18. The Day I Crashed

Back in 1996, working in a sheet metal factory, Danny heard a new song on the radio and was sure it was the new Supergroove single. It wasn't. It was "Too Much" by Dave Matthews Band, a band he'd never heard of. When his then-drummer handed him the full album, Crash, Danny's entire concept of music changed on the spot. Not only did Crash turn him into a lifelong fan, it showed him what was actually possible as a musician. Genre-defying musicianship, unexpected songwriting, real emotional weight, it's all still there almost thirty years later. On today's episode, Danny talks about the beginnings of the band and plays Mike the album that rewired how he thinks about music.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're not supposed to practice the ad, right? It kind of takes the spontaneity out of it.

SPEAKER_03 0:04

I'm just reading it first. Make sure you didn't put any trickery in there. Well, I'm gonna get you one day. What's going on, Danny? What's going on?

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Man, you're coming in hot.

SPEAKER_03 0:34

Well, I'm all amped up because I almost got in the crash the other day.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Ah, did you? Yeah. I can see what you're doing. I can see what you're doing. But you also did almost get in the crash.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

Yeah, I'm not, yeah. Yeah, I'm not gonna. Uh yeah, I was on I was on the way here. Um there was uh on the far left, on one of the like off-ramp exits, um the the traffic was completely stopped, and then the next two lanes over, everybody was still zipping by, and somebody cut right out in front of somebody. Um and it was a pretty significant crash, actually. It was a bit scary. So it was it was an actual crash. It actually wasn't, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

It was an almost that you were involved, but it was an actual crash.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

Yeah, I was it was kind of just to the left of me, um, basically parallel to where my car position was, and I kind of just swerved around them a little bit while it happened. It was a bit scary. Um, but then it did make me think, hey, remember Crash, the album by Dave Matthews band? That was a good one.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

I was thinking, do you have to tell that story again now for North Americans and change it to on the right? So they're not what you're talking about? No, I'm sure they can figure it out. You drive on the right in Canada, right? Yes, we do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's see if I can uh teach you how to do an episode about a band.

unknown 1:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

After you did a four-hour episode about Rush. It was didn't convert anybody.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

You know what? It was shorter than the Yacht Rock episode, and I could have gone a bit longer. You can put me on the side. Yeah, there's a lot to say about that band.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Well, this is another band that has a lot to say about, but I agree. But yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna rattle through um some of the history uh before we play a bit of music, and then pretty much just focus on the music. But you actually do know this record a little bit, don't you?

SPEAKER_03 2:07

Yeah, I I mean I know Dave Matthews band. Um I'd say around in university I listened to them a bit more, but um I haven't listened to them in years, so yeah, I've I've I'm sure I've heard most of the songs. I don't know if I ever really sat down and listened to the album.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Right. Um, so you already know them sort of in a passing way.

SPEAKER_03 2:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Yeah, yeah. Because Kiwis just don't really know them. Oh, really? I think a lot of people in music have heard of them or have heard a little bit. I don't know if regular punters would usually know who they are, which is always interesting to me because they're one of the biggest bands in America.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

I didn't realize they were as big as they were until we started having that conversation.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, they were enormous. I mean, probably not so much now, but especially rose up through the nineties and hit early arts. Yeah, very big in the 2000s as well. Yeah. So Dave Matthews was born in 1967 in Johannesburg, South South Africa, and he moved frequently between South Africa, the UK, and the US during his childhood. Oh, interesting. I re I realise I already sound like I'm reading text, and that's because I am. He started playing guitar when he was nine, and what I've always thought was really interesting is that he wasn't formally trained. I don't think, I don't know if he had a tutor, actually, now I think about it, but the story is he wasn't formally trained, and being a guitar player, observing his playing style, his playing style is bonkers.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

Yeah, he's all over the place. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

And and it's actually amazing when you realize that he's sort of emulating the music he grew up around in Africa. That he's I know he's talked about it before, like you can hear this the the kind of the talk. Do you know what talking drums are?

SPEAKER_03 3:44

I think I've heard the term before, but maybe explain it for the audience.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Yeah, it's a drum, it's a drum where there's a skin at both ends, and the drum itself is shaped more like an hourglass, and there are strings connecting the skins. So you're you're you kind of hug it with one arm, and when you uh squeeze it with your arm, it pitches up. So it goes boom boom boom boom boom boom boom like that. And that's a that's a it's a such a cool drum. Percussive bagpipe. And you can actually hear him sort of emulating that sound, especially in one of the songs we're gonna hear soon called So Much to Say. Uh, but yeah, when you realise that, you know, he's a kid who grew up in South Africa and heard all that music and it's all in his bones, you know. And he's pretty he's got a very percussive playstyle. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, and you know, African music, right? Yeah, yeah. Uh so I mean apparently when he met his drummer years later, his drummer actually thought he was a bit dim at first, or or on the spectrum or something, because what he was playing was so out of it, and then there was a moment where where because he was like constantly changing time signatures and playing like weird phrasing and things like that, and I think there was a moment where he's like, Okay, this guy's really clever.

SPEAKER_03 4:53

Yeah, there's something there's something going on, he's not just randomly changing shit. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Yeah, so he travelled around the world. I don't know what his dad did for a job. Um, I think that's why he was travelling a lot, but his dad died when he was 10, which obviously would have been a big deal for a young 10-year-old.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

He's someone who's experienced actually a lot of loss in his life, um, but also he's growing up in a time in South Africa where things are pretty heady. Um, so he's he's being very informed by all these, you know, very volatile and intense things in his life, right? So he grew up with all of that stuff flowing through his brain, and in 1985 he left South Africa uh because one of the rules in South Africa was when you I think when you got to 18, you were automatically drafted.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

There's a lot of countries that have um similar rules like that. Yeah. Korea is another one, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, and he was dead against that. So he left to get away from that and he went to New York. I don't quite know why he went to New York, but he he was there for a minute and then he went down to Charlottesville, Virginia, which is somewhere he had gone with his dad, I believe. So he kind of was retracing his dad's steps to get to you know to there. I don't think he had a plan, he just kind of went where his dad took him and found himself working at a bar called Miller's Bar, and he was actually trying to be an actor. Okay. And he's a very good actor.

SPEAKER_03 6:16

I was gonna say he's been in quite a few movies. Yeah, yeah. He normally has pretty funny cameos.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

He was acting in stage plays at the time, and he apparently was very, very good. And I I saw him in House, he was in he was in an Adam Sandler movie, I think.

