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

this thread will become the milestone by which all threads will be measured.

all shall pass thru the DMB thread, or they shall perish.

Hi! Long-time fan here (9 years, 34 shows), and I couldn't resist chiming in to tell you all how much I love this thread. It's provided much entertainment to a previously hum-drum day (I'm not trying to be a sarcastic bitch either, you really have great senses of humor and kept me chuckling). I'm hesitant to say more because of the criticism random "Googlers" have taken for being... random googlers (aside from adding unintelligible posts and making your point about tDMB fanbase resoundingly clear, but what can you do), but I'll try to watch my p's and q's. Most DMB fans are quite used to the hating at this point, and so don't bother to comment on the subject, but thank you Allison for truly Representing. I too, was a hater once, for about 10 minutes, until a copy of Crash landed in my stereo. From the first 5 seconds of Two Step I was a goner. I can't argue the technical merits of tDMB's musicianship because I'm not even a very good air-drummer, but their music spoke to me then and speaks to me still. That's really all I know. Oh, and that I never ever get tired of intoducing new music into my system; rock, jazz, and bluegrass being my favorite forms (DMB just happens to meld all three harmoniously). My other favorites include Badly Drawn Boy, Wilco, Zero7, Prince, Steely Dan, Nikka Costa, Marvin Gaye, Taj Mahal, Ben Folds/Five... just the first few that come to mind. I'm starting to listen to Death Cab for Cutie and digging them, and might just poke around this site some more to see what else I should be listening to right meow. Hope no one minds... :)

The Dreaming Tree

Standing here
The old man said to me
"Long before these crowded streets
Here stood my dreaming tree"
Below it he would sit
For hours at a time
Now progress takes away
What forever took to find
Now he's falling hard
And feels the falling dark
How he longs to be
Beneath his dreaming tree
Conquered fear to climb
The moments froze in time
When the girl who first he kissed
Promised him she'd be his
Remembered mother's words
There beneath the tree
"No matter what the world
You'll always be my baby"
Mommy come quick
The dreaming tree has died
The air is growing thick
A fear he cannot hide
The dreaming tree has died

Oh have you no pity
This thing I do
I do not deny it
All through this smile
As crooked as danger
I do not deny
I know in my mind
I would leave you now
If I had the strength to
I would leave you up
To your own devices
Will you not talk
Can you take pity
I don't ask for much
But won't you speak
Please

From the start
She knew she had it made
Easy up 'til then
For sure she'd make the grade
Adorers came in hordes
To lay down in her way
She gave it all she had
But treasures slowly fade
Now she's falling hard
She feels the fall of dark
How did this fall apart
She drinks to fill it up
A smile of sweetest flowers
Wilted so and soured
Black tears stain the cheeks
That once were so admired
She thinks when she was small
There on her father's knee
How he had promised her
"You'll always be my baby"
"Daddy come quick
The dreaming tree has died
I can't find my way home
There is no place to hide
The dreaming tree has died"
(shake't shake't) x4
Oh if I had the strength to
I would leave you up
to your own devices
will you not talk
can you take pity
I don't ask for much
won't you speak
please
(to much time)
Take me back x7
Save me please
(take me back)

~Dave Matthews

Not at all. Welcome!

DMB represents an MOR sensibility and the fetish of musicianship without anything resembling good songwriting. Taken alone, they are not unlike many of the boring bands that populate vh1 (john mayer, jack johnson, natalie merchant, nelly furtado, etc, etc.)

This would not be a problem but for their omnipresence, especially in cities with grocery stores that offer a myriad of granola options. DMBs main appeal is to jam band lovers, who are nice yet repugnant. Their secondmost audience is aging (sub)urbanites who crave eclecticism in only the slightest of doses. As much as I'd like to say that a band's audience doesn't color my impression of a band, it just isn't true in practice.

If anyone is still looking for good songs to download, some of my favorites are Seek Up (live at Red Rocks), Captain, Halloween (live at the Gorge - the video is even more kickass though), JTR, Lie In Our Graves, Warehouse, too many to list - but my all-time favorite DMB tunes is #41!

