Dog Heaven Cynthia Rylant

When these recording sessions began in the last week of May 2020, I hadn’t left my house to go anywhere other than the grocery store in over two months. I hadn’t taken a cab or subway. I’d lost several friends to COVID-19, and was afraid I’d also lose more thanks to the non-response of our would-be dictator/“president”, whose deliberate embrace of untruth fed tens of thousands of lives to the pandemic, and also reduced what little hope was left for avoiding global warming catastrophe.

Beware of the Dog was Hound Dog Taylor's posthumous live album containing performances that are even steamier than his first two studio albums, if such a notion is possible. For lowdown slow blues, it's hard to beat the heartfelt closer "Freddie's Blues," and for surreal moments on wax, it's equally hard to beat the funkhouse-turned-loony bin dementia of "Let's Get Funky" or the hopped up hillbilly fever rendition of "Comin' Around the Mountain".