THE STRAYDOGS

In the annals of Sixties music of Singapore, the Straydogs rank as one of the pioneer bands of r & b and blues music. They formed at a time when the music scene was itself evolving internationally. The first wave of beat groups that had rode on the Beatlemania wave had crested and even the Beatles were undergoing changes themselves after they did their last US tour at the end of 1965. Folk Rock was burgeoning and R & B was starting to mutate from a poppy outlook to a harder and more potent form of blues. It was with this swirling backdrop that two blues fans gathered along the Katong shores talking about music, listening to music and trying to create music.

The two fans were Ronnie Kriekenbeek, a young harmonica player and Dennis Lim a music fan. Dennis recalls, "We heard the Rolling Stones and we thought, "That's us ! We want to play like that." Ronnie remembered hearing Rolling Stones "Not Fade Away" which he found he could follow on the harp.

In April 1966, The Straydogs came together with Lawrence Lim (vocals), William Lim (ld gtr), Jeffrey Low (rhy gtr), Ronnie Kriekenbeek (hrp, org), Dennis Lim (bs) and James Tan (drs). The name Straydogs came from Arthur Woo, a friend who remarked they were always loitering about in the Katong area and could be liken to stray dogs. Jeffrey Low remembers that it was originally going to be called Lawrence Pariah and the Straydogs but Ronnie insisted that following the trend of having singular names Straydogs would be more appropriate. William was the only musician in the band according to Ronnie and he taught Jeffrey and Dennis how to play guitar and bass respectively. Their early repertoire was the mid Sixties standard R & B repertoire which meant mainly British R & B songs.

The band practised in the early days at the house of a rich friend who had a full set of instruments. Their first gig was at the 21st birthday party of Ng Eng Tee, the son of rubber magnate Ng Quee Lam. They also made guest appearances with other bands but stuck mainly to the RAF circuit. Ronnie Kriekenbeek, recalls, "When we started playing, a lot of people were thinking what are these guys up to, harmonicas screeching, guitars hanging as low as your knee caps, dressing wasn't like uniforms the other bands had."

It was not long before they acquired their own set of instruments. Ronnie said, "Jeffrey and myself were walking around Tanjong Katong Road and we stumbled into this brand new music shop that had just opened up. At that time it was called Robert Piano. He had two Teisco amps and two or three guitars hanging on the walls. We got in and started talking to the man and paid him nightly visits. We told him of our venture. He wanted to start his music shop off, we wanted to start our band off, so it started off on a trust. He said, "You can have these two Teisco amplifiers, these guitars and we will start you off on an instalment plan."

Ronnie who doubled on keyboards was taught chords by William but he figured the rest out on his own. He said, "I think that too much harp on every song, every night can get too monotonous, too boring." His using the keyboards added texture to the band's sound as they had two guitars and a keyboard to fill out the sound. Now armed with their own set of instruments, the band began to rehearse and build up a repertoire. Dennis said that they had rehearsed for quite a while before they began to play. Their early engagements were at RAF clubs and house parties. Every weekend they had gigs and then it came to the point where they were playing at least three or four gigs per week. Jeffrey recalls that they would play at RAF Changi Youth Club on Wednesday, RAF Seletar Youth Club on Thursday, the Armada Pavilion on Friday and Saturday at the Chalet Club.

The soldiers who heard the band at these clubs were also frequenting the Golden Venus at Orchard Hotel which had been hosting Beat and Blues Sessions on Sunday afternoons from 1963 onwards. The resident band then was Unit 4 Plus 2 Plus 1 which was Checkmate (4) plus Cyclones (2) plus Vernon Cornelius (1). They told the band about this hot R & B band that was playing in the RAF clubs. The Checkmates were intrigued because they had not heard of the Straydogs in the circuit. The Straydogs gigs were mainly in the RAF Clubs and they did very few gigs outside of the RAF clubs.

Soon they were confident enough to approach the top R & B band in town, The Checkmates, who then held a residency at the Golden Venus Club in the Orchard Hotel about giving them a support slot at the Sunday afternoon Beat and Blues Sessions. Jeffrey Low approached Lawrence Lee, the Checkmates bass player, who had been his classmate in school about giving his band a chance to play at the Golden Venus. Lawrence agreed and Straydogs made their first appearance playing support at Golden Venus and even the Checkmates were stunned.

The Straydogs were blowing an authentic brand of R & B that veered closer to the roots. In Ronnie Kriekenbeek they had a harmonica player who was par excellence. With the Straydogs supporting, the Beat and Blues Sessions at the Golden Venus were beginning to heat up. Before playing at Golden Venus however, the Straydogs had supported The Dukes at their tea dances at the Prince Hotel Garni in Orchard Road.

In late 1966, the Straydogs were also given an opportunity to play a one month contract at a new restaurant that opened up in Changi. The club management did not know of the brand of music that they played but engaged them anyway. The patrons started asking for offbeat which was Singapore lingo for cha cha. The band knew no cha cha but they did know Otis Rush's All Your Love. That song had been the opening number on the John Mayall Bluesbreakers album, John Mayall and Eric Clapton and had a cha cha tempo. Straydogs played that song satisfying the management and the patrons that they did indeed knew how to play offbeat. Ronnie said, "After playing that, we went back to our normal repertoire."