(from Seek Up)

I'm not going to change my ways
Just to please you
Or appease you
Look at this crowd
Five billion proud
Willing to punch it out
Right wrong, weak strong
Ashes to ashes, all fall down

~Dave Matthews

He'll rip your heart out, make you eat your own lips.
Then crack your elbows, and crush fingertips.
He'll make you wish that you didn't exist.
Cause Sargent 'D' is coming, and you're on his list.

Don't cut the line, cause he'll cut off your legs.
Don't take your time or you'll spend time with the dead.
Don't try to trick him, he'll fill you with lead.
Don't beg for mercy, he'll piss on your head.

He'll kill your sister, then mail back the tits.
He'll beat you senseless, then break out the whips.
He'll make you wish that you didn't exist.
Cause Sargent 'D' is coming, and you're on his list.

He'll put gas on your kids, then throw them a match.
He'll back the car over grandma, then dissect het cat.
With his Stormtroopers of Death, he'll come to your town.
Their Uzi's rip through flesh, then it's time to chow down.
Their cause is justified, their reason is clear. T
he word revenge is all that they hear.
He'll make you wish that you didn't exist.
Cause Sargent 'D' is coming, and you're on his list.

- SOD "Sargent D & The SOD"

http://www.powermetal.cl/darkmetal/images/venom/band03.jpg

VENOM!

You're right. I'm quite skeered.

may this thread continue into oblivion.

we've already had milk & cookies. what should be on the menu this time around?

A few peeps in half-hearted defense of the Davester.

In Richmond, Virginia, circa 1992, when I was a silly college student playing drums in a bad jazz band, these "Dave Matthews" chaps were a prominent regional band who were not yet famous. I never opened for them, but I did open for Bio Ritmo and Bio Ritmo sometimes opened for Dave. (So, by the transitive property of opening bands, I could kinda say I opened for Dave Matthews.)

They played every Wednesday at the Flood Zone, I think, and some friends of mine always went to see them. A girl I knew had a huge crush on Stefan Lessard, the bass player who is from some other country. A couple times, we were a few tables away from them at a bar or some such, but I never actually met Dave or anything.

The first song of theirs that I heard was "Satellite," from the album that had a cool magic-eye optical illusion on the cover (psychefuckinDELIC, man!). It has a very clean guitar intro that is in a weirder time signature than I had heard in rock and roll up to that point. And I still think that "Satellite" is a good song. (Though I can't get into all that followed it.) And I think that Dave's duet with Emmylou Harris, "My Antonia," was not half bad.

Whoever said that thing about some people wanting their eclecticism in very measured doses is mean but probably right.

Still, the band should be commended (with reservations) for popularizing different instrumentation from your standard rock band.

Yes, I know, the Velvets had the viola, blah blah blah Sugarcubes blah blah blah Jethro Tull. I'm not saying that the BMD is groundbreaking--rather that DMB's very large audience has a model for a different way a band can be, and that is worth something.

Last week, I heard an actually quite good rock band with a cellist, and suspect they were more inspired to break away from standard rock instrumentation by Dave and his crew than by, say, Rasputina.

;)

Tickets will go on sale via the Krewe of Roo, The Official Bonnaroo Community,
on Thursday, January 27, 2005 at 10:00 AM Eastern Time and to the public on
Saturday, January 29, 2005 at 10:00 AM Eastern Time. Please visit
http://www.kreweofroo.com/ for information about the Krewe, or the official
Bonnaroo website at http://www.bonnaroo.com for complete ticketing information.
Check back often for additions to the lineup.

In addition to Dave Matthews Band, the 2005 Bonnaroo Confirmed Artists are:

Widespread Panic (2 shows)
The Allman Brothers Band
Jack Johnson
Alison Krauss & Union Station
Modest Mouse
Gov't Mule
Bela Fleck Acoustic Trio
The Mars Volta
John Prine
Yonder Mountain String Band
My Morning Jacket
Keller Williams
STS9
Earl Scruggs & Friends
Joss Stone
O.A.R.
Toots and the Maytals
Umphrey's McGee
Iron & Wine
Ozomatli
Rilo Kiley
Karl Denson's Tiny Universe
Drive-By Truckers
Particle
Joanna Newsom
Xavier Rudd
Ray LaMontagne
The Gourds
Secret Machines
Donna The Buffalo
John Butler Trio
Ollabelle
Citizen Cope
Brazilian Girls
M. Ward
Madeleine Peyroux

Specific performance days and times for each artist will be announced in the
coming months. Complete festival information is available at
http://www.bonnaroo.com, which will be continually updated.

