Dogs

["Gary M. Gillman" <garyg@inforamp.net>]

Anyone who is in London in June to see the Hyde Park Quadrophenia may want
to visit one of the surviving dog tracks around London to enjoy in real life
the atmosphere evoked by the Who`s charming but oddball song Dogs. Working
in a genre mined perhaps more effectively (as a general rule) by Pete`s good
friend Ray Davies, Pete and the band bring to life a slice of mid-60`s
English working class life with their talk of beer, wage packets and betting
on the dogs. I don`t know if the White City racecourse survives, but some
years ago I visited a course in the far depths of East London, in a winter
rainstorm yet, to see if the dogs of Dogs were still running strong... and
they were... as were their handlers and the hopeful bettors, almost all
male. The dogs were beauties, greyhounds I believe. This was about 10 years
ago. You could place a bet at a booth in the grandstand but bets also were
taken by a few oddsmakers, all elderly men, who had set up simple stands
right in front of the track and marked the odds with chalk on blackboards.
There was no electronic board but results were announced on a PA. The
charming absence of high tech went along well with the hot milky tea and
simple but good food available in the grandstand. The English accents of
many of the punters, who were mostly in their 40`s and up, were exactly as
Pete talks at the end of Dogs. Some of the characters were none too
reputable looking and I could see at an instant what Moon had intended to
lampoon in the filmed Tommy with his sneaky demeanour, muttering and greasy
raincoat act. So I saw what had inspired Pete to write his paean to this
(now fading) pastime of English working class males. But I`m sure the dogs
are still running somewhere around London and that the Uncle Ernie
characters are still there placing their hopeful bets (despite England`s new
national lottery); but go see them before the remaining courses are razed to
put up a shopping mall, or parking lot...........Gary M.