Ronnie remembers that the division between the cool crowd and the offbeat crowd was very pronounced then and it could be quite harrowing to handle a hard core off beat crowd when you did not know any music that they could dance to. He remarked, "Do you know The Palace ? We did some guest appearances there prior to appearing at the Golden Venus. There it was all off beat." Benny Koh and Trailers were the stars there and they could handle off beat music very well although they played Western music equally well too.

In March 1967, The Straydogs celebrated their first anniversary as a band by having a dance at the Mandarin Hall of the Chinese Swimming Club. The band was supported by Cells Unlimited and Ray and The Deltons at this gig.

In 1967 after they had been playing as a guest band at Golden Venus for some months, Unit 4 Plus 2 Plus 1 decided to quit the Golden Venus Beat and Blues Sessions and they asked The Straydogs to take over as the resident band.

Toward the end of 1967, the band was approached by EMI to record a single and they produced an original for the A side, Mum's Too Pampering. The music was by Ronnie and Dennis with Lawrence providing the lyrics. The flip side was cover of a Van Morrison composition I Can Only Give You Everything. The band looked real sharp on the picture sleeve dressed in pyschedelic clothes. That too reflected the times with the Summer Of Love of 1967 still fresh in everyone's minds. Dennis Lim recalls that the band still flirt with Pyschedelia. He said, "Yes, we went through that period. That was our freak period. You know, kurtas, incense, things like that. During that time, we were doing Traffic's Coloured Rain, Fifth Dimension's Aquarius. We went through a couple of months doing pyschedelic stuff. It felt great doing those songs. But it was only for a little while. Then we went back to playing r & b."

The first change in the line-up came when rhythm guitarist Jeffrey Low decided to quit the band and concentrate on his career as a journalist. He however maintained his contact with the band becoming their defacto manager. The replacement they brought in was ace blues guitarist Jimmy Appudurai. Jimmy had been playing lead guitar with a band called The Motifs which comprised Mick Davies (vcls), Ray Archer (bs) and Bill Lunn (drs). The Motifs played on the services circuit and in fact they had The Straydogs playing support to them so that by the time they approached him about becoming their lead guitarist they were not an unknown quantity to him. Dennis said, "We were a r & b band then. When Jimmy came in, then band became more of a blues band. Played more slow blues then. We would play a song that would last for 45 minutes."

With Jimmy on lead guitar, William Lim the original lead guitarist moved to the role of a rhythm guitarist and the Straydogs were apparently going from strength to strength when another disappointment hit them. In October 1969, Ronnie announced to the band that he wanted to leave the band as he was going to migrate to Australia. This was a blow to the band because apart from Jimmy on guitar, Ronnie was their other front line instrumentalist and he was reckoned to be the best harp blower in Singapore then. Less then two months after Ronnie left, the band broke up ! Dennis recalls, "There was a period when we did not play and Jeffrey who was our manager suggested that we split since we were not going anywhere. Everybody agreed. We met at my place and divided up the equipment. Everybody was so downhearted but it had to happen. We had to split. James got the drumset. Poor chap. That was the cheapest piece of equipment we had. But he became the richest." The band broke up because they had reached a plateau and were not making any progress.

The split was short lived because Dennis was contacted Lim Thian Soon, former guitarist from the first hard core blues band in Singapore, Pest Infested. Pests Infested who had formed in May 1967 had started supporting Straydogs at the Golden Venus and the kinship between the two bands was strong. Soon had left Pests Infested in early 1970 and he was looking for a band to play with. Surprised that Straydogs had split, Soon suggested to Dennis that they form a new band. They approached Terry Tan, singer-organist with Rotten Bodies, another Rock band on the scene, Jimmy Appudurai and drummer Jeff Angus from Damestic Creation. By this time all these bands were defunct. After toying with idea of naming the new line-up Second Move the band decided to retain the name Straydogs.

EMI gave them another opportunity to record and in early 1971 they released their second double sided single Cold Morning/Freedom. The single went to Number One in the Malaysian charts the week it was released. They hoped that with the release of the single more avenues would open up for them in terms of more gigs and recording opportunities. But this was not to be because their music although very good was considered too radical. They did a one month stint at the Happening Club in Macpherson Road in 1971 but only barely made it because they would not compromise their music to suit the crowd. Another recording opportunity presented itself in 1972 and they went in to the studio to record their next single and came up with Repent/Rocking Our Blues. This single too went up the charts in Singapore and Malaysia. Repent was an ambitious effort with producer Reggie Verghese ex lead guitarist of the Quests adding strings to bring grandeur to the sound.

Rocking Our Blues was their statement of their musical philosophy featuring duelling guitars from Soon and Jimmy. With all the promise suggestive of the group still being not enough to make a breakthrough for them disillusioned some members of the group and both lead guitarists threw in the towel. Jimmy left for the further studies in England never to return while Soon went to look for musical fulfillment elsewhere.

So ended a second chapter of the Straydogs. Dennis Lim kept the group going until 1978 when the band disbanded for good. It was a good long run for twelve years. In dim mists of time, Straydogs appear to be just another band doing their thing in r & b but to those who lived through that era they could appreciate what it took to go against the grain and to stick to your covictions and play the music that appealed to you. Regardless of acceptance, support and having to face the prospect of industry wide condemnation and ridicule. The members of Straydogs now can look back with pride and say, "We stuck to our guns ! "