DOGGED BY DOGMA

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