Dave Matthews Band : Name Your Reasons Why They Are So Bad & Hated.

again, bullshit - Johnny Clegg and Savuka. He never sold as much as DMB, but you can put that down to timing and marketing.

where does someone like Stevie Wonder and his afro-excursions fit into your alternate reality?

uh

where does someone like Stevie Wonder and his afro-excursions fit into your alternate reality?

here's a more useful list of cumulative album sales. f'rinstance...

Michael Jackson 60.5
DMB 30.5
The Cars 23.5
The Police 22.5
Sade 22.5
Stevie Wonder 19.5
Grateul Dead 17.5
Bob Marley 16.5
Paul Simon 13.5

-- gabbneb (gabbne...), August 22nd, 2006.

guess it's a good thing i'm not a 'scientist' then, isn't it? of course, it was a 'scientific' thing i said, now was it?

and keep kickin that dead dead horsie there, ol' gabbneb.
somehow we'll see that point.

SECONDLY AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thirdly, ok, forgot about Bo Diddley, but certainly Dave Mathews Band is the first group of American Musician's to ever be influenced by European music. I mean their use of violin and all.

Michael Jackson 60.5
DMB 30.5"

you gotta admire the way gabbneb's stacked the argument here: by his criteria there's only one person who could possibly challenge DMB's seat as the "biggest selling figure in American pop to incorporate African pop music" ie, Michael Jackson.

............

for a dude with tissue-paper skin about the words-in-mouth thing, you shore do it an awful lot. my real point was, dudes, if you want to take my argument down, you're missing your biggest weapon.

For instance, if I say Dave Mathews is the first band to incorporate european influence with their use of violins, or keyboards, or guitars, or triads, or functional harmony, or the English language that's sarcasism.

If on the other hand I say Dave Mathews is a real Boer, that's a pun.

they were failing at the end a long string of successes

no idea what that means

Much of urban, educated black America was on an afrocentric trip through most of the 1970s, and the music of Africa was definitely in the mix. Every funk band had congas from about 1974 to 1980. Yes, I know the conga is technically an Afro-Cuban invention, but in America in the '70s it was presented as a nod to Mama Africa.

The idea that Dave's bogus little musical safaris were earthshattering breakthroughs is completely laughable. Paul Simon had far greater influence and created much more exposure for South African musicans; the notion the DMB were unique American exponents of Afrian music is as wrong as saying Eric Clapton turned America on to reggae.

xpost: Dave outsold EW&F too. point me to where I said they were earthshattering breakthroughs or created more exposure for South African musicians than Graceland or were unique American exponents of African music. I'm saying that no other artist has so completely integrated it, even at the minimal level dmb does, into their fundamental sound from the very beginning of their career. for everyone else it has been deployed at a particular point in their career, after being well established by other means, and eventually dropped.

I know I am being a bit specious here, but I think you are moving the goalposts around too.

Earth Wind and Fire were African-influenced from the get-go and continued to be so for the entire run of the decade they were most popular. And they were huge in the SOuth in the '70s with both whites and blacks. I'm white and I can't remember a trip to the roller skating rink that I don't tie in with EWF, and Kool and the Gang who were influenced by EWF, and the Gap Band, the Dazz Band, Cameo, etc (all likewise.) Black American music was at a hitherto-unknown apex in the '70s, and Afrocentricism was a huge part of that. Maybe the borrowings from African music were not all that obvious, but they were there nonetheless.

Yeah, DMB has outsold a bunch of people, but so what? How many of his fans can even hear or care about his African influences?

summary-heard WAY more than 2 or 3, unfortunately. and no hating on mass appeal. if he's into making an army of mediocrity lovin fools, then so be it, let the march of blandness continue.
but, the music's still crap. and crap coated in sugar's still crap.
the meatheads would still be available for keg-parties, name calling, and date rapes all the same.
and to call DMB art is the loosest use of the term available, i'd say.

But....at the end of the day, DMB's music still bores me to absolute tears.

-- Alex in NYC (vassife...), February 12th, 2003.

_________________________________________________________

Totally OTM and prescient. And this didn't even take into account the purposefully overhyped WMD canard and the hamfisted way this Administration would mismanage the war. He's right about DMB, too.

But before I talk about the album specifically, I want to share a memory I have of Dave Matthews and his entourage coming into this restaurant I worked in...it was after he had been on David Letterman for the first time, but I do believe it was well before Crash had come out. Anyway, at the time this happened, it was like he's just made it. He was a star now. And him and his group of people stayed later at the restaurant than anyone and I began to really resent him because I wanted to go home for the night, and we couldn't because of his table and I figured he had this huge swollen ego now that he'd made it. So when he finally decided to leave, we all stood up and greeted them, just as we would have any customers as they left and in a narrow hallway I stood, saying thank you and making eye contact with everyone in that whole entourage except him, whom I refused to look at or speak to.

This was before I really got into his music, though, so it does look very different to me in hindsight. Although maybe he did have a big head then? Who am I to say?

Anyway, first of all "Crash" the song is a fucking tradgedy. The riff is divine, the tune is divine, it could have been the best thing they ever did but he fucking ruins it with those lyrics. And it's because it's like he's too lazy to try some interesting poetry to describe sex and love, he has to have it literal and stupid. And I think I said before it just ends up sounding like an invitation to groupies, how egotistical. Just so idiotic and stupid. But the song itself, like I said, the tune is fucking gorgeous from beginning to end. As for the rest of the album "So Much To Say" isn't quite as good as it promises to be, "Two Step" is not too bad, but nothing to write home about, and "Too Much"/"#41"/"Say Goodbye" is really not worth mentioning, most of it goes in one ear and out the other. "Drive In Drive Out" is also rather repulsive, but then comes "Let You Down" something delightful happens and the album suddenly takes a turn for the better. "Lie In Our Graves" is delicious English/Celtic folky stuff to my ears. "Cry Freedom" is staggering and single-handedly justifies the entire album. "Tripping Billies" has been sanitized and overproduced here, losing all the vitality of the live version on the first album. And it all ends suitably beautifully, with a very nice mellow track called "Proudest Monkey".

Never again would I find their music interesting.