Pair this gutbucket five-song EP with the cassette-only excretio: the difficult years (sold at shows, when Chris Flemmons' outfit was called Poor Bastard Sons), and you've got a demo for Music
from Big Pink -- OK, 31 years after the fact. Like the Gourds and the Bad Livers -- and, yes, The Band -- before him, Flemmons finds truth and beauty in the trad-rock form, meaning he performs and records like a man who's never heard of the  Beatles...or, for that matter, electricity. Funny how the backward-glancers have become the most "visionary" among us in these most desperate times; we revere those for whom there's a past beyond tomorrow, and Flemmons is nothing if not the most backward among the Denton rock crowd -- and that's the ultimate compliment. Dog is a gawldang throwdown and God-bless comedown, a CD that belongs on acetate in the Library of Congress basement-tapes archives. "Pats the Rub" may well be the stompingest song you'll hear (or, likely, not) all year, and its follow-up, "Evergone," may be the saddest, especially when the thirtysomething Flemmons starts crooning like a 90-year-old man oooohing his last breath. At first, I thoughtDog sounded like something recorded on a front porch; upon further inspection, more likely it was just found in a ditch, at the end of the rainbow.                                              ~ Robert Wilonsky

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