SPEAKER_03 6:30

Yeah. I'm trying to think of uh as soon as you said that, I remember a couple different ones, but I can't think of what it was.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

And I think now those cameos happen because he was a rock star. Yeah, for sure. He had those friendships, but I think people have noticed that he's a actually an extraordinary actor, and he could have had a very, very successful career in acting if music hadn't taken off on him. So the music side of things was a bit of an accident, and there there's a story that I heard that when I researched it, it turned out to not be a story I could verify. It was a great story. Part of the story is true. One of the the the part that's true was that he was constantly hanging out at his friend's uh pink warehouse, and he'd be sitting there smoking joints, playing the guitar, and all of his ideas at that point were just scraps of songs. And the the part of the story that I couldn't verify, so it's probably not true, is that his friend who lived there took the joint out of his hand one day and said, I'm not giving this back to you until you finish those songs because there's something really special there, and he did, and the other part of the story I heard that I couldn't verify is that because he gave him that nudge and then they became this big successful thing, they then gave this guy a percentage of their earnings, as I think. Yeah, lovely story, couldn't be. Okay, interesting, yeah. Yeah, but there was definitely a pink warehouse, he definitely hung out there, and the guy definitely gave him a nudge. Kicked him out of the nest. Yeah, yeah. I believe the story is he was working at Miller's Bar, and there were all sorts of different b uh jazz bands and so on coming through, and in one of the one or a couple of the bands playing there were a couple of standout musicians, and one of them was Carter Beauford, the drummer, and another one was LeRoy Moore, saxophonist. And so Dave went and asked them if they would be keen to just play on his demo. Can you help me just record these songs? And they recorded the songs, and I guess it kind of clicked. I mean, I read a thing where he said that the first rehearsal was a total train wreck, and just he he said he couldn't believe a second one ever happened. But for some reason, a second one did happen, and they kind of found a sound, and then they started to quite enjoy it and put the whole thing together.

SPEAKER_03 8:37

The hangout must have been fun at least. I I guess so.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Yeah, they found Stefan Lassade, their bass player. He was I think 16 or something, underage, and I can't remember how they found him, but he was like a standout talent to them, so like joined the band. And the other the other member was Boyd Tinsley, their fiddle player. Dave said they weren't actually looking for any musicians in particular. He didn't have a lineup in mind, he was just like he would hear people and go, That's cool, I like what you're doing, you know, I like your sound, I want you in the band, without any kind of plan, right? And um, they they had the four-piece together without the fiddle for a while, and then they decided they wanted fiddle on one song, and that's when they looked around for a local fiddle player and found Boyd Dinsley and he ended up in the band. They also had a keyboard player at the time as well, who would sooner leave. So they start playing around town at a few different places. I also heard a story that they were playing one of their early gigs and noise control turned up, or the police turned up, or something, and they said, you know, you gotta get off, you know, we've had complaints, whatever, and they said, Um, can we play one more song? And they eventually said, Okay, one more song, and then you have to get off. And apparently the one more song was like 25 minutes long. I love it because they were a jam band, yeah, for sure. And you know, Carter and Leroy were from this jazz background, and they just I I think they also said they only had about four songs at the start, so they'd make every song really long to fin it to fill the gig up. I I I think as a side note, it's interesting how jam band has become a sort of swear word in the music world. A lot of people say that in a condescending way.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

Yeah, I have heard that before, but then I've also heard a lot, well, maybe not in the musician circle, but I know as like a fan it also is a bit of an endearing term as well. Like some people love jam bands, right? Like you've got the fish heads and and deadheads who will go around and travel and and champion these bands and go see ten different shows in a year. So there's definitely a it's a two-sided coin, I think.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

But the de But the deadheads in the fish movement are seen as weird outliers in a way. Hell yeah. Yeah. And people and and I mean that I I can't speak to those bands, I don't know much about those bands, honestly, but the the idea of watching musicians jam to me is like that's the most pure experience you can have watching musicians play. I mean, that's what you're experiencing when you watch jazz musicians. Yeah, definitely. And I've never understood why that became a swear word.

SPEAKER_03 11:11

Like it it almost seems like these days I I'll be honest, I didn't know it was.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Yeah, because people always say it with that kind of like jam bam. Oh, here we go, 16-minute jam track. Yeah, it's one more example of how we we put on pedestals all this forgettable crap, and then when people do something really good, all we do is put it down.

SPEAKER_03 11:31

Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

So they start playing at this local venue called Tracks, and I've got I'm gonna have bits of the story missed out. Dave Matthews band fans are intensely loyal and know all the history, much like Rush fans. That's why I was so nervous when I did the Rush. But I can't speak to Rush fans, I'm sure they're lovely. And Dave Matthews fans are are often like super lovely. It's actually really interesting. I think we even I think I might have alluded to this on the Rush episode where I think I was talking about how some bands have nicer fans than other bands.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Oh, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

And in my mind, I was talking about Dave Matthews' band. Oh, interesting. So often when you see people online on comment threads or whatever, the conversation is so civil and so respectful. Like I'm sure there are exceptions, but it's like they attract good people.

SPEAKER_03 12:21

Like me. Everybody who likes this band is smart and great. Exactly. You're getting it. Yeah, yeah, together, you're getting it. I think I do wonder though, if there's something about um just the music in general with stuff that is a bit more out there, or it's uh you know, it's it's a little bit out of the usual, maybe it's a longer track, maybe it's a bit more um introspective, or it's something that you actually have to sit down and and think about and listen more a bit more intently. Well, maybe your casual music listener's not gonna be interested in that, and then they're not definitely not gonna go in a uh discussion group and you know think about it later. So maybe that's just a bit of a natural progression of of the style of music.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yeah, and also a reflection on how things have changed. You know, remember there was a time where jazz music was pop music. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So it's not like humans are incapable of listening to interesting stuff. Something more complex than I think that's a little bit of a cop-out mentality that's thrown around these days. Like you have to dumb it down for the masses. I don't like that mentality at all. Yeah, no, you don't. There's lots of interesting shit that makes it into the zeitgeist.

SPEAKER_03 13:26

If a human is smart enough to come up with the music and perform it, other humans are smart enough to appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Yeah. And the same can be said about lots of TV shows and movies. They constantly say we've got to put out this crap because that's gonna and in a TV show breaking bad, or you know, something will come along. It's like that's so clever, and it's executed so well on every level, and people love it.

SPEAKER_03 13:49

Yeah, I don't know if you have this, but I find some shows where like they'll set up the premise and like you can already sort of see where it's going within like the first you know twenty minutes, and you're just like, Oh, I'm just I completely check out.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Either that or they have a really good setup and they haven't thought about how the story's gonna actually evolve or conclude. Well maybe. Here's the here's the tension. Maybe they're going, I don't know, but we're now eight seasons in and we can't figure out where to go.

