Weekend Listomania: Special "Who Let the Dogs (and Cats) Out? " Edition

[I originally did a version of this back in...yikes...2009. For today's updated posting, I've done some serious rewriting and swapped a couple of entries so as not to appear to be the lazy slacker I actually am. In the meantime, please enjoy. -- S.S.]

So the other day, I stumbled across this photo of our late lamented feline friend The Incomparable Eddie©...

...and I thought, hey, there's a possible subject for you know what.

And which leads us to our fin de la semaine business. To wit:

Most Memorable Post-Beatles Pop/Rock/Soul/Folk Song or Record Referencing Members of the Animal Kingdom (Pets or in the Wild) in the Title or Lyrics!!!

No arbitrary rules, you're welcome very much, except no band names need apply, okay? So don't gimme any of that Monkees shit 'cause I don't don't wanna hear it.

And my totally top of my head Top Six is/are...

6. Al Wilson -- The Snake

"You knew I was a snake before you brought me in." You gals know the feeling, I'm sure.

5. The Fools -- Psycho Chicken

When this originally came out in 1980, I remember thinking it was a long-overdue skewering of David Byrne's pretentious anxiety attacks. In retrospect, it's basically just a sort of sophmoric Weird Al record, which is to say only moderately amusing or smart, and I'm somewhat more forgiving of Byrne's neuroses these days.

4. Bruce Springsteen -- Pretty Flamingo

Originally a hit for Manfred Mann, and written by a guy (previously unknown to me) named Mark Barkan, whose other claim to fame is penning the theme from The Banana Splits. Talk about credits. 😎

A great song, in any event, but since I'm always looking for an excuse to post the above particularly gorgeous 1975 live version (from the famous Roxy bootleg) by Bruce Springsteen this works out pretty well.

3. The Hollies and Peter Sellers-- After the Fox

Jeebus -- even Burt Bacharach's joke songs are gorgeous. I mean seriously; that piano-riff-with-the-vocal-hisses is just a killer hook, isn't it?

2. Gilda Radner -- Let's Talk Dirty to the Animals

Written by the late great comic genius Michael O'Donaghue. And could Gilda be any funnier/sexier? I think not.

And my personal favorite song about species other than our own is...

1. Henry Gross -- Shannon

Gross was one of the original members of Sha-Na-Na, but also -- as you can hear from the above melodically fab ode to Beach Boy Carl Wilson's then lamented dog and glimpse from the Rickenacker 12-string he's playing in the clip -- he's obviously also a serious power pop guy.

Sheesh. I'm gonna have to do some more research on him along those lines, but really...how comes he doesn't seem to be a household word/genre cult figure already?

In any case -- alrighty then. What would YOUR choices be?

And have a great weekend, everybody!!!