BATTLE OF THE BANDS: It’s a DOG vs CAT Battle Showdown! This is ROUND TWO…

Today’s Battle of the Bands is ROUND TWO of the

Ultimate Dog v Cat Tournament!

In case you’re out of the loop and aren’t sure what’s going on here, Mary from Jingle Jangle Jungle and I have teamed up to do the Ultimate Dog vs Cat Battle of the Bands Tournament. You can go back to my original Round One DOG Battle post for full details, or Mary’s Round One CAT Battle.

To catch you up: Round One was a battle of Hard-Rock Dogs and Cats. My Hard-Rock Dog Song battle (here if you missed it) featured these two contenders: Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” going up against Ted Nugent’s “Dog Eat Dog”. Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” was the victor in Round One. 

Today here at Angels Bark I’m doing ROUND TWO – The Soft-Rock DOG Battle. Mary is doing Round Two – the Soft-Rock CAT Battle over at her place.

My Contenders duking it out for the Soft-Rock Dog title are Lobo’s “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” vs Marvin Gaye’s “I’ll Be Doggone”

Are you ready for this dog-fight? Here we go…

Contender #1: ME and YOU and A DOG NAMED BOO by Lobo

“Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” is the 1971 debut single by Lobo. Written by Lobo under his real name Kent LaVoie, it appears on the Introducing Lobo album. Lobo means “Wolf” in Spanish.

Roland Kent LaVoie (born July 31, 1943), better known by his stage name Lobo, is an American singer-songwriter who was successful in the early 1970s, scoring several U.S. Top 10 hits including “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo”, “I’d Love You to Want Me”, and “Don’t Expect Me to Be Your Friend”. These three songs, along with “Where Were You When I Was Falling In Love”, gave Lobo four chart toppers on the Easy Listening/Hot Adult Contemporary chart.

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“Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” is about two hippies and a dog taking a cross-country road trip in an old car that runs poorly. The protagonists of the song get mired in the Georgia clay, steal food from a farmer and work to pay it off, and end up living in Los Angeles, but the old car makes them want to hit the road again.

The single peaked at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was the first of four of his songs to hit #1 on the Easy Listening chart, where it had a two-week stay at that top spot in May 1971. The song also reached #4 in the UK Singles Chart in July 1971, and spent four weeks at #1 in New Zealand.

Internationally, “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” was Lobo’s second most successful song among more than 15 single releases. It was surpassed only by “I’d Love You to Want Me” the following year.

 

Contender #2: I’LL BE DOGGONE by Marvin Gaye

Marvin Gaye (April 2, 1939 — April 1, 1984), born Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr., was an American singer-songwriter and musician who helped to shape the sound of Motown Records in the 1960s with a string of hits.

“I’ll Be Doggone” is a 1965 song recorded by American soul singer Marvin Gaye and released on the Tamla label. Gaye is known for his smoldering love songs, but this one takes a different approach, as it finds him warning his girl that if he ever finds out she is cheating, he will leave her. The song talks about how a man tells his woman that he’ll be “doggone” about simple things but if she did him wrong that he’d be “long gone”.

“I’ll Be Doggone” represents three firsts for Marvin Gaye: It was his first million-selling record, his first chart-topping #1 R&B single and his first song to be co-written by Smokey Robinson and his fellow Miracles bandmates, Pete Moore and Marv Tarplin. The clever wordplay – “I wouldn’t be doggone, I’d be long gone” – is typical of Smokey Robinson’s songwriting.

Along with the Motown’s long-standing female back-up group The Andantes, the Miracles provided backing vocals to the song. (Fun fact: Smokey Robinson also penned Gaye’s second R&B hit, “Ain’t That Peculiar”).

“I’ll Be Doggone” also gave Marvin his third crossover top-ten Pop hit, where it peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 (which matched his follow-up record “Ain’t That Peculiar”, also charting at #8).

On the Motown roster, Marvin Gaye was far more than a singer – he was also a songwriter and drummer. Early on, Gaye wrote his own songs, including “Pride and Joy” and “Stubborn Kind Of Fellow,” and had an interest in recording standards (he wanted to become “the black Frank Sinatra”).

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Mickey Stevenson, who was head of A&R at Motown, convinced Gaye to go in another direction as a singer, recording more R&B material. Robinson wrote this song specifically for Gaye, but Marvin put his own spin on it. Said Smokey, “When I showed him the song, he began to sing it like I had never imagined it being sung.”

 

IT’S TIME TO VOTE FOR THE SOFT-ROCK DOG WINNER!

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Which soft-rock dog song do you like best? And tell me why. THEN be sure to go check out the other half of Round Two in the Dog v Cat Battle of the Bands Tournament: Mary’s soft-edge Cat-Fight battle over at Jingle Jangle Jungle.

And when you’re done with that, be sure to check out the other cool battles that are happening this week. You can get links to all the other participants in the sidebar at Stephen McCarthy’s Battle of the Bands page. 

 

PLEASE JOIN THE FUN WITH OUR ULTIMATE DOG v CAT BATTLE  OF THE BANDS TOURNAMENT! Give us your votes! And then spread the word: We’d love to have a rockin’ turnout for this very unique battle tournament so feel free to share our links on your social media: invite your Facebook and Twitter friends to play along and cast their votes. This is after all almost as big as the battle of the sexes: it’s DOGS VS CATS Y’ALL! C’mon! 

And remember to come back on AUGUST 15 for ROUND THREE of this fun and funky Battle of the Bands! 

I’ll post the results from my ROUND TWO Soft-Rock Dog v Dog battle in 7 days…

As always, thanks for participating and ROCK ON my friends!