Around 1970, the intersection of my family’s Volkswagen Beetle and me in the backseat with our St. Bernard, Polo, who outweighed me three digits to two, approximated a buffalo stampede on the twists and turns of our steep hill. I got trampled but good. One time, descending Spring Road – the dog replaced with my best friend Steve – we thought we had run over a canine on a curve when barks sounded all around us. Turns out it was my mom’s 8-track of Pink Floyd’s 1971 psych burner Meddle, whose “Seamus” remains one of the great hound songs of all time. From the LP illustration on Nazareth’s Hair of the Dog to Austin rock ripostes A Giant Dog, Canis lupus familiaris domesticates music as it does the planet. Here’s what happened one morning when the phrase describing the “most sultry period of summer,” approximately July 3 to Aug. 11, became a team Music email chain. Book rights pending.
This article appears in July 17 • 2015.
