The Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog,"
performed by Alejandro Escovedo

The version of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” captured on Alejandro Escovedo’s More Miles Than Money: Live 1994-’96 is one important element away from explaining its own presence on this list.

When Escovedo performs his rendition of The Stooges’ staple in concert, he tends to get the string section going before offering a spoken-word preface to the song: How Iggy Pop and Bela Bartok were drinking absinthe at a Texas road bar, getting more and more detached from this plane of consciousness as they drank and danced to, if I remember correctly, every Hank Williams track on the jukebox, eventually falling into one another’s arms and making love all night until, at morning light, Iggy penned “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

The factual basis of that is admittedly suspect, but it’s better as a legend anyway. With a simple twist, it could serve as the perfect origin; if Iggy and Hank had a love child, it would be Alejandro. Not that Escovedo doesn’t have his own remarkable pedigree — his brother Pete Escovedo played with Carlos Santana; his niece is Sheila E., as in The Revolution, as in Prince & The Revolution — but the first-cousin nature of punk and country has rarely, if ever, been better realized than in Escovedo.

In terms of its importance as an American cultural invention, country is on the same plane as blues. The blues are black America’s expression of the hereditary sorrow that is its birthright; country is the expression of white-working-class America’s disillusionment with the American dream. Not every song in country or blues is “down,” but the “ups” are always fleeting, a silver lining that only belies that the rest is all cloud. Country, gospel and blues can be looked at as the building blocks for every American musical form since, from rock to jazz to jungle, but the truth is that all genre distinctions become fuzzy as the balance shifts one way or the other in each composition until the miscegenation obscures all bloodlines.

That’s why it’s not entirely accurate to classify Escovedo as a “country” artist — he was punking with The Nuns in San Francisco back when punk meant, basically, what country used to mean, and country meant twangy versions of bland Top 40 pop pap. But labels like “roots rock” and “post-punk Americana” sound like deliberate dodges to avoid what Escovedo is making: His original songs like “Broken Bottle,” “One More Night” (both on More Miles) and “Baby’s Got New Plans” are real cry-in-your-beer music, and are far truer heirs to country music than Shania and Faith.

That doesn’t mean Escovedo can’t, or doesn’t, rock, as well. But he never rocks as well as he does when he’s doing “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Reimagining the song with strings upon strings, Escovedo shout-sings the lyrics through a sonic haze:

So messed up, I want you near
In my room, I want you here
Now we’re gonna be face to face
And I’ll lay right down in my favorite place

The amazing thing is that the song fits perfectly in his catalog. Alejandro’s fakebook is one of the best — he nails the Rolling Stones, Gun Club, Jimmie Rodgers and many others — but it’s woven throughout with his often flawless sensibilities. As good as they are, however, Escovedo’s interpretations of others’ songs are entry points into his more-impressive original body of work. The burgeoning popularity of “alt country” is one of the most promising trends in music today, and More Miles Than Money is a perfect example of why they call it “cowpunk.”

— Sean Weitner (sean@flakmag.com)