SPEAKER_03 14:13

Maybe they're just winging it like us. Well, we're not winging it. Oh sorry, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

This is still this is still totally planned out.

SPEAKER_03 14:19

Yeah, sorry, don't don't give away our secrets.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Um, but they they were playing, I th I think they were playing somewhere else and they moved to tracks, or they were playing at tracks and they moved somewhere else or something like that. But they were playing this regular night on a I think it was a Tuesday night, and they were so good live, and everything was so in the moment and spontaneous, and the musicianship and the whole thing, their jams, people love the jams, that they started selling out every single Tuesday in the same little local venue, which is just unheard of if you've ever been in a gigging originals band, especially a band that plays 25 minutes jam songs, yeah, for sure. Yeah, so they sold out um constantly. I think the story is they then needed to upsize their venue, so they went to a bigger venue. Either tracks was the bigger venue or they went from tracks to a bigger venue, or something like that, but that's kind of how they were evolving, and then there's also a thing called the tape trading culture. Have you heard about that? No, this was the thing that was massive in the in the 90s uh in northern North America and in the US, especially, where people were recording on cassette, they would record shows, and then they would trade the tapes amongst the community. Yeah. And the Dave Matthews band actually put a board out with output sockets so that people could plug their devices in and get a get a mix off the mixing desk. Oh wow. So they noticed that people were recording their shows just holding up tape decks and things, and they're like, no, no, no, you can get a better, a cleaner feed if you just plug into this. It's obviously going to be rough because it's just taken off the mixing desk. But you can get a clean feed and then get you cassettes because these people were sending these cassettes all over the country.

SPEAKER_03 15:52

Like, check out the show on so in it's such a different mindset to no recording, no cameras, you know, put that put that down.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Well, that would catch up with them later. Okay. The whole dark part of that story matter, yeah. But they they encouraged it and people would be, you know, all excited, just like any collectors, like, check out the sack solo that they did on June 12th, you know, on this particular song. No, no, no, no. That's nowhere as good as the solo he did, you know, three months later. Listen to this one, and I'd be posting them all over America. One of the interesting outcomes of that was the first time they went out to the West Coast, apparently they filled venues and had audiences singing along with them, and they'd never been there before. And they weren't signed yet and they weren't on the radio.

SPEAKER_03 16:35

Which I mean, yeah, it's one of those things nowadays, you know, if something goes viral in their social media or something, you might expect that a little bit more if you go to a town that you've never been to, but you know that you've got a whole bunch of followers here, you might actually expect that, but you wouldn't have done that at the time.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

No. Yeah. No, exactly. So that that was a really important part of how they spread, and part of what's important about their story is that they had this organic rise. They it wasn't a case of what you often see these days is an artist that doesn't have any following and nothing's going on, but they now are trying to present it and hype it up and and make it seem like something's going on to try and entice excitement. Heavily promoted, and yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, these guys were their own little operation, they were the band, they had their crew, and they were grassroots hopping around in a van, and they really built this big following. Later on, when record companies would get involved, they were able to broker very, very good deals because they already had the the um the upper hand.

SPEAKER_03 17:30

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

Yeah, really, really clever. They um wrote a massive amount of songs in this time, and these songs would be enough to fill their first three albums. And one of the interesting things was once they got past their first three albums, they'd now run out of material. And it was after that their their studio albums became more and more controversial because they weren't quite the same ever again. You know, for better or worse, obviously it's up to each individual.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

So on November 9th, 1993, they released Remember Two Things, which was their own independent release on their own made-up label called Bama Rags. And that was popular. I don't know any numbers or anything, but it was popular. And it was enough that they did get a record deal. Like I say, they broke it a very, very good deal because they had the upper hand, and at one point Dave Matthews himself said uh that their record deal was so in their favour that they could lose it and not notice it. It was effectively a distribution deal. Oh wow. Which is a pretty bold thing to say.

SPEAKER_03 18:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

They weren't totally well, I don't know the details, obviously, but but it sounds like it was literally like a maybe more of a P and D deal, which is a pressing and distribution deal rather than the record company owns everything. And they would go on to become very wealthy as well. I think that's because they managed to hold on to ownership for a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

Yeah, so few artists actually had that sway, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Yeah. They also had um good people on their crew as well, including a good manager. So they somehow, for their first record, were aligned with the producer Steve Lillywhite, who was an incredible producer. The list of artists he's worked with include XTC, Simple Minds, Ultra Vox, David Byrne, Talking Heads, Rolling Stones, Peter Gabriel, and maybe most famously you too, because he worked on the Joshua Tree album. I don't think he was the producer, but he was part of that album somehow. So they got him for their first album, which was a an an amazing marriage creatively, because he really knew how to bring the band out. So their first album was called Under the Table in Dreaming, and it was released in 1994, and it brought the band worldwide fame, and it was eventually certified six times platinum. Huge. A tragic part of it was more loss and tragedy in Dave's life. Um, just before the release of that album, his sister was murdered back in South Africa. Her husband killed her and then killed himself, and left, I believe, one or two kids who um Dave then adopted. Uh Dave and I think Dave and his other sister adopted them to look after them. But a horrendous thing for the family to go through. So the first album is dedicated to his sister. Makes me choke up slightly just even saying that. Yeah, that's horrible. Yeah. So anyway, cut forward to 1996, and they released the album Crash. So it's the second of the first three that we're focusing on today. Now, just before I start playing any of it, how am I doing? How am I doing? Am I am I beating you yet? No, I don't think so. Yeah, I think I am. I think I'm winning.

SPEAKER_03 20:36

Let the fans decide. I've got to talk faster. I'm gonna win. I'm gonna keep screwing you up.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Sabotage. My my little setup on coming across the Dave Matthews band, because they were never a big band in New Zealand, so it was, you know, slightly unusual that someone like me would get into them. So in 1996, I was working in a sheet metal factory with my blue overalls and my brown steel cap boots, and I was operating a big uh uh stainless steel guillotine cutting things up to order, and I had this radio right beside me, and I just have it on the rock stations and stuff all the time. And on a previous episode, we talked about the band Supergroove. Do you remember that? I do, yeah. We listened to a clip of Carl Stephen talking about the uh record deals, and Supergroove had had this giant album in the early 90s, and it was it was this year that the next one was coming out. The new Supergroove album was coming out, and the Supergroove album was full of horns and funky drums and things like that. So when I first heard this song come on the radio, like this is a new Supergroove song, and I'm like, Jeez, these guys have really stepped up their game. This is some heavy shit. And I I listened to it day after day after day, every time it came on the radio, going, This is amazing! I can't believe how good Supergroove have gotten. I didn't realise the whole time I was actually hearing Supergroove's new song. And it sounded nothing like Supergroove. Because they had changed their sound to it for reasons we won't go into now. But the first song that I was hearing was a song called Too Much. So I'll play You Too Much Now. And to anyone who knows Super Groove, it won't sound anything like Super Groove. I was just I was highly confused. But here we go.