Cheers, Warehouse Crew

http://warehouse.davematthewsband.com

i wonder if they'll do thier 3 hour set or just an hour?

This thread is so flappin' long I forgot who was irked about DMB suing record stores for selling boots, but I had meant to comment that they are righteous in doing so; bootlegs are FREE, not 60 bucks. They freely allow tapers to record all of their shows so long as a profit is not being made. It is how they acquired their fanbase to begin with. Just an fyi, yo.

Dave Matthews Band: Their Success And Their Music
Who is the Dave Matthews Band? Five years ago that question would have gotten nothing more than a weird stare and a stupid look. But today you would get everything but that. The Dave Matthews Band is one of the most successful bands of the late 20th century. But many ask how a band so new has become so successful in such a relatively short period of time. Many come to wonder if it was their music, their look, or possibly something else that has made the Dave Matthews Band what they are today. It is my opinion that the Dave Matthews Band's success comes from their earth-toned acoustical music, their buttoned flannel shirts and their khaki pants, their heart-laced lyrics, and the need for many Jerry Garcia "Dead Head" survivors to find a new musical connection to life.

Using the Official Dave Matthews Web Page (http://dmband.com) as a reference tool, I found that the life of the Dave Matthews Band saga begins early in 1991.Dave Matthews decided to put the songs he'd been writing on tape. But rather than recording just his voice and guitar, he decided to gather some other musicians to give the project a fuller sound. Carter Beauford, Leroi Moore, Stefan Lessard, and Boyd Tinsley teamed with Dave Matthews and became the Dave Matthews Band. After several rehearsals in basements, they were ready to play in public. The first gig was May 11, 1991 at a party on the roof of an apartment building in Charlottesville. About 40 people were in attendance that night. Their first open-to-the-public performance was at the 1991 Earth Day Festival on Charlottesville, Virginia's Downtown Mall. That exposure led to regular Tuesday night gigs at a small restaurant called Eastern Standard. Before long, the largest music club in town had them playing Tuesday night gigs filling the club to capacity with locals and University of Virginia students week after week. As word spread, the band was playing three- four- five- night tours around the region. As the band's success began to exfoliate, the first album named Remember Two Things was released in August of 1993, shortly followed by recently released in February of 1994. With 1994 proving to be a big year for the Dave Matthews Band, Under the Table and Dreaming was released on September 27th. This major release is what really made the bands elegant acoustical sound known throughout the United States and Europe (26 March 1999).

By this point, many wonder what is next for the Dave Matthews Band. Their audience was growing, but they still didn't have a following that rivaled bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish. But nobody could have predicted what 1995 would bring, both good and bad. Dave Matthews Band (DMB) opened two shows for the Grateful Dead at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas. Some believe this show was priceless and "one in a million" for the Dave Matthews Band (Pepper). Many of the reasons this show was so important had to do with the attention Dave Matthews Band got from the Grateful Dead's audience. This proved to be an overwhelming significance when the Dead encountered the death of Jerry Garcia later on in the 1995 year. The Grateful Dead had an incredible amount of fans. "The band attracted a cult following in live performances by playing without set lists (lists of songs) in a free improvised format shaped in part by audience rapport" (Garcia). All the "Grateful Dead" fans, better known as "Dead Heads" loved the acoustic sound Garcia provided for the band, and with the newly created vibe of Dave Matthews Band, the transition was an easy one to make. Thus, many of the "Dead Heads" are now faithful followers of the DMB, and many now use Dave Matthews Band as a new musical connection to life.

