In the Dynamite Jet Saloon

On a recent trip to Minneapolis, I met up with an old friend.  Beers were opened, guitars were brought out, and my friend mentioned that he had a Dogs D'Amour album that he had found, which included a few songs from an album we played the bejesus out of in the summer of 1989 (cue Bryan Adams here) called ...In the Dynamite Jet Saloon.

If you couldn't tell by looking at the band's photos to the left, you might think this was some sort of hair metal band in the same vein as Poison, as the cover pretty much looks like "Look What the Cat Dragged In", only these guys aren't as pretty.

Click here and open up this album to listen to it in another browser.

When I got home, I went looking to see if I could actually buy that album, as the album my friend had was missing some of the songs I remembered and liked.  I was met with miserable failure, although it appears that lead singer, Tyla, made an up to date version of the album to celebrate the 25-year anniversary of it, with some different songs.  Unfortunately, Tyla sounds like he continued to smoke and drink over the past 25 years, and so, yeah, not the same, unfortunately.

There are some obvious blues/Rolling Stones elements to this album, but to me, I get more Faces influence out of some of the songs.  Around the same time, another band called the London Quireboys came out, and you can hear some similarities between them and the Dogs, but I think the Dogs are less-polished sounding than that first Quireboys album.  Overall, I'd say this is a 4/5 star album.  Some of the songs are basic hair metal, but others, I think, have stood the test of time well.

"Debauchery" is kind of a typical rock album opener.  I really like a lot of the lyrics on this album, as they are pretty romantic for the genre.  My favorite line from this song, "When the devil comes around to get you, your place is such a mess".  The first 4 songs on side one of the album are all pretty great, though.

The next song is "I Don't Want You to Go":



The third song also has a more polished video:



I guess I don't really know where I'm going with this. Mostly I just wanted to share this album with folks because I was surprised how much I like it still after all these years. I really like "The Last Bandit", "Sometimes", "Billy Two Rivers" and "Wait Until I'm Dead". I never really followed these guys after this. I sort of got into the whole grunge thing and then alternative country. But they probably cross into the same style of music Steve Earle was trying to make at the time. Check out how "Sometimes" shares the same feel as Earle's "Someday".

I dunno. What do you got?