SPEAKER_03 22:43

He's got such a unique singing style, doesn't he?

SPEAKER_00 22:47

It's so alive. It's so in the moment. So this is what I was gonna say. Like I grew up loving funk guitar, I grew up loving the funk guitar in Michael Jackson, his DV Wonder, and the songwriting, and the I love great drumming, and I loved horn sections, the horn sections in Phil Collins' music, which was the Earthwood and Fires horn section. Um all that stuff just lit me up. But I also like rock music, I like music with grit, you know. One thing about me though is that I never liked music that was one uh one-dimensional emotionally. I always thought that was a bit untrue to real life. I thought real life you would be having a bad day, but you'd still have to put on a happy face, or there was always that complexity to real life. And I just loved, immediately I loved how alive this felt. And how you can hear anger, you can hear grit, but it's playful, it's joyful, it's got that mentality of like shit can get bad, but we're gonna make it, kind of thing. Um, and it had all this incredible, incredible musicianship to it. But it's something so playful and cheeky about those horns, you know.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

I also like the the panning they've done in the rhythm section. It's a bit of a call and response thing going left ear and right ear. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

A few years later, they'd play the song at Bill Clinton's second inauguration with the lyrics I eat too much, I drink too much, I want too much, too much. The song about greed. I like it. So funny. That was a cool build up. In the early days, especially, he had a lot of anger towards the idea of God because he felt like what kind of god would do things like have my sister murdered. Yeah. So that previous one was a big call out to God, you know. Can you hear the kind of anger that's sitting there under the plate for this? Yeah, definitely. One thing I heard him say in recent times is over the years they've had different members come and go for different reasons, and lots of people guessed with him. And he's he's always said he's told or listen to it.

SPEAKER_03 25:17

That was good.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

This is probably where he gets a little angrier. Horns playing the line he just sang. Call and response.

SPEAKER_03 25:32

They do a lot of call and response.

SPEAKER_02 25:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

Complex horn layers too. Yep. You can hear like some really low stuff in the rhythm. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Yeah, so he says his mandate for all musicians is he's he's not gonna tell you what to play, he's not gonna hold you back. You've gotta bring everything. You've you can't phone it in. I've been in with so many musicians in my time who are great, but they're just too cool for school, they hold back, and his mandate is like, give it everything. And you can hear it, right?

SPEAKER_03 26:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Unreal rhythms action. Absolutely. And one of the significant things about them is that they they were writing these songs on the road, and they were such high-level improvisational musicians that a lot of that call and response thing and the the drummer card playing in a sort of sympathetic way to the vocals and often catching the phrases of the vocals and stuff, all of that's live. Like, I don't believe they ever talked about any of it. Maybe in the studio they would they typed a few things up with it. But most of it would have just been like playing out 500 times live. They would have talked about arrangement things and what recorded. Yeah, you know. Like illusory words.

SPEAKER_03 26:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

All of the little spontaneous moments where you just hear them responding to each other like that. I'm pretty sure the very high majority of it would have just been what they ended up doing life. I mean, I've experienced it myself with quite a few bands that I played with. We're you play the same thing night after night, you get to know each other's playing, you start to compliment things and things, and and and some of my favorite moments would be that you just never could have possibly planned. And even if you rehearsed it, you probably wouldn't have remembered it anyway. Like it had to come about in that way, you know.

SPEAKER_03 27:20

Yeah, I I mean often when we talk about this stuff, um, I've related it back to sports in the past as well, just because you know that's kind of um sometimes I think about the band format as similar to like when you're playing with your teammates and everything is clicking and you might do stuff that you would never do regularly and it just works on that day because everyone's you know, everyone's in the zone, everyone's uh anticipating what the other person is doing, and you're you're you know proactively um hitting that next note without reacting at all. Yeah. And it's it's yeah, it's it's wild. You know each other's moods and reactions, and it's like you know each other's personality. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does happen, man, it's cool. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

That's right. Yeah, I always felt about them like they were kind of outside trends. Like they didn't belong anywhere. They kind of still don't, really. Yeah. And and I love that because I hate the idea of a genre creatively. I think it's a very limited idea.

SPEAKER_03 28:15

It's never it's never been a musician's idea in my video.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

But they weren't worried about trying to fit in in their time. They weren't trying to sound like Hero Jam, you know, or whatever. They were just playing from the heart and bringing all of their influences to the table. You know, and I mean only they were from South Africa, so the other guys had all their own influences, and yeah, I mean I just loved the kind of the purity of that. So at this point I thought we hadn't worked out that that wasn't over. Or maybe I did finally work it out just before this rehearsal that I was going to do. Uh we went down the L to Raggling before an on-KW that maybe an hour and a half of the bigger beautiful days. We had uh house and we did it up with a rehearsal weekend. And I was talking about the song that I heard. Yeah, so I must have figured out there was a band for the day to make us then, because I mentioned that NL drummer at the time had uh had the cell phone. And he's like, alright, well these guys are amazing, you should check the cell, and he put it on. And what I just played you was cool too much, they had actually like track four. I decided to start out of order because that's how I was introduced. But the song that opens the song could so much to say, and the song totally changed my brain when it came to music. It is nothing conventional about the guitar part, it is nothing conventional about how he's singing. When the band finally comes in, it's so surprising. Before the last 30 years of music happened as well. And I the clarity, the space, the musicianship, the the emotion. I just couldn't believe what I was listening to. This is where I think you can start to hear the African drum influencer playing.

SPEAKER_03 30:08

I do remember this one, I like this song a lot. This was a big one. This is I believe this is the only song they ever won a Grammy for.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Oh really?

SPEAKER_03 30:16

I think this is probably. Would this be their biggest hit?

SPEAKER_00 30:19

I'm not sure, honestly.

SPEAKER_03 30:20

Yeah, they had a few later that were pretty big. When I think of Dave Baptist band, this is the song, right, that comes to mind here.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

So at this point it's just a funky acoustic, and you go in my yep, like okay, sweet. What's gonna like that? Yeah, yeah. But listen to what happens to the baritone sex, the drumming. It always reminds me of the Muppets. And that funk guitar.

SPEAKER_03 30:52

Such an um inconventional, unconventional way of singing as well, but I love it.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

Yeah, yeah, I don't know where he got it from. Yeah, yeah. I've seen a lot of people, and I know it's on your Facebook, so it doesn't really count, but I've seen people in the local market here in New Zealand uh on Facebook throw a lot of shade at this band and other bands similar. And and then they will often celebrate pretty vanilla stuff. And I feel like it's gotta be just like you're intimidated by it.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Possibly is that a ta what is that?

SPEAKER_03 31:54

Horn. It's a baritone text, and it's a baritone text. Yeah, yeah. Have you seen the baritone text? They're massive, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

I love these words. One year of crying and your words creep up inside. It's just a fun little line. Uh, but it stayed with me ever since and I've now got a four-year-old daughter, and I've been thinking about it the whole time. Okay. And witnessing her go from saying nonsense to forming words, this song just kept playing in my head, you know. What's the thing like imitat?

SPEAKER_03 32:38

Yep. It's quite a like the beat's almost. I don't know, like the rhythm section it's almost on the back end of the beat. I don't know. Do you mean the like the phrasing? Yeah, like the start of each bar is is pretty open, and then it all kind of comes in at the back end. Yeah. We put this open group here and then button back up again.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

I just love the idea that they've arranged these songs based on how they felt reactively. They literally performed them with no plan and no structure, and over many gigs the songs would take shape. And you can see it happening when you go and watch enough of their life stuff. You can see songs that are in their sort of birth state, and then they change and transform and whatever, and then years later we'll end up on an album, they go, okay, that's where they ended up. And then it doesn't stay there.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Open up my head, let me out.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

And that line there, open up my head and let me out, landed with me so hard when I was a mixed-up teenager, not knowing like who I was and where I was going. But it's all playful. Yeah, and it's fun. I I just never heard anything like that in my life.

SPEAKER_03 34:18

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SPEAKER_00 35:03

Just for a second, I thought you were asking a very caring question. You're very conc concerned for the my state of mind in the mid-90s, but no, you're transitioning to the eight. Fair enough. I'm concerned about your state of mind today, let alone the mid-90s. Do I seem a little excited? Well, I'm now I'm now finished my story part, and now it's just really the music on the most part. But one one story. Uh one thing that I would find annoying uh uh in the studio and in rehearsals over the years was when you'd be trying to work on something and musicians with a default genre too much to speak on genre. I'd find that annoying. You'd play something like this, and then they would go, oh that sounds like that, and they'd just go into the template mode. And it would always like, no, we don't have to do that. You don't have to follow that same formula. We can kind of mix it from here and take it from there and take it from there, and mix it up. And they would often stare at me like, what are you talking about? You're playing this genre, I'm doing the thing, that's how it works. I'd be like, no, you gotta expand your mind, man. And this is one of the songs. This is a song called Two-Step, and it's a song that has a two-step groove, which is known as more of a country thing, but it's not a country song. And no one in the song is playing anything you'd ever predict. The song is about seven or eight days long, so you probably won't be able to listen to the whole thing. Just taking their time getting into it. They have a guitarist called Tim Reynolds, who wasn't originally part of the uh four more lineup. That was a nice little descending run, yeah. Yeah. Uh he these days he is officially part of the band. Um back then for some reason he was more of a floating member. But he's taking care of all of the electric guitar, I think. I'm pretty sure Dave only played acoustic back then.

SPEAKER_03 36:59

I only really think of him as an acoustic player.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

Yeah, he played electric a bit later. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 37:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

And Tim might have been doing those acoustic things. They sound maybe a bit more like Tim than Dave. See, now they've gone onto the two-step groove. Do you still count it as four? One, two, three, four, one, two, three. Well, I guess if it's a two-step. One, two, one, two, one. Yeah, I was curious. Yeah. That's what I mean, it kind of doesn't make any sense. They're treating it like four-born. I've always this is something that Radiohead does a lot as well. They have upbeat um tempos and long held vocal notes. I find that I think they're so haunting from bands with them.

SPEAKER_03 37:49

Yeah, Radiohead probably does that better than anyone. Absolutely. Yeah. Is there two different drum beats going? Maybe just the way it was panned in sound like there is.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Unless they they might have overdubbed something for effect.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

He's a bit like Tommy Emmanuel Carter Over, in the sense that he he has a very, very big drum kit and lots of percussion stuff around it. And he like they definitely don't need a percussion section because he is he he'll be playing layers and layers of stuff. Um, which I love. I just adds so much to the music.

SPEAKER_03 38:53

There's muted strings on the violin. It's cool too because that's such a simple melody with all the complexity going on, but it really jumps out of it.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

Yeah, that's right. We often talk about how when you go through the post-production process of tuning and quantizing everything, it takes the life out of it. And again, it's another thing. If you listen carefully to his vocals, you'll you'll hear it's not always hitting the mode. No, he's been all over the place. Yeah. But it's charming? Yeah, yeah. And if you can't. Well, it's not not like it was his intention, but if you're not trying to sing perfectly, you sing with passion.

SPEAKER_03 39:59

Emotion. Yeah. Conviction.

SPEAKER_00 40:01

Yeah. Polyrhythm?

SPEAKER_03 40:05

Yeah, that's cool. Now you know what I was hearing? Yeah. It sounds like the drums are panding the left ear. And then there's somebody doing like a rhythmic maybe on a fiddle or on a mandolin or something. It's just out of the like scraping.

SPEAKER_00 40:26

Yeah. There's a couple of acoustics in there. I'm not sure if our podcast always broadcasts in stereo as well, so some of the listeners might be like, what the fuck are you talking about?

SPEAKER_03 40:41

We'll listen to the song with some good headphones on and stereo later. I'm gonna fade it out because otherwise I'm gonna lose the bet.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

They do have very long songs.

SPEAKER_03 40:51

No, no, I want to hear the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 40:53

So do I. But I'm determined. I'm determined to not fall into the rush trap. So, this this next song, uh, again, I just learned so much from them about writing. And they played this beautiful chord. And whenever I wrote songs back then, I would constantly change chords. Uh, you know, one chord, down to the next chord, down to the next chord, or whatever. But Dave put this chord on top.

SPEAKER_03 41:29

But he changed the bass note underneath the chord. I was gonna say, as soon as you started playing it, I was like, no, no, you're supposed to put that finger down. I can in my head I can hear wherever it's supposed to go, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:38

Yeah, he changes the bass note and yet keeps the top chords the same, which is such a beautiful idea. And he also changes the note at a very strange time. He doesn't change, he doesn't go one, two, three, four. He goes one, two, three, and four. One, two, three, and four. And changes on the end, which is another surprise in the writing.

SPEAKER_03 42:08

Isn't that lovely? That is lovely.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

That's an amazing, amazing little progression.

