Dwight Twilley - Jungle

Apparently Dwight Twilley had been around a while before I picked up Jungle back in '84. "Girls" was a song that got under my skin, not under my skin as in being irritating, I meant under my skin in a good way - yeah I should have just deleted this and started again, but I feel like I should commit to it, and just push through - hopefully this isn't getting under your skin. Having Tom Petty singing along certainly didn't hurt. It was an album chock full of pop goodness, what I would later come to associate with power pop. There was a certain rawness to the songs that hearkened back to the late '70s first wave of new wave.

The album was pretty decent, and I always thought "Why You Wanna Break My Heart" should have been a hit, instead we got to hear Tia Carrere butcher the shit out of it in the movie Wayne's World, and then again when they put it again on Wayne's World: Music from the Motion Picture. Sigh, the same soundtrack Gary Wright figured the world needed a reworked version of Dream Weaver - it didn't, the original was amazing. Leave well enough alone.

Well this has devolved a little more quickly than I anticipated. Well, why stop now - let's just press on and see where this goes.

It's all downhill from here. Hang on.

Now, there are a few really good tracks on the album, and yes the highlights are "Girls" and "Why You Wanna Break My Heart" and there are others too, but for me the song I think of when I think of Jungle, is the closing track on the album. It's a little of a minute and a half of unbridled rock and roll bliss. Yeah, I'm talking about "Max Dog." I don't know why this particular song got me in the feels, but it did.

Max got the bacon
Max got the eggs
One thing baby ...
Max dog got no legs

After I would find some of Dwight's previous releases, and it was from the Dwight Twilley Band period I'd see Phil Seymour's name who provided lead and harmony vocals. I don't really remember much from that period to be honest, and the albums have long since disappeared from my collection. Still, there was something about him I never forgot.

Even though Jungle that was fairly successful, there wouldn't be a follow up for a couple of years. When he drop a new album it was on another label, and frankly I never saw it in the bins. Reading up on Mister Twilley it seems like label issues and questionable decisions seemed to plague his career. Which is too bad. Jungle would be about as far as I went with him. Like I'd mentioned earlier, I did find a couple of older releases (long lost), I never did find anything this album - and while I kept an eye out for a new album to come out on CD, I never found it, and over time he sort of faded from memory. While "Girls" would pop up on the occasional '80s compilation he was more or less forgotten by the masses, which is a shame as he when he was good he was very good.

However, it would seem that despite the weird label issues in this era of Spotify, there is actually a fair bit of his catalogue out there that can be heard, and that's a good thing. If iTunes is your thing and you actually want to buy stuff, there's a lot there too. 

Which actually warms my heart a little.