THE PLAGUE DOGS

The late David Aaron Clark had bands before he came to New Brunswick (I knew of his South Jersey group The Trial), so I shouldn't have been surprised, but The Plague Dogs seemed to materialize out of thin air in 1986. DAC's inspirations included X, Gun Club, and similarly "dark" bands. Likewise, Plague Dogs songs didn't brighten your day, but they had a number of good ones: "It's Like That" appeared on the NB comp Mental Floss, and the late Mad Daddys alumnus Don Buchanan contributed the unfortunately prescient "King of Beasts" (chorus: "In the living world I was not welcome/In the land of the dead I stand alone"). To hear my favoirte, "Burning Building," navigate to the Mixtape. Those tracks and others featured Roland Keane, a cross of John Doe and Iggy Pop (c. Lust for Life). Unstable in all senses of the word, Plague Dogs rotated bandmembers on a weekly basis (including the Null Set's Dave Machos and Leather Studded Diaphragm's Eric Gladstone and the late Ethan Stein, also of Outdoor Minor), played maybe eight or nine shows and, suddenly again, DAC changed things around with the False Virgins months later.

Two compelling if not uplifting flyers by PD bassist and guitarist John T. Quinn III, though I credit DAC with the dot matrix printer-generated show attractions on the "feel (y)our pain" one: "sadism - masochism - terror - angst - regret - door prizes." Clark could have added "resignation," since Keane quit after this show, and goodbye band. The Valentine's Day flyer is typical slapdash DAC, who was at heart a comic book obsessive.

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