1996: Cardiacs Dog Like Sparky & Rush Dog Years

"Pet him on the head, give the dog a bone;
Use a friendly tone, he won't leave you alone
No one understands like old faithful ...
No one understands it's a dog's life" (from Gentle Giant's Dog's Life).

From the dog year of 1996 when Cardiacs released the double-album Sing to God and Rush released Test For Echo. Neither of these songs would be my particular choices from the albums, but I want parallelism (love the Sing to God album, but I'd probably choose Dirty Boy as a song poll choice as it's the song that made me fall for Cardiacs).





Edited by Logan - March 08 2018 at 17:02

Nogbad_The_Bad wrote: Cardiacs, obviously

Cardiacs. That song sounds to me like XTC playing with the Sparks.

Cardiacs get my vote.

Well, this contest is a bit uneven (I don't really see it as a competition). I voted for Cardiacs myself (I've grown to love that band so very much). Sing to God was my first Cardiacs album, more recently I fell really big for A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window. My initial Rush vs. Cardiacs idea was choosing the one "minor" Cardiacs hit song (the one that can be compared to the Cure), "Is This the Life?", and putting it up against the Rush song "Turn the Page". Is This the Life? isn't a particular song that I'd want to highlight off that album (love it in the context of the album even if not a fave on the album), but I felt that it made stylistic sense to put these to up against each other. I really do spend far too much time thinking about such stuff even if the associations only make a lot of sense to me (I should be doing database work when on site).

I actually like this Dog Years Rush song, and there's something punky about it which to my mind made it seem not bad as foil to the Cardiacs one. Both are fun and zany in their own way, but the Cardiacs seems more creative, fun, adventurous and varied to me.

On a tangential note, I love Günter Grass's novel, "Dog Years" (remember discussing Grass with Jean or Friede not that long ago at this site -- it's the third volume of his Danzig Trilogy, the other two are The Tin Drum and Cat and Mouse).

Edited by Logan - March 10 2018 at 10:22

^ I like it. Incidentally, I said that that "Dog Like Sparky" seems more creative, fun, adventurous and varied to me than "Dog Years" (as a song), but I actually think that "Dog Years" is more adventurous in terms of being different from other material made by the respective bands. At least I think it's a fairly unique song in Rush's oeuvre. With each song taken on its own, though, irregardless of other material put out, the Cardiacs' one strikes me as more adventurous. Both are playful.