Dogpiling, candles, and how it all made sense in Reagan-era Mid Michigan

2010-02-03T08:21:00.000-08:00

Sitting here in my cubicle I'm reminded somehow of one of the most memorable eras of my life, and I'm amazed to this day that it hasn't been documented in any way. In 1985 I was a teenager living in Saginaw, Michigan and like most others in the area I was bored. I remember hearing rumors of a dogpiling movement going on in Flint and I knew at that moment that I wanted in. Dogpiling- it's when a group of people spontaneously decide to form a pile of human bodies. The "winner" is the one on top of the pile. The kids over in Flint wanted to celebrate once they were on top of the pile, and they started doing that by lighting candles when they were on top. Every teen in flint was carrying candles by the end of 1986. During those two years there was a whole scene built around it- different candle makers, bands, posters, and by the end of it even the biggest corporation in the tri-cities, Dow Chemical, got into it. This is the story of how it started and where it went. I'm not sure if the kids that I used to know want to be associated with this anymore, so I've tried to de-identify the pictures a bit and I've changed the names- slightly.

Terry Adams was the person that at least I'm crediting with the start of the movement. He was more or less a loner but found popularity when he started to dogpile. No one knows who lit the first candle on top of a dogpile, but it was Terry that was the first to market the candles. He started the group "Greater Flint Area Dogpiling association" and sold his candles for a buck. The one in the picture below I picked up at a garage sale last year for 12 bucks. Not sure why anyone would sell it, but I was overjoyed to find it. Terry sold a long candle on a blue backed piece of cardboard with some plastic wrap over it. These are really rare especially in the package. It should be added that NO ONE in the scene called the candles candles. Terry had called them "Waxy Fire Rods" and that's what everyone else called them.

In the first month, Terry had made close to $200 and that caught the eye of a group of kids from Saginaw who started calling themselves the "Proud Teenage Businessmen", although they were also known as the AV club in their school. The PTB were the inventors of the short torch, a shortened candle that fit in the pocket better and didn't break when you were at the BOTTOM of a dogpile, something that happened very often. They were also the first people to sell a single match with the short torches. The fact that they drew attention to the notion that they were teens was a huge theme in the dogpiling scene. It was a way for them to say 'Look, we started this, we understand this, and hey we're teens making money and having fun'.

Below are images of their trademark green papered baggies holding a short torch and a match.

Now during this time in Mid Michigan, there were a lot of latchkey kids- kids that would come home to an empty house. To help combat the loneliness and boredom, these kids really got into the dogpiling scene. Of all the teenage candle makers, the Latchkey Teens were the only ones selling them in a box. Fronk Jennings and Eli Mason were the founding members of the group and also made up the band "The Milk Duds", which I'll get into later. The only thing I can say right now is that at first they didn't have drums or a drum machine, so what they did is plug some speakers in, lick their fingers, and hit the end of the output plug to make a sound like a drum-that's the attitude of dogpiling, in my opinion.

The brown box was the original 1985 version- the blue box came out later in '86. The Latchkey Teens were the first to call the candles "Waxed Flame Sticks"

For most of '85, it was the big three making the candles: The Association, Proud Teenage Businessmen, and the Latchkey Teens. This was only in Flint and Saginaw. Towards the end of the year dogpiling spread to Bay City and Midland and I guess you could say that this was the golden period. More candles, music, and bands popped up here than any other time. Kids started selling the candles at intersections to teens AND adults. Everyone was dogpiling, everyone was having fun, and there was a lot of money to go around.

At first, girls didn't want in on dogpiling, but got in on the fun eventually. This was sparked by the first group of girls to make and sell candles. Jenny Jenny as a group actually didn't have anyone in it named Jenny. They took advantage of dogpiler's slang- all girls were called Jenny and all boys were called Joes. There aren't many examples of the candles that Jenny Jenny made because they sold them on a piece of paper that usually got thrown out or just got destroyed over the years. Their image of a cycloptic Madonna (the singer born in Flint) was hugely popular and made its way on to T-Shirts and spray painted stencils that found their place in schools and streets in Mid Michigan. They were also a band- probably the best band of the scene, and again I'll get to that later I swear. Jenny Jenny also were the first to sell their "pocket lanterns" for under a buck- they priced out at 75 cents.

The three Jennys

The yellow print is extremely rare- only about 10 of them were made.

Matt Bunderman, originally a member of the Proud Teenage Businessmen, broke off and formed his own group at around the same time Jenny Jenny was rising in popularity. He called his group "Dogpiling Adolescents" and was actually the only member of the group. He was in a band with one of the girls from Jenny Jenny and they called themselves the "Kazoo Two". His orange packaging is actually my favorite in my collection. He sold his candles for two dollars.