SPEAKER_03 42:12

It's funny how many similarities I see between Dave Matthews and Rush. Well that that's that is something that Alex Lyson does a lot. He'll keep he'll keep uh like open chords going and sort of play the melody underneath, or he'll keep the high part of the chord going. Um and and use like open voices and and stuff like that to try and just fill out the sound because obviously they were just a three-piece, but um yeah, very similar technique.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

Well I appreciate that because now I can say if this episode runs long, it's because you brought up Rush.

SPEAKER_03 42:52

Very subtle, yep. That was cool.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

Yeah, that's really nice. And it's really responding to Dave's vocal forks. Last for you and following the dynamic of the vocals. And in this part here. Um That little section goes from a 4-4 groove into a bar of five, followed by a bar of three into a bar of six and back into four. When you actually count your way through that, it's so weird. And Carlos' like, is this guy okay? But then he was like, no, this guy's actually a genius. Timing tourette. And and I think what it is, my speculation, is that Dave is so free in his expression, he's not even thinking about it.

SPEAKER_03 44:28

No, he's not thinking about the time structure, he's just thinking about where he wants to go with it. Yeah. What feels right.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

Yeah. So I'm guessing that's probably where the band did have to actually work it out, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 44:38

Yeah, you'd have to.

SPEAKER_00 44:39

Yeah. I love how all the there's so many instruments going on, and they're all playing really strong melodies.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

So they're but they all work together.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

Yeah. But you you can't say that they're really using a less is more approach. It's such a busy band. But they're never stepping on each other's toes. Oh, they're playing sympathetically.

SPEAKER_03 45:15

Yeah, everybody's busy but in their own lane.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:19

And serving the song rather than themselves.

SPEAKER_00 45:25

The drumming is great in this one. Incredible, though. The whole percussion, yeah. Those wood blocks, he can do that live while he's holding the groove down, you know. That's incredible. He's an open-handed drummer as well.

SPEAKER_03 45:38

Listen, I grew up on Neil Pearl. I'm not impressed.

SPEAKER_00 45:44

Neil was alive today. I do notice that. Like I'm a big fan of drummers, and I'm often paying attention to conversations about the great drummers in the world. And I notice a lot that Carter doesn't really make the lists. I didn't know his name before this. Yeah. I I know his work because I know the band, but I mean I brought it up with Rooney a little while back off mic. Because I was like, why why don't drummers talk about Carter? And he's like, yeah, no, Carter's amazing. I'm like, well, how come no one talks about him? And I don't remember what he says. But I I just wonder if he's too outside the normal conventional kind of space that drummers usually play in. Possibly, yeah. Because you've got the RB kind of hip-hop drummers, and you've got the rock drummers, and you've got these sort of drummers that are in their lane, and they and and the session drummers. And Carter is such a an oddball that maybe they just don't sort of think about it.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

That triple kick kind of came out of nowhere, too.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

Yeah. He will often use things like that as a hook. So on the record, it then goes to too much, the song I played you first. Um but what we're gonna do now is go to a song called Number 41, which is one of my favourite songs on the record. Um the history behind it is that there was a big fallout. They've had a very tight crew that have stayed lore to each other and and so on. But it wasn't a true with their original manager, um, it was something that they eventually hardly with them and got another manager involved who would be very, very good for them. I think they might have been a cool. Neither of those guitar parts are in any way conventional. No.

SPEAKER_03 48:54

And they almost feel like they should clash. Yeah. But they don't really. Very different. Yeah. Very different tones as well.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

Day's really good at doing these big screams, these big kind of calls. I love the way he didn't completely get to the note at first and he bends the note up to get there. It's so powerful. And there's this big hook that came in, you know.

SPEAKER_01 49:27

I will go down.

SPEAKER_00 49:31

That's nice. That's a high hand word. Also, have a listen to the bass playing.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

I will tell you a baby, but it's cold up too much to go.

SPEAKER_00 49:51

See if you just listen to the bass and the kick, it's kind of upbeat thing. And they're tight as, right? They're locked into each other. We used to play for all the loneliness that nobody notices now.

SPEAKER_03 50:19

I keep thinking that like little stabby guitar part probably sounds like shit on its own. Yeah, Walter, yeah. If you isolated that, it'd probably be so thin. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 50:29

But it sounds great in the song. And that's one of the things I love about the production, is there's so much going on and everything's in its place. It's kind of like the opposite of the Warlow sound thing that um Spectre was famous for. How alive does it feel? Like, I mean, obviously I'm a fan and I'm fully signed up. But do you do you agree with me that this feels really expressive and you know pure?

SPEAKER_03 51:02

It feels like real musicians in the room playing together.

SPEAKER_00 51:05

Yeah. With no other intention other than to get out what they're feeling and to play together. Yep. I love that level. And now they go into a an instrumental thing. This song has a little bit of police and vibes in it. Yeah. I mean the opening groove was a very Copeland-y kind of groove. And because they have the fiddle here who takes a solo, and then the sacks will take over and take a solo, they've often got these like the true spirit of a jazz band where they sort of trade off to each other.

SPEAKER_03 52:04

Stupid question. Is there any functional difference between a fiddle and a violin? Uh, one starts with F.

SPEAKER_00 52:11

The same instrument, right? I believe so, yeah. Ah. Yeah. I just know that he was called a fiddle player. He was referred to as a fiddle player in the early days, so I just went with it. I think fiddle was just more associated with bluegrass and barbers. Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah. But I don't, I mean, I'm not a fiddle player. Here's a sex. Interesting phrase. Yep. We should talk about Leroy. He is such an unusual sax player. He doesn't play it safe. He didn't play it safe. He would often cr get the sax to squeal, and especially on live stuff, he'd push it so far. And he was never super smooth in that kind of dinner music sax way you kind of think of sometimes, you know?

SPEAKER_03 53:12

Um that sort of careless whisperer.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

But he really he kind of played the way that Dave sang. In a surprising way that goes from very, very tender to explosive and furious. I mean, there are there are other songs that we won't get to today where Dave pushes his voice to such an extent through pure emotion. And one of the great tragedies in the Dave Matthews band was in 2008 Leroy Moore had a an accident on an ATV, is that what they call? Those farm bike things, four-wheelers. And he rolled it and he was pretty badly injured, and he was in hospital for a couple of months, and everyone understood he had, I don't know, a couple of broken ribs or something, and he was gonna fall out of it. And I don't know the the details, but very suddenly he died.

SPEAKER_03 53:59

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_00 54:00

And I I heard speculation that he'd flown out to see them play. He wasn't fit enough to s to actually play yet, but he he flew out to um, you know, be there, and some people have speculated that the flight might have caused complications. Yeah, I don't know if that was ever the true story or not. Um, but they it's it's heartbreaking when people saw Dave sitting outside the hotel bawling his eyes out when he just found out, and they went on stage that night and played and and dedicated the night to him. Oh, that would have been heartranging. They had uh a guy called Jeff Coffin filling in who was um from Hellflick. And he was filling in Molly Rollers unwell and ride creator. I wish you're loving it. I think he really loves it.

