Dog Daze

YOUR NEW movie is cleaning up on both sides of the Atlantic. Do you celebrate by:
(a) Going on a mad coke-fuelled bender with your mates down The Viper Room?
(b) Buying yourself a bijou $20 million mansion in Bel Air?
or (c) Traveling half-way round the world to support Republica in a Belfast car-park?
Keanu Reeves has plumped for (c) a dodgy decision made even dodgier by the fact that only 700 of the 5,000 expected punters have turned up, and it s raining like there s no tomorrow.
Which, incidentally, is when Keanu and the rest of Dogstar are supposed to be grunging it up at Glastonbury.
In the same way that you wouldn t automatically go to a film because Nicky Wire s got a bit part in it, you don t cough up #16.50 to see a band just because him from The Matrix is the bass player.
Not that that s done anything to keep him off the front pages hacks jostling for position at the press conference, which takes place earlier in the day at The Hilton.
I m sorry to disappoint you ladies, but jet-lagged as fuck after a 12-hour flight, the actor looks decidedly frayed round the edges.
He needs a good bath, whispers a female journo, and I m the one to give it to him!
With their contract stipulating that they re billed as Dogstar featuring Bret Domrose, Rob Mailhouse and Keanu Reeves , it s no surprise that his buddies do an equal share of the talking.
We try to downplay it, Domrose says of Reeves 9 to 5. But the harder we try, the more people want to make a big deal of it. We ve got good songs. If you close your eyes, we re a good band.
Or, alternatively, Pearl Jam minus the tunes and Eddie Vedder s charisma.
I admit that my acting career has given us some opportunities to be heard, and we re grateful for that, interjects his colleague. But in the end it comes down to the music and I feel good about that.
While it s easy to dismiss them as a celebrity plaything, Dogstar s roots go back to 1991 when a pre-superstar Reeves chanced upon Mailhouse in a L.A. grocery store. When lengthy jam sessions ceased to satisfy them, they auditioned for a singer-cum-guitarist and found Domrose, a local scenester who d come tantalisingly close to landing a gig with Sheryl Crow.
He keeps me on my toes and I probably keep him sane, is how he sums up his relationship with the actor. As for musical matters, Keanu is a lot more into punk rock. I m more into singer-songwriters bands like U2 and The Replacements that focus more on the songs than on the playing. Our two energies came together really well.
Further journalistic probing confirms that Reeves does indeed have a predilection for punk he lists his favourite concert as a 1987 Ramones show in Buffalo ( I drove with friends in my first car from Toronto, Canada to the venue. )
Along with da brudders, the other people who make him all tingly are The Clash, The Exploited, Joy Division, Fugazi, Robert Johnson, John Coltrane and Sonic Youth.
Indeed, such is the trio s shared penchant for Kim n Thurston that they do a cover of them covering Superstar by The Carpenters.
It being the highlight of their 40-minute T At The River set tells you pretty much all you need to know about Dogstar. The girls down the front scream on queue every time Keanu throws a shape which isn t often but even they know that this is fag-end stuff.
Sporting a Compo from Last Of The Summer Wine bobble-hat, Reeves looks by turns petrified, embarrassed and relieved when they eventually exit to the merest ripple of applause. The reaction they get at Glasto is even worse Domrose, apparently, lucky not to have his eye taken out by an intercontinentalballistic hot-dog.
Still, there s always the day job. n