But the death of Jerry Garcia and the flock of newly dedicated fans weren't the only reasons for popularity for the Dave Matthews Band. The sound, the feeling of the music that Dave Matthews Band creates, makes for their own following, like no other before. As David E. Thigpen, author, Time magazine puts it:

The DMB offers an alternative to alternative rock: music that is conspicuously eclectic but plainly rooted in the familiar bedrock of Americana, the blues and jazz. By introducing acoustic guitars and shifting tempos punctuated by violins, penny whistles and other flourishes of world music and jazz, the band has forged a cerebral yet commercially appealing sound, surpassing competitors like Phish. (Thigpen)

After the release of Under the Table and Dreaming came the album Crash, which involved various artists such as Bela Fleck & the Flecktones and Los Lobos. But their most recent and best studio recording effort by a landslide is Before These Crowded Streets. Instrumentally, the band is joined by interesting guests such as Bela Fleck that is known to "… decorate the record with his saw-toothed banjo…" (Gulla). Kronos Quartet and Alanis Morisette show up on several songs and sing background vocals on "Spoon". Before long, the Dave Matthews Band not only attracts their own audience, but they reveal that rather than being content with their considerable fan base, they reach out to new styles, new ideas, and best of all new fans (Gulla).

Though their music is powerful indeed, what's in the music is as so ever powerful. Lyrics are the heart of any music, whether they are sung, yelled, or mumbled. The Dave Matthews Band is definitely one to talk when it comes to lyrics. In hearing any of his lyrics from all the way back to his first album, right up to his current hit with Before These Crowded Streets. All of the Dave Matthews Band songs have what many would call "heart and soul" to them. Take for instance "I Let You Down":

…I let you down; How could I be such a fool like me; Tail between my legs; I'm a puppy for your love; I'm a puppy for your love; I have no lid upon my head; But if I did; You could look inside and see what's on my mind; oh it's you…

Line by line, Dave Matthews Band goers find themselves breathless is awe of the words that come from Dave's mouth. In "I Let You Down", Dave is singing about how he had done something that let supposedly somebody down by, and he is so upset he tries to show his sorrow and his want to reconcile his wrong doing. But the helpless of his music propels you into his world so you can feel his pain.

Many well known magazines also have good things to say about Dave Matthews Band's lyrical approach, "he (Dave Matthews) conjures optimism in a world be set by environmental depredation, political paralysis, self-doubt, and hopelessness" (Thigpen). Meanwhile Dave Matthew's describes his songs as "therapy, an effort to help his listeners cope with society, where racism is absolutely alive" (Sheffield).

There's something else about the Dave Matthews Band that propels so many to want to see every show that they play. Maybe it's because whenever the band is seen they wear anything but exactly what one of the newest and most popular alternative bands would wear; Khaki pants, flannel shirts, hemp necklaces, and an occasional baseball cap. This helps create the well known "laid back" style of the band onstage as well as off. But quite possibly it's the way they "seem more like a jazz combo than a rock band" (Thigpen). Robin Bresnark, from Melody Maker says:

Their musical style is very natural, full of blues and jazz from introduction of acoustic guitars and shifting tempos punctuated by violins, penny whistles, and other flourishes of would music and jazz. Onstage the five band members seem more like a jazz combo, playing tightly coordinated phrases then suddenly veering off into flights of improvision. (Bresnark)

In conclusion, the Dave Matthews Band is nothing short than incredible. By projecting a very laid back and functional attitude, with a very open musical style, the band will continue to top the billboard charts for years to come. Dave Matthews' musical style will live forever, and I am sure that Jerry Garcia is very happy knowing that his following is now sleeping in line for hard to get tickets to every show Dave Matthews Band plays. Talent flourishes in the band, and for anyone who has any of their CD's, you'll know that their live music is incredibly spontaneous. But one thing is for sure, this band will be releasing albums for years to come; and it's nice to hear music that is not filled with hate or violence, but filled with heart and soul lyrics, and a non-violent tone.

Works Cited

Bresnark, Robin. "The Dave Matthew Band gives us a guided tour of Washington DC." Melody Maker Aug 8, 1998.

Bresnark, Robin. "Unfinished Monk Business" Melody Maker Jun 27, 1998.

Garcia, Jerry. "Jerry Garcia." Encyclopedia Encarta. 1998 Ed.

Gulla, Bob. "Before These Crowded Streets." Audio Aug 1998.

Pepper, Tracey. "Dave Matthews Band" US Jun 1998

Sheffield, Rob. "Stunt/Before These Crowded Streets." Rolling Stone Dec 24, 1998-Jan 7, 1999.

The Dave's Matthews Band: the official Web Site. (1991-1997) http://dmband.com

Thigpen, David E. "Shelter in the storm" Time Aug 3, 1998

mmmm... Egg-cellent! BUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!