Who Let the Dogs Out?

Swamp Dogg Barks the Beatles

"You need this," Swamp Dogg swore to me after his show at the Continental Club in 2007. The gonzo soul legend born Jerry Williams had just signed my copy of his 1970 cult classic Total Destruction to Your Mind and, sensing a sucker, made a hard sell on the most questionable item at the merch table. In 1983, the same man who wrote the brilliant and poignant "Synthetic World" programmed a keyboard with barnyard animal noises and barked out his favorite Beatles tunes. The Beatle Barkers LP answers a question so inane no one ever thought to ask it: "What if the Fab Four were replaced by a howling hound, chicken, sheep, and cow?" Even for the warped mind of Swamp Dogg, this is some weird shit. Credited to the Woofers & Tweeters Ensemble, his name doesn't actually appear anywhere on the LP, and additional information is scant. At the Continental, Swamp Dogg suggested I pair the disc with candlelight and save it for romantic evenings with my lady, a pitch that proved impossible to refuse. Beatle Barkers is unspeakably bad, objectively one of the most terrible albums ever made, but it's still $10 well spent.