Billy K - I hope this is okay. I've been meaning to post this for a while now anyway. This is the last of my Dave's Big Deluxe collection. I'm sure I don't only speak for myself when I say we'd love to hear the rest of your recordings. I didn't even know DBD had put anything else out because there's virtually no mention of the band on the internet. Is there a site I don't know about or any other info you feel like sharing with us?
01 Little L.A.
02 What Kinda Girlie
03 What I Used to Be
04 Power Grip
05 Time After Time
06 Ham & Egger
07 Girl in My Kitchen
08 Hole in My Shoe
09 Charlie Don't Surf
10 Brand New Second Hand
11 Miss Fortune
12 It's OK to be Ska
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Thanks!!! Finally!!!
ReplyDeletemany thanks 4 this and all the great posts!!!!!!!
ReplyDeletepvc
I lost touch with the guys many years ