hey. i have a great idea. let’s write a top 40 smash hit. the topic?
a dead dog.
from the what the hell were they THINKING file: henry gross, a founding member of Sha Na Na, struck it out on his own and made an album. one of the songs on it was titled skin king. well, where do you go from there?
you change record companies, of course.
gross moved over to another record company, where he wrote this little ditty about the passing of beach boy carl wilson’s dog, shannon. i guess once you write a song with a title that might sound like a film vehicle for ron jeremy [warning, kids: don’t open that last link up at work or the bells will go off], where else do you go? as we learned as english majors reading john donne, there’s nothing closer to sex than death. so of course, in the classic tradition, gross made the leap… into an irish setter’s demise.
you old folks might remember the long distance dedication moment on kasem’s american top 40? well, someone wanted kasem to dedicate shannon to the requestor’s deceased dog snuggles. apparently, all hell broke loose when his coworkers programmed something upbeat before the doggy downer:
nothing like a dead-dog song to bring us all together.
We used to put this song on at slumber parties and just cry and cry.
Funny… I never realized it was about a dog! I assumed it was about the mother’s daughter or something. I even still know most of the words. The mind is scary.
I’ve never heard that. Ever. And now my ears are bleeding.
Ha! I wish YouTube weren’t blocked at work. I’d love to hear this one.
I’m with Catherine.
ah, nylon and catherine. you youngins 😉
OMG, fifteen seconds of this and I was about to barf.
Who knew Shannon was about a dog?
I need to find the lyrics to it – none of the phrases I remember really indicate anything about a dog (although there was something about a backyard). Was it just one of those inside scoop things?
yep. i remember casey kasem (in a non cursing moment) telling the story about Carl Wilson’s dog Shannon being the subject. it’s been corroborated numerous times.
Oh my god. All these years I thought it was about some poor girl dying. A dog! Now I’m reallly sick to my stomach.
All these years I couldn’t believe that someone would be weepy enough over a dog’s death to bum out an entire nation of radio listeners.
Best part of the Kasem thing? The middle, when in full rant (to Don, on the phone) “…and what happened to those pictures I was supposed to see this weekend!”
sorry…lurking. I’m a sucker for lists about music. even bad music.
i’m glad you said that — i have been wondering (to meself) about those pictures. the nature of those pictures. ah, casey, you naughty man.
please continue lurking. or commenting. 🙂
The Langley Schools kids totally should have covered this. They did do “Wildfire,” though, so they’ve got the dead-pets genre covered.
Carl Wilson was not available for comment, but I like to think of his response as, “Geez, Henry, you’re more broken up about this than I am. Dennis was allergic to Shannon, and Carnie and Wendy couldn’t come over because Shannon kept trying to bite them. Oddly enough, Shannon loved Mike.”