Hounds o' Hell

Prop comic book from The Lost Boys (1987).

Edit: please see my response to Hugh’s very crucial question in the comments. (I also shared it as a “note”.)

History:

Not much to say here. I’ve always loved dogs, even though I never had my own until my 40s. So making them the monster of the week, and demonic to boot, well, that’s going for the emotional jugular. Very playfully in this case, obviously. The various band members barking for the intro still makes me smile (as it was meant to) and Dave doing that high-pitched, tiny-dog yap right at the end of the intro still makes me burst out with laughter. On several occasions, as an opener to this song live, I’d chew up dog biscuits and spit them on the people in front of me, then throw the rest of dog biscuits out to the crowd further back. Believe it or not, folks loved it.

I suppose the rest of the historical stuff fits better in the sections below.

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Music:

This was basically our first attempt at “cow punk”. It’s kind of amazing to think that the 13-year-old Dave who wrote this would in about four years write the likes of “Stampede” and “It Came From Down South”. As with the surf songs on this album, the clean guitar tone is plain and without countrified effect. But switching back and forth between that and the distortion just keeps the album’s cartoonish punk fun going. It’s also possibly the most straightforward song musically on the album as it runs through its cycle of verse, pre-chorus, chorus three times and promptly ends.

I’m surprised to find that the album liner credits me with co-writing the music with Dave. I think I now recall writing that chorus and maybe a version of the verses. It sounds like the stuff I was writing back then. I’d come up with songs or parts of songs that I’d play very badly on an acoustic guitar and then hand the tune over to the band to play properly, and often to adorn, develop and alter. Here I suspect Dave added in the sort of psychobilly clean-toned strumming in the verse as I wouldn’t have been able to even haltingly play that. What I do remember is initially resisting the slowed-down tempo between verse and chorus. I wanted as many straightforwardly fast songs as possible but my brother wanted to constantly mix things up. I’m very glad he got his way. I usually couldn’t resist the sheer creativity of his songwriting. And, of course, Mike rounds out the pre-chorus with his flourish on bass.

Add to this that it gave me a chance to do my best (not great) Glenn Danzig/Joey Ramone singing for those bits and I was a happy front man. It ended up being a nice contrast to the verses sung in a more Dickies/Scary Tweezers register. The pronunciation of “hell” and “trail” in the chorus as “hey-o(l)” and “tray-o(l)” was more intentional silliness and catchy as (dog)shit. As were the little vocal additions (like on “Check-Out Girl”) such as the chorus’s echoed “barkin”/“again” and the one-off group shout of “here boy!” I’ll add here that it’s starting to strike me that my vocals often, as in this case, slam together the sincere and the sardonic. I feel like you can hear both laughter and “fangs of pain” in a lot of the vocal delivery. We really felt it all, and all at once.

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Lyrics:

Every time Jesus comes they're prowlin'
Then I'm on the run from their howlin'
Lickin' tongues and waggin' tails
soon become horrified wails

Pitbulls from the pit
What the devil's gotten into them?

Hounds o' hell
barkin'
On my trail
again

And that ain't no high pro glow
That's fur on fire from hell below
I'm pantin' and scratchin', hopin' day comes soon
Can't take another night to hear 'em howl at the moon

Sick, sick, sick! Fetch my bone
Why won't they leave me alone?

Hounds o' hell
barkin
On my trail
again

Why, oh why when i feel joy
do i always holler, "here boy!"
Lassie, Benji, Rin Tin Tin
are all possessed by ghouls again

Demon dogs on the Gravy Train
Blood red eyes and fangs of pain

Hounds o' hell
barkin'
On my trail
again

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“What all the barking’s about” might be more terrifying than you expect, especially if you watch this commercial.

Hey, hey, for once the Jesus goes right at the beginning rather than the end. I kind of don’t mind it here. It’s a quick simple reference that colors the rest of the song without overwhelming it. As I say, I loved dogs, so to turn their waggy, licky joy into horror was meaningful, and of course funny, to me (in a very simple way). As with the other sort of tortured lyrics on the album, I was genuinely expressing a torn psyche, a riven religious sensibility. With humor, as always. References to “high pro glow” and “Gravy Train” are still more TV influences, in this case commercials for dog food. I find this corny stuff uncomplicated and joyful. (And I’m fine with being the only one who does haha!)

I like too that “fur on fire from hell below” references the vampire mythos more than Christian cosmography (not that the two don’t overlap). In fact, one influence on this song is the hellhound scenes from the 1987 vampire film The Lost Boys. I’d actually forgotten that this involves a (prop) comic book (see image above). Turns out I spoke too soon when I said we were done with comics in the last post! Rad to be reminded that this song’s vampire adjacent. It doesn’t just come out of nowhere on the next album.

I seem to be half demon dog myself as I “pant” and “scratch” till the safety of daylight. And calling “here boy!” in the midst of “joy” suggests I’m not merely their victim, I’m complicit. This can, of course, express frustration toward a self-sabotaging tendency that is not strictly tied to religious backgrounds. The dog roll call is of famous TV & movie dogs of yore, the stuff of reruns in my childhood. In fact, the tragic nonhuman heroes of The Call of the Wild, Old Yeller, and Where the Red Fern Grows would’ve been the deep-heart dogs for me. Summoning instead these canine scions of whitebread USA and transforming them into demon dogs would’ve made intuitive, sarcastic sense. The song’s overt theme of spiritual struggle is counter-supplemented by more or less unconscious jabs against aspects of mainstream culture, from the status quo maintenance provided by fictitious animal friends to the marketing of dog food. (I’m not trying to read more into this very slight song than is warranted, but I do notice a whiff of this.)

It’s not really hard to imagine these beloved canines as hellhounds. Lassie could be howlin’ against this bright-eyed, whitebread shit. If you grant that there’s almost a darkness in Benji’s eyes, this poster could suggest Carrie meets Cujo. And it wouldn’t take much at all to turn The Return of Tin Tin Tin into a classic horror movie poster.

I still enjoy all three pre-chorus lyrics. They’re goofy but I like ‘em. And it kind of amazes me that Jesus just has the one brief appearance at the top of the song. Would that I would’ve done more of that, just artistically speaking, never mind in terms of theology. The sole Bible verse I included in the liner notes was Philippians 3:2-3: “Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh.” Hm. I think I missed Paul’s point a bit. I certainly wasn’t referencing “Judaizers” or legalists in my dog imagery. But “dogs”, “mutilators of the flesh”, Paul being metal. I guess I couldn’t resist.

Anyhow, a fun, ridiculous, almost throwaway tune. I’ve had fun revisiting it. Curious if anyone is fond of this one, or hates it, or finds it inoffensively forgettable?

Should Mulberry Square Records reform to rerelease this album with “Hounds o’ Hell” tacked onto the tracklist?