Below is something that is a mystery to me. "Rebel" started selling "Flame Wands" at Kazoo Two concerts during intermissions. He (or She) would get younger kids to hand them out for a dime. They were very short, shorter than a short torch, and wrapped in tin foil. They were popular, rare, and featured the logo of a scorpion with a sort of ball and chain mace as its tail. The girls liked them because they sort of looked like some lipstick. No idea on who Rebel is- if you're reading this and you have a tip please please please let me know!

And so, we go on...The City-Wide Knucklers were a group of kids from Bay City who were into aggressive dogpiling. Normally no one would get hurt, but the knucklers sort of made it a point to make someone bleed after every dogpile. This got some coverage in the news and painted all dogpilers in a bad light, and I've gotta say that still to this day I hate these guys. Their band was ok, but it's my feeling that they were one of the reasons the scene came to an end. They took something innocent and turned it into something completely different- and to the media's eyes it was all the same. They called themselves knucklers because of the way they danced, knuckles on the groud. You can see an example of this in the graphics for their "Waxed Flame Holders".

Now we get to one of my favorite parts of this post. This is what I consider the pinnacle of the dogpiling movement. In early 1986 a mixed tape was made featuring most of the bands associated with the movement. It had songs by Jenny Jenny, Kazoo Two, The Knucklers, the Milk Duds, and Spades of Aces. It was sold for 4 dollars along with a waxed flame stick. It was put together by the group "Teenagers helping Teenagers help Themselves" (a group that I was a part of) and was hugely successful. These were the songs that were blasting on everyone's walkmans. These are the songs of my teenage years! Most of the songs were short, and really the only lyrics were "dogpile". At the concerts no one would mosh, no one would dance, everyone would just be dogpiling and lighting candles. This is how it was for us- it was amazing and great and I wish it could be like this again! The music was heavily influenced by Bruce Springsteen, Devo, Madonna, and the garage-rock revival going on in Detroit at the time. I've gotten some of the songs off from the cassette and made a myspace page for it. You can finally check it out here.

So- now that we've seen the pinnacle of this thing I think that it's time we saw how it ended. Like most things that teenagers and kids are into, adults try to copy and just get it all wrong. There were some grown men and women who saw the dogpiling, saw the money, and simply wanted in. Below is an example of this. His name was John Houston. He had a lot of money and flooded the street with his waxed flame sticks, oh wait, but he didn't call them waxed flame sticks, he didn't call them waxy fire rods- he called them "Lightable Dogpiler's Candles". The kids knew that this was beyond lame but adults bought these things up like crazy. Groups of accountants, businessmen, bankers, they started dogpiling in '86 and only used Houston's candles. The kids saw this and they saw that they got no credit- no respect- and started moving on to other things. He killed it- or wait, not quite, it gets worse.

Below is an image of Houston trying to sell his Dogpiler's candles to some kids at the school I used to go to.

The homeless population of Mid Michigan was embraced by the dogpilers- that is until they started selling scraps of candles for pennies, stealing business away from all of the groups that I mentioned. Below is an example of a typical "no homed candle" made by a guy in Saginaw named Mark. Although this had always gone on in one way or another- it wasn't until the Houston candles started coming out that it got out of control. It was simple- dogpiling was going down in popularity, there were more discarded candles, there was more material for the homeless to work with. Not their fault really- I would have done the same.

Are you depressed now? Saddened? Well now as promised it gets worse. Young executives and Yuppies invested a huge amount of money in taking over the already dying scene. They sold candles as "waxlamps" and even tried to take away the apparantly lowbrow name of dogpiling. They rebranded the scene as "Hound-Mounding". For us, it was both sad and funny to see these young professionals dogpile- oops I mean hound-mound on their lunch breaks, all dressed up in suits. I guess it just irked us that they never gave us any credit. I guess it irked us that when someone lit a candle on top of the pile or mound, they were lighting an executive candle, or a houston candle, and never something by Jenny Jenny or the Proud Teenage Businessmen.

Anyway, as you can guess by now the scene had completely died out with the area teenagers. And it's sad that the last of the dogpiling flame rods was made by none other than Dow Chemical. For about a week in the end of '86, Dow ran advertizements that said "Tired of poorly made flame sticks? Send them in to us and we'll replace it, for free, with one of our high quality professional-grade candles." Some of the yuppies did this, but none of the kids did. It was over. Done. Everything ends someday though, I guess I couldn't imagine all of us dogpiling and lighting for the rest of our lives! I have one of the Dow candles from my older brother (was a yuppy but now is a really great and talented guy) and like to light it every once and a while- not sure why.

So that's it. That's the story as I remember it. I'm glad that I was as much of a collector back then as I still am today and kept all of this stuff. I have more- some posters and there are some other versions of the flame sticks. I just have to find them somewhere in my basement. Thanks so much for reading and please if you have anything to add to this leave a comment and I'll get in touch with you. And to all of you Jennys and Joes out there- NEVER STOP DOGPILING!

Dogpiler's candles- Mid Michigan, 1985-1986

Dogpiling, candles, and how it all made sense in Reagan-era Mid Michigan