SPEAKER_03 55:16

I think they're gonna be a little bit ringing. I won't kick on it.

SPEAKER_00 55:28

Speaking of drumming, I'll I'll play you uh I'll play you this one. Big fan shots. Now I'm gonna I'm gonna get us to the end of this one, because the drumming at the end is spectacular. And then after that we'll start to just play a few snippets of the second half of the record. It doesn't have the snare on two and four there. See how there's no snare? Such inventive players. Kind of got that walking jazz bass feel to it. It's very much informed by the guitar part they broke. But like with a limp. Yeah. Snare comes back in. Don't care if we all turn to dynamic moves here.

SPEAKER_03 57:32

What a buildup. And what about that bell work on the right? I definitely don't remember the drums being this intricate. Yeah, it's I probably just never listened to it with the same ears, you know. Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:57

That's all as that's all his uh right hand on the right symbol there. Well it'd have to be to hit everything else. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He's unbelievable to watch, you know, footage of. I've seen him live a couple of times as well. Just incredible.

SPEAKER_03 58:11

I did see Dave Matthews band once. Um would have been probably around 2006, 2007. Okay, yeah. Cool. I do remember it being incredible as at the Molson Amphitheater and the whole the whole stadium was rocking. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 58:37

Now that was good. Yeah. Okay, now they do this. It starts to become a bit unhinged. It's like, what the fuck? It's like you've got a song on the next record called Um Halloween, which plays into this type of weird is it a key change or just a weird bridge? No, it's just outside galore. Yeah. Release.

SPEAKER_03 59:23

I was just thinking he must be hitting pretty much every fucking pizza that's kidding hat.

SPEAKER_00 59:28

Yeah. Bring it back a bit. He was also famous for never remembering his lyrics live. So he would always start making things up. To be fair, I can't really understand them anyway. Well, yeah, but could you ever understand any better?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:02

No. Even when I saw live, I couldn't understand it. Right. There are some singers that are like that, right? This could be one of the coolest outros of all time.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:24

Oh, did you hear that? They caught someone in the room going, That was bad shit. I love it. And that also, I don't remember which episode it was, or it might it might be one we haven't released yet, but I was talking about how much I love bongos.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:40

That was the IRAC one, I think. Right. Danny Bongo's McConnell. There's some good bongo action on that one. There was some good bongo action. That um obviously very, very different style of music. But that little breakdown where all of the um inflections and all the interesting stuff is happening on those offbeats that you don't expect it. Yeah. That's something that um Buffy Clorrow does a lot. One of one of my favorite bands. Buffy Cornrow. And I love it when you're in the audience and you're watching it and you know that those parts are coming off. It's hilarious watching the crowd kind of get thrown off a little bit. Like it's so funny. You never get the beating, you know, and then you never get your timing right because we're so used to things being on two and four and that sort of set cadence.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:22

I always love seeing footage of the Dave Matthews fan playing live because you see all these people playing eardrums in the audience, curiously, because they've memorized all the films. Um I did actually miss a couple of songs out on the Dave Matthews fans will have to cover it. This is I'll just play a little bit of this one. This is another side of the band. This one's quite long. Uh and he He writes these really beautiful reflective songs. That are sometimes almost like a meditation. Like it doesn't have a big normal pop arrangement to it, it just sort of stay there in the emotion. He's a very vulnerable singer as well. This is a sort of like there's multiple sides to the band that the fans love and to his performing, and he has this amazing ability to be vulnerable on the mic like that. Uh which is in such contrast in many ways to the fiery explosive side of the band. Um there really are like multiple sides of them. I thought I'd play a little bit of this one as well. I don't remember if I've ever heard them play this on any live recordings, it's a song called Cry Freedom. It probably doesn't really sound like them in many ways. I don't know where the song exists in the canon, but I always thought it sounded a lot more like Hill Jam.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:26

I mean the vocal. That sounded a little eddy. You reckon?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:30

Yeah, yeah, because I always thought that's the future.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:40

I wonder if this song was just like a good song because it's a good song, um, but it's just not really exactly their sound. And I wonder if it just sort of got forgotten about it was just a bit of a B-side sort of song. Beautiful song though. I did jump over a song called Lion Out Graves for no particular reason.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:17

You're just not a real Dave Matthews.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:26

It is one of those albums where side one is spectacular and then side two is good.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:33

Well, side twos, you know, where you just have a cigarette and chill. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:38

Although you can't chill very much on the next one. The next one might be one of the bigger songs off this record. I think. I think it was a big single. This also really shows off how tight the band is.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:14

Do you know the song? I don't think so.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:20

Dragons were smoking, the movies were staying, that's how it's too.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:25

I just noticed the mongo, I never noticed before. That's why you like it. Yeah. This is one of their very famous lines. I mean they didn't make the line up. Um, but eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. Famous saying, but it's become one of their kind of mantras. Their fans put on t-shirts and hats and things on.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:59

We're wearing nothing, nothing but our status, status falling down on the beach. Remember, just out on the beach as we walk on the photo round springs. So I would have to get out of their space.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:28

He's got a very expressive iPad Mike Cymbalwork. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:32

And that was really innovative, especially at the time, because drummers would usually hold down quarters or eighths or sixteenths, and you could never predict what he was gonna play. I had heard a story, and I don't know if this is true, that he had before the band, he had had a gig playing maybe in some sort of television band or something, and he had gotten fired. Because he could never play anything straight.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:05

He needed to find someone like Dave to hook up with.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:10

That is, I mean, that's a really interesting point. There's so many artists out there. You have to find the the people the right people and the place and the timing, and you know, there are so many amazingly talented people who just never quite land in the right spot. And then there are people like this, like, I mean, Cut is an incredible drummer, it's feels like he would have had a good career one way or another. But maybe not.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:34

Maybe he would have been kicked out for being too busy everywhere he went, and he he wouldn't have found his day. Who knows?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:42

I often think that you see a lot of artists nowadays where, you know, hey, I I I programmed the drums and I and I did the guitar and I did the bass and I did the vocals, and it's like, that's great. And maybe it sounds awesome, but like, do you want to play with other people? You might even sound better, you know? A lot of bands are greater than the sum of their parts. Absolutely. And I feel like because we're maybe so isolated these days, you don't have these same sort of experiences where you're just in a room with people and you just sort of jam, so I think it's also the way to bring that back.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:11

I think it's also because it's tough to go out there and make your money back and build an audience and all that kind of stuff. So I think that's the crisis musicians are in because they work really hard to get really good at this thing, and it takes so much time and effort, but then what do you do with it?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:26

