If you look closely, you'll notice a new tab on the website, entitled "Music." It's not a general repository of clips meant to show snippets of songs the band does. Rather, we made the decision to start recording and releasing music just like a...well, what's the word? "Real?" "Normal?" "Original?" band would. In other words, yes, we get it - "but you're a cover band. Why record songs that already exist?"
Well, our first "single" - if you will - does NOT actually exist anywhere, except for in the Dogtones' universe. "The Dogtones 90s Mashup" is a unique celebration of songs from the 90s. If you want to split hairs, it's possible one or two might have actually been after the turn of the century. Personally, I choose to suspend my disbelief in that regard, so that I can charge blithely ahead with this concept, and not have to re-title the thing or explain it any more than I already do. Anyway, the 90s: ah yes, Bill Clinton, the EU, iMacs, the end of apartheid, the first Gulf War, Seattle, flannel, grunge, and...some other music too. We mostly focused on the "other" music for this little trip down memory lane.
Sometimes the mashups (or medleys) occur to us when we talk about songs we want to do. Often we'll talk about certain songs that have a bit of nostalgia, associated memory, or even kitsch factor, and realize that, while we'd love to play them, the joke might get old after a verse or so. Enter the mashup. The perfect tool to cram even more memories into an evening of music.
Cover bands are both blessed and cursed by the weight of history (wow that sounds important...bear with me, 'cause it's really not). Any time we play a song, we have the benefit of a possible historical, social, or personal association in the audience. "Everybody wants to Rule the World," in a vacuum, is just a pop song. Set against the mental backdrop of one's high school years (mine, for example), the song carries countless associations: personal, social, political, historical, all neatly wrapped up in a bright shiny shuffle. By the same token, we are often beholden to history, and attempting "new" things as a band, be they new songs, or new ideas can be harder to do in this context, whereas a "normal" (read: original) band is expected to re-invent the wheel. We like to try to do a little of both; repackaging old things in a new way is fun for us, and keeps this process interesting. It's a way of honoring the past while acknowledging the changes in the present and future.
My good friend Tony Starlight said it best: "I too look forward to the future, when I can relive the past once again."
The Dogtones 90s Mashup is available as a free download on the "Music" page. We hope you enjoy it. Request it at a show. Stay tuned for more recorded content here. We're working on it. Thank you!
