Dogpatch Press

“What Is Furry Music?”  It’s a topic that Rakuen Growlithe started on Flayrah.  It can be music with furry themes, or music made by (or even popular with) furries, or both.

Rakuen dismissed much of the latter kind for not being furry enough.  I don’t think that’s quite fair.  Consider overlap with rave scenes and gaming.  Music related to those things can carry furry culture or spirit without animal themes built in.  Music has context – it even matters where you go for it (yay for dive bars!)  Some classic electronic/rave music was made with animal sounds for their musical tones. Doesn’t that bring out a little furry spirit?

I’d love to get into this and get responses from Furry music makers about how they personally define it.  This gets very much into “personal taste”, but that’s the fun of it.  Just like tasting different foods, it’s hard to say anything is right or wrong.

Arts, music, furry, and other subcultures have many overlaps.  A while back I covered the super incongruous overlap of furries and industrial music. (Part 1, part 2, part 3.)  I liked contrasting the extremes of cold, robotic and aggressive vs. warm, fuzzy and cute themes.  You could do this for many genres.  How about heavy metal?  It’s often associated with Wolves.

Here’s some personal favorite stuff that came out of 1970’s/80’s classic punk and goth.

I Wish I Woz a Dog, by Alien Sex Fiend.  (It’s easy, be a furry.)

This is like the anthem for an underground sewer club full of feral furry rats and stray mutts.  In the beginning of the song they’re banging on a real trash can.  Then it revs up like a washing machine full of spikes.  The drum machine and no bass/guitar-only sound makes exciting rawness.

With a name like Alien Sex Fiend, you know they have some wicked humor.  It’s refreshing among a tendancy for too much self-seriousness in their gloomy genre.  They’re often grouped into the subgenre of Deathrock, but they also reached out to play with stuff like acid techno.  They’re theatrical and the singer paints their album covers.  It earned them a long lasting cult following.

For fursuiters with attitude:  a goth-punk song about masks.

Who knows The Dark?  They were one of many bands from the era of The Sex Pistols and The Damned that didn’t become legendary.  Their greatest song should be.  It’s a hybrid of styles that doesn’t compare to much else, with the trashy B-movie attitude of the Misfits but the creepy grandeur of Bauhaus. (It would be awesome if either band had done music this perfectly on-point.  It’s almost Goth Oi!)

GG Allin – Livin’ Like An Animal.

Alien Sex Fiend sings about wishing to be a dog.  GG is famous for actually pooping on the stage and flinging it at the audience.  That’s what you need to know if you want to risk your innocence and know anything else about his filthy anti-music.  This is the “radio friendly” version which has a nastier version called “Fuckin’ the Dog” which I’ll hasten to add is a saying for “sitting around and doing nothing”.

The Stooges – I wanna be your dog. They call it the genesis of punk rock but I just call it a great item for this list.

The Ramones – Pet Sematary. For the title alone.

More Punk stuff:

The Damned – Rabid Over You. “You treat me like a dog, Give me a bone to chew, Frothing at the mouth, Frothing all over you, Yeah I get rabid over you”.

The Cramps – Can Your Pussy Do the Dog.  Just a mention, because how much innuendo do you need… See also I Was a Teenage Werewolf.

The Descendants – I wanna be a bear.  See also Doghouse and Dog and Pony Show.

The Misfits – We Bite.  Werewolf songs can make a whole other article. Also try Danzig – Killer Wolf or Pain Is Like an Animal.

The Suicide Machines – Sometimes I don’t mind.  It’s 90’s pop punk, but a love song to a Boston Terrier with a fursuiter in the video is almost the cutest song.

How about more goth/industrial rock.  It’s a jump from that punk stuff, but it connects through ones like Alien Sex Fiend.

Evil Mothers – I Like Fur.  Ooh, it’s eeevil and shameless about the kink theme it shares with some others above.

Nine Inch Nails – Closer. It’s one of the biggest songs ever for industrial music and I probably don’t need to remind you about that chorus.

Ashtrayhead – Good Doggy.  If you’re into this deeper than NIN, the late, great Cubanate is a band you can’t miss.  I think even most fans don’t know this side project of the singer. It’s a nifty obscurity which might suit this article better than other lists I could think to put it on.

The Cure – Burn.  A super classic club filler about a guy who turns into a crow for vengeance. “Every night I burn, Scream the animal scream.” For more weird anthropomorphism: check out the lost project of the director of The Crow, in my interview article.

Front 242 – Animal. This was kind of a weird era for this classic band when they wanted to turn into The Prodigy, but I think it works.

KMFDM – Animal Out. I miss their early-mid 90’s stuff but let’s round out the list with something fairly recent.

I can’t put GG Allin on a “furry music” list without cleansing the grossness away.  After all that not-so-cute stuff, here’s the punkest song of all:

The Wiggles – Brush Your Pet’s Hair.  Someone make a fursuit music video please!