Words & photos by Jim Pilling.
Despite the name strangely reminding us of our Latin classes at school – wasn’t there always an image of a dead dog in the textbooks? And a phrase that we still remember to this day: ‘Caecilius est morte’ (the character’s father, not the dog). No? Just us? Ok, we digress… Anyway when Dog Is Dead took to the stage at Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen last week there were enough mutterings of ‘talent show band’ and ‘rising stars’ from the band for us to be able justify an opinion either way, and to leave our Latin lessons far behind us. They thanked the fans in the fairly well packed room for coming down and told us how they’d played the same venue numerous times, but only to a handful of people. The boys have stepped up a notch or two then. A full room was praise indeed, and testament to how far Dog Is Dead have come. A few hours earlier we sat across the table from Rob (Dog Is Dead’s singer) and Trev (their ginger ‘fro rocking bassist/saxophonist) and had a little chinwag before the gig.
“This was a school talent show band when it began, it wasn’t even a band,” Rob explained (ah ha, so perhaps they also studied Latin? But we won’t deviate from the conversation in hand). “We needed a quick name for the programme, so we came up with this little thing that was a bit of a private joke at the time, but people seemed to enjoy it. It’s definitely our career now though, we’re totally dedicated to it. We had a little trial period that was like a gap year, but we never had any plans to go to university, so it was like – if it fails we’re totally fucked, and if it doesn’t we’ll carry on giving it gap years. It’s gradually become our life but maintaining that fun part of it is great.”
So it’s spanners to the contingency plans for the moment, and on with the fun! Rob pondered what he’d be doing if he wasn’t in a band, “I’d like to have done something in music, just clutching at whatever I could get… I never really think I’m going to fail; I have this stupid mentality where I don’t have any backup plans and it seems to have served me well. But as you become more involved and it ends up taking over your life, the pressure mounts because if you lose it you’re losing more the bigger it gets.” The gravity of the opportunity that these five lads from Nottingham have, is clearly not lost on them, but Rob reassured us that they weren’t letting it get the better of them quite yet. “We’re just 5 quite silly guys doing something quite serious.”
This led on nicely to what Trev had to tell us about their tour rituals. “We do this thing sometimes on tour if we’re not going out,” he began. “We go to the hotel room and all pile in and have a few drinks, put on this programme called the Hill Street Blues (an ‘80s US police drama), mute it and dub over the voices. Anyway, we found it really funny and ended up getting a signed picture of the main character – he was our little mascot, we took him on tour and cellotaped him to the front of the keyboard during shows.”
So where is he now, the mysterious sixth member of the band? Rob set the record straight, “Well, it got a bit weird; he was getting his own rounds of applause.” There was, before we left, just one more thing we had to be clear about (and no, it wasn’t Latin). You see; if Dog Is Dead were called ‘Cat Is Dead’, then it would be fair to assume, as we all know, that curiosity had killed the cat. So what was it that killed the dog? Trev told us it was a curious incident in the night (you’ll have to read the book to find out what the incident was…), but Rob had his own theory…
“Smallpox. It was smallpox – that stuff’s deadly!” Ok, enough said. With that all cleared up, a conversation about the difference between smallpox and chickenpox ensued, and at that point we decided to call it a day, popped home for tea, then returned to watch the lads put on their most triumphant show in the area to date. If you like their sounds, you won’t be disappointed by their live show. It can be a bit of an onslaught of harmonies at times – they really belt them out, but underneath it all are tender and well sculpted songs delivered with all the youthful energy and passion that they’ve been written with.
To check out their website [click here]