And these guys are only this good because they were able to sell out that venue every Tuesday.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:31

Yeah, they were playing live.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:32

People showed up to Newsly, but they weren't playing live to half-empty rooms, they were playing live to audiences that responded to them, and they were organically learning which bits the audiences liked and which bits they didn't like, and they were honing and honing and honing, you know. Listen to what they became.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:46

Like, isn't this so full of life and excitement and you know? Yeah. And I and I totally, I mean, I don't know what your personal feeling is, whether you you actually like it or not. I mean, it that's fine if you don't. And for anyone listening, you may not actually like this sort of thing. I think that's fine. You know, but you can't deny the expressiveness and the life that's in it. Listen to the drumming here.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:26

Yeah, I mean, you can tell that they're incredible musicians. But it's just kind of like, ah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:33

Couldn't keep a straight face.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:35

I'm just I'm just trying to get get Danny back for the Russian.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:39

Is that what I said about Russian? Yeah. I got so much feedback about the Russian design. Yeah, good. You deserve it. I didn't tell you about the feedback. Like a weird loot meditation idea. And the band is like fully just like.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:29

Maybe because it's called Proudest Monkey and it's a bit weird.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:32

Yeah. Like it doesn't really change, it doesn't really go anywhere.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:39

Yeah, I remember this one. Funny.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:41

What a strange one to remember.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:42

Yeah, weird.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:47

This is one of the few Dave Matthews band that really stuck in my head. It's so weird. Such an unusual song. If you're enjoying the show, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and tell a friend. It helps us grow and we really appreciate it. And make sure you subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you've got any thoughts on today's episode, drop a comment on our Instagram or Facebook page at What Do We Know Show. Also, remember to join our Facebook group. You can find links to the to the group on our Facebook page and website. We'd love to hear your feedback and opinions as well as your ideas for future episodes. Uh Danny and I are quite active in there and we'd love to get to know you all. Our website is what do we know.co.nz. And if you would like to support the show, you can leave us a tip at buymeacoffee.com slash what do we know show. We'd really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:36

You pushed your button again. We should try like, hey, you know, if you're if you're enjoying this show, uh you can leave a re leave a uh a review on, you know, Apple or Spotify in it. You gotta ease into it, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:49

Sorry. I'm still learning. We'll get it eventually.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:54

It's just the way you snap into it, it's just cracks me up. So what have you learned? What have I what have I educated you on, or what is your summary?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:03

Um I was just enjoying that guitar playing. Um again, it's weird though, right? Yeah, it is weird, but it's really good. That's cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:14

I think I definitely so I mean they're a band that I knew before. Um, you know, I I've definitely heard their songs over the years. Um I have seen them live, but I haven't listened to them in years. And I know a lot more about music theory and timing and sort of song structure after, you know, taking lessons um with uh Aquaguitarlessons.co.nz.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:37

Nice callback.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:40

See, that was casual. There you go. You go ahead and um so you know, I think I've definitely hearing it with fresh ears and a fresh perspective. I think I appreciate the musicianship um a lot more. They were a band that I think I always knew had something cool going on, something a bit unique. Um they're a bit of a band where I have to be in a bit of a mood, a mood to sort of listen to them. They're not they're not something that I'm gonna listen to all the time. And I think that's just a personal preference thing. Yeah. Um but this is making me want to go back and revisit. So yeah, I think that's one of the things. I don't think I appreciated the level of musicianship or some of the weird um, you know, some of the weird composure of the songs and and how busy they actually are, but then how it still works, and that's that's something I probably want to dig into a bit deeper.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:28

That's something I empathize with you about with the Rush episode, because sometimes when I've talked about Dave Matthews band with people in the past, like, play me something, what shall I listen to? And I'm like, um, I don't really know. They're not a pop band, so they don't they don't really have that kind of easy, here's your happy meal kind of entrance to the. Here's the big hit, listen to us first, too. Yeah, and so it's like you've kind of got to experience them, but you've got to experience them in the right headspace, and you've gotta spend time with the record yourself. But a lot of Dave Matthews fans will say we've got to really listen to the live records, because that's really when they're that's the true juice, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:06

Um see that's actually something we've talked about this in the past. I'm normally not a huge fan of live albums. Yeah. It's one of those things that I love live shows, but listening to live albums never really click with me. I mean there are there are a couple, um, but in general, I'm much more of a studio album listener.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:23

It all depends on the band for me. I mean, because I really appreciate well-produced studio albums as well. But I mean, a band like this where the live performance isn't just a replication of the studio song, it's actually a new expression of it. And all of the playing is going to be different and the solos will be different, and that's what I I like. I like hearing with these guys, you can you can take the same song and hear how it's been performed over 30-something years. Yeah, I agree. And and it's gone through all these changes, and you know, uh yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:54

And I think one of the cool things with the band that sort of has their roots in that jam space as well is you know that they're really good at that, because you know that is their bread and butter.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:03

Um and you'll see really cool differences in the performances from from one lesson to the next. So that is really cool to see, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:10

I I think also the jam band swear word thing. I think it's possibly in response to over-indulgent musicians doing, you know, 25-minute boring guitar solos and things like that. Um I think I think that might be something that fuels it. But it's pretty rich. I mean, there are a lot of bands that are held on a very high pedestal that totally did that, you know. Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:33

Led Zepp, Pink Floyd, most most bands who have great songs started as, you know, they they were doing a bit of a jam and they came up with an idea that they then expanded upon. That's right. You know, that's how a lot of songs are written. Yeah. So yeah. I didn't actually know that that was a quote-unquote swear word. Um that was new to me as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:52

Yeah, I mean, maybe I've overthought it, but I'm pretty sure I'm right that it's a it's definitely an attitude that's out there somewhere. No, I am. I've heard it. I believe it. Um I also love the fact that there's nothing predictable about these guys. Like, they're not just like a typical jazz sack solo or a typical blues guitar solo, which makes me want to fall asleep in Sony. Um, there's just nothing about this that is connected to anything. It's just on its own planet.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:24

And I think that's probably one of the things that does make it a bit tricky to bring people into it, right? It's not, it's well, who do they sound like? Like themselves. Yeah, yeah. They don't sound like anyone. Yeah, it's a self-referencing argument, isn't it? But no, that was great. Now we gotta think of something to play.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:40

Yeah, what do you play after that? Should we attempt to put a DMB?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:14

This episode was brought to you by Aquam Guitar Lessons. Head to AquamGuitarLessons.co.nz or email info at Aquangitarlessons.co.nz to find out more. I didn't know what the hell to play over that. I'm not surprised.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:34

Pretty out there.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:36

Yeah.