Whether or not you're willing to admit it, you went through a Dave Matthews Band phase. Maybe it lasted a week, a few months, or a decade. Maybe you saw them play at a bar in Charlottesville when they were nothing more than hometown heroes. Maybe you bought Under The Table and Dreaming because you heard "What Would You Say" on the radio. Maybe you caught your first DMB show in this millenium after the band scrapped the Lillywhite Sessions in favor of releasing Everday in 2001.
I'm willing to admit that I played Under The Table and Dreaming endlessly after my friend bought the tape in 1994 and introduced me to them. I saw my first show in December of 1995. For a short time, the number of Phish shows and DMB shows I'd attended sat even. From there, my live music intake strongly favored Jimmy going off to camp rather than Jimi Thing, but I didn't really abandon Dave and Co. until attending a couple of his shows about five years ago and feeling like I had stumbled uninvited into an after party of a high school prom. It was then that I decided I had no choice but to leave them behind.
Searching for Warren Haynes videos today on YouTube, I stumbled upon a few of Dave Matthews performing solo in front of a small audience in 1994. Watching it reminds me so much of the band I fell in love with for a period of time a decade ago. They feature a musician and singer who would soon find himself at the helm of a band that would go on to be considered one of the most important groups, culturally, of the 90's and 00's. He just didn't know it yet.
I am certain that many years from now, I will listen back to these early songs from the Dave Matthews Band, without the bias of seeing them as merely a band for high school kids that I used to listen to. And they will bring back some great memories.
Enjoy these two videos of both 'Best Of What's Around' and 'Lie In Our Graves'.
1 comment:
Amen to that, brother. I still remember the feeling I had at my last DMB show. It was that feeling you get a few months after you've graduated college and you decide to go back for a night to go to the same bars you frequented for four straight years.
It was that same feeling of being the uninvited, out-of-place guest. That feeling that people are talking to you, but on the inside they're laughing at you for being the "old guy" trying to come back and relive college for a day.
I think it's a paranoia we all had at our respective homecoming weekends. And just like the last time I ever went to Cornerstone Bar & Grille, the last time I went to a DMB show, I left thinking, "yeah, I never need to do that again."
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