DOGGED BY DOGMA

Review #1

As my first review, I choose an album that hasn't been reviewed yet, also an album which even when it's none of my favorites, is a quite nice record and I truly believe deserves more attention by Prog Rock listeners. Canterbury Scene, among other Progressive Rock styles, had an explosion in the late sixties and early seventies having as their most "important" (I think a better adjective would be popular) exponents bands like SOFT MACHINE, GONG and CARAVAN, bands that made remarkable albums experimenting with a whole bunch of instruments and being able to create really interesting mixtures of Psychedelic Rock and free Jazz without losing the characteristic sound that Canterbury style has itself. "Dogged by dogma" was recorded the next decade.

Even when there is not too much info about this band online, we can find two well-known names of the Canterbury Scene of the seventies: Dave STEWART (ARZACHEL, EGG, KHAN, HATFIELD AND THE NORTH, NATIONAL HEALTH, BILL BRUFORD BAND) AND Pip PYLE (DELIVERY, KHAN, GONG, HATFIELD AND THE NORTH, NATIONAL HEALTH, SOFT HEAP, DAEVID ALLEN BAND) among with a bunch of non-so-well-known musicians under the leadership of a guitar/organ player named Charlie SUMMERS who is not very easy to find info about online but he managed to form this interesting project.

The album is filled with really short songs (at least short in Progressive Rock measures), not a lot of instrumental passages and not very hard or improvised musical structures, however, the harmony of the music makes this album quite enjoyable and not at all boring. Probably if the band would have recorded more albums they would have created a strong cult of followers and maybe even opened the doors for more eighties Canterbury bands in Europe, sadly this was their first and last work.

Nor a very famous record, neither a masterpiece but truly an album that, as I said before, deserves more Prog-Rock fans to discover it and enjoy its uniqueness. If you haven't heard it yet, don't think about it twice, you could get a nice surprise.

Mostly 4 minute long tunes with a very 80s style.

It's like the Canterbury Scene version of 80s Jethro Tull.

Listening To My Neighbours Singing is a good opener as it shows the core of this album, new wave with a somewhat strong Hatfield And The North tinting and somewhat lengthy bridges.

Sexist Conversation is similar to the previous track but it has a neat little instrumental in it where the upbeat song gets real calm which gives it some nice contrast. Then it kicks into some shouting and back to the song.

Social Workers is also like the previous track although it has more focus on the vocals which is a negative in my eyes as the chorus is one of the albums weaker ones.

Hollow Cost this one starts with a distorted organ (?) and deeper singing mixed lower in the track alongside random background chatter. It then heads into a tune more alike the others of the album. The organ riff returns for a second and the track head into a nice instrumental workout led by keyboard then just ends.

Make Sure Your Garage Is Large Enough opens with e piano which is replaced by synths for a second then e piano returns alongside female scatting. Soon the scatting becomes actual singing and it's quite pretty, goes well with the instruments. The synth returns again for a second and the scatting returns then is replaced by a jam with the synth on lead. Honestly the warble (?) synth shouldn't have been used, should have just used the epiano or guitar.

Stabbing Cats this one right away opens with a stilted rhythm and Charlie Summers talk singing over it. There's a synth solo for a bridge, the song returns and boom, it's done.

CS's this one starts calmly with flute (might be flageolet) then the track begins and all is well until the refrain for me. Too silly for me, the vocals on this one are somewhat ugly and the lyrics are pretty lame. "Custard Slices theeere not the same, Custard Slices theeere not the same!" This one ends with a cool Tom part.

Look Mum No Hands is the longest song at about six minutes. Part one opens with bell like synth then heads into a bass lead instrumental section. After a stop which makes this not feel like one song, part two begins with an atmosphere recalling the first parts opening. Then boom keyboard led section (this might be the beginning of part three). After a nicely done dual keyboards workout the song ends on some calming epiano.

A Large Lounge And Yawn is horrible, not even two minutes long but wow. half of it is just treated vocals shouting no. The second half is organ over quirky percussion. Not a good closer in my eyes.

Overall this is a fine release, I think fans of 80s music could really enjoy the album. Canterbury Sound Score 4/5

The 80s was a bizarre decade to say the least and a cruel one for many of the talented musicians who could make a living crafting complex and challenging music the decade prior. The 80s was all about the decade of towing the record company line and following certain trends especially in the world of progressive rock and former giants of prog like Yes, Genesis and PFM were transmogrified into dancing circus animals that performed the way their masters demanded. Not to say there weren't some interesting experiments that came out of the tension between artist and label but overall artists who went their own way were left to flounder in obscurity. But despite the guaranteed isolation into a world of their own making, many artists still sallied forth and released music that they wanted to make.

The Welsh multi-instrumentalist Charlie Summers was one such bucker of the trends and delivered a single slice of the 70s Canterbury Scene in 1982. His one-off project THE GHOULIES released the sole album DOGGED BY DOGMA which looked more to fertile musical expressions unleashed in the 1970s rather than the synthpop and heavy metal dominated 80s. After the fall of the once great prog empire, many musicians were scrambling to find something that appealed to them and in the process Summers snatched up some verifiable Canterbury royalty for his single contribution. While basically a solo project of Summers, THE GHOULIES featured 10 musicians and vocalists to join in on varying track including keyboardist Dave Stewart of Arzachel / Egg / Hatfield & the North / Khan / National Health fame and drummer Pip Pyle who served in Delivery, Khan, Gong, Hatfield & The North, National Health, Soft Heap and In Cahoots.

DOGGED BY DOGMA is as strange as the album title and misfitting band name. Even the album cover offers a head scratching moment of uncertainty. The 80s was not kind to the Canterbury Scene with Pip Pyle and Dave Stewart fresh out of the unsuccessful Rapid Eye Movement project and other artists calling it quits. THE GHOULIES was a strange fish swimming upstream in a torrential river of new wave, post-punk, glam metal and MTV hits but sometimes the show must go on even if no one is listening. DOGGED BY DOGMA is one of those strange albums that doesn't ignore the drum machine / synthpop 80s and incorporates some of the aspects of new wave and simpler music into the fabric of Canterbury jazz. The results are mixed with various tracks sounding more like classic Hatfield & The North and others taking on a strange syncopated reggae groove in the vein of the Talking Heads.

The album featured nine tracks with Summers himself playing guitar, organ, flageolet as well as offering his best Richard Sinclair vocal impersonation. The tracks are on the shorter side and the music offered that direct immediacy that the 80s demanded out of listeners but the tones, timbres and especially organ sounds are straight out of the heart of the Canterbury 70s. It's an odd mix of classic Canterbury tinged with a touch of humor only adhering to some of the modernities of the world of 1982. It is a bit frustrating in the fact that the tracks hint at venturing out into more expansive musical compositions but forcibly retreat in the fear of alienating the modern sensibilities of the younger short attention span gen x-ers. In short THE GHOULIES was very much a tug of war between total musical freedom harkening back to a different era while trying to fit in to the completely new paradigm shift.

Despite the support of John Peel and an attempt to modernize the Canterbury sounds of yore, THE GHOULIES was pretty much a flop and DOGGED BY DOGMA sold a miserable 3000 albums making this one of those one and done rarities that have more caught the attention of collectors of rare vinyl rather than lovers of all things Canterbury. It's an oddball album for sure but not without its charm. In some ways it sounds like Summers was trying to revive the Canterbury sound in a similar way neo-prog bands were reviving the symphonic sounds of classic Genesis and similarly minded bands but the album is a bit erratic and even a bit goofy at times which would not have been a good selling point. Personally i kinda like this one. It's unique and it's filled with a passionate dedication to a craft even if some of the fundamentals have been compromised in favor of a more trendy approach. Perhaps not the Canterbury creme de la creme but an interesting little oddball to have emerged in the decadent 80s.

3.5 rounded down