For most of my life, I rarely remembered my dreams. But over the past several years that has changed, so I get treated to nocturnal shows like last night.
The details are hazy, but it involved cereal icon Cap’n Crunch and a talking pig wearing a sweater. The two were in the mariner’s apartment discussing his missing dog when the place went up in flames.
I think everyone got out safely, but there was something suspicious about that pig and I wouldn’t rule out arson.
The dream also made me think of an album title by REO Speedwagon – The Earth, A Small Man, His Dog And A Chicken.
Growing up in the Midwest, REO Speedwagon was a radio fixture and never more so than in late 1980 when they released the album Hi Infidelity. The songs from that record sounded great on radio (which is fortunate, as they were always playing) and the band was a favorite to most of us in my junior high school.
Ten years later, as I was nearing college graduation, the record store where I worked received a couple of copies of REO’s The Earth, A Small Man, His Dog And A Chicken.
I was immersed in band’s like R.E.M. not REO, whom I hadn’t listened to for years. The album title, though, made an impression (even if I don’t think I ever heard the music).
Several years later, I was working in another, much larger record store. For most acts, we carried at least a token copy of each title in their catalog. On slow mornings, the Drunken Frenchman and I would browse through the bins, discussing various artists and albums.
One morning, there it was – The Earth, A Small Man, His Dog And A Chicken. The Frenchman was no fan of the band, but it became a recurring subject for us.
“It’s one of the most truthful album titles ever.”
“That man, though a bit portly, is, indeed, small.”
“There’s the Earth.”
“There is a dog and, here, a chicken.”
“Man that dog looks miserable.”
R.E.M. might well have been playing over the speakers in the store (it would have been around the time of New Adventures In Hi-Fi.
“Why would they put Sebastian Cabot on the cover, though?”
Thirty years ago, REO Speedwagon had one of the biggest albums in the country with Hi Infidelity and one of the most popular songs with Keep On Loving You.
Here are four other songs that I was hearing on the radio – often on Q102’s Top Ten at 10 – in March, 1981 as I indulged my fairly new interest in music…
Blondie – Rapture
from Autoamerican
Blondie was one of the first bands that I truly took to as I began to discover radio and, at the age of twelve or thirteen, the winsome Debbie Harry added an undeniable visual element to the appeal.
Following up on the massive success of the breezy, faux-reggae of The Tide Is High, Blondie offered up something quite different on their subsequent single. The chiming, hypnotic groove, metallic guitars, and Harry’s breathy vocals – my friend Will was convinced that the lyric “finger popping” was actually something more PG13 – made for an irresistible mix.
But the song also blew our young minds. It was our first exposure to hip-hop and as much as we were entranced by the rhymes regarding aliens dining on bars, Subarus, and human noggins, we were also baffled.
April Wine – Just Between You And Me
from The Nature Of The Beast
Rush, Triumph, Loverboy…and sometimes April Wine…the American Midwest loved Canadian rock bands in the early ’80s (at least this was the case in my part of the Midwest).
From the opening riff, Just Between You And Me makes me think of certain older kids in my hometown, usually notorious ne’er-do-wells, smoking cigarettes and hearing this song blaring from their Camaros.
Donnie Iris – Ah! Leah!
from Back On The Streets
I heard a lot of Donnie Iris while listening to local radio on family vacations to Western Pennsylvania (from where Iris rose to semi-prominence and still resides). At home, not so much.
Ah! Leah! did make it to radio in the Midwest, though. It was too monstrous to ignore. It’s a towering, glorious behemoth of a song. It thunders and shudders and Iris wails like a man possessed.
John Cougar – Ain’t Even Done With The Night
from Nothin’ Matters And What If It Did
Before he was John Mellencamp, saving American farms, and incessantly reminding television viewers that “this is our country,” he was simply John Cougar (or, as my friend Bosco dubbed him, Johnny Hoosier).
He’s arguably done better music since those early years, but Ain’t Even Done With The Night captures the restlessness and possibilities of late summer nights and is one song of his which I still never tire of hearing.
*it seemed appropriate – given the recent hullabaloo surrounding the good Cap’n – to repost this entry from March 9, 2009
Barely Awake In Frog Pajamas 
I was living in Rochester, NY, at the time “TEASMHDAAC” came out.
The Great Great House of Guitars, a semi-legendary local music store, used to run TV ads in which they would announce the latest record releases they had in stock.
I can still hear the voice of the House of Guitars’ spokesman saying: “REO Speedwagon … The Earth, A Small Man, His Dog and *A Chicken*?”
As if to say, “WTF?”
Most of the time, the HoG ads announced record titles straight … but in this case, things were just too absurd to pass without comment.
I’m almost embarassed to admit this but I actually owned that album on CD at one point (I may still have it somewhere in my collection). It was largely forgettable and I don’t know that I ever actually listened to the album in its entirety.
I much prefer REO’s seventies material. Hi Infidelity was their peak… It was all downhill after that.
I was hoping that you’d tell me it was some kind of crazy concept album.
REO Speedwagon and concept albums don’t really go together… Maybe if Alan Parsons were to produce them… but other than that I don’t really see any concept albums in their future. I’ve got to give them props for the originality of the album title though.