooges-esque Hell In New York and the Springsteen style tale of deals gone wrong East Side Of Town. Definitely worth a curiosity listen.

Again though, this line-up wouldn't last and by 1981, Slaughter would be no more with Rossi briefly going on to work with former Heavy Metal Kids singer and Auf Wiedersehn Pet star Gary Holton. Barrett and Rossi would reform the group in the early '90s and even managed three albums in 1991's Shocking, 2001's Beware Of and 2016's Vicious (the latter probably being the pick). Unfortunately, a couple of years ago, the Barrett/Rossi partnership came to a very messy end with the former firing the latter and posting a very angry rant on Facebook about how frustrated he'd got with the group in recent years. Unfortunately I don't think anyone came out of the incident well - it's never a good look to wash your dirty laundry in public. Barrett is now touring with his own Slaughter & The Dogs line-up while Rossi has reunited the Bite Back line-up headed up by Garrity who is now known as Edweena.

It's a real shame the whole situation between Wayne Barrett and Mick Rossi deteriorated to the extent that it has but suffice to say that if either of the current two line-ups play Leeds or Bradford that I'd definitely be interested in going down to give them a listen as they're a group who unbelievably I've still never seen live (the two years I went to Wasted Festival in Morecambe they weren't on the bill). Either way, all of those involved can hold their heads up high at Do It Dog Style which, as I've said earlier, is one of the great lost punk classics of the '77 era and Bite Back isn't a bad effort either. It ain't big and it ain't clever but when it's as much fun as this, that doesn't really matter. Go out, give 'em a listen and get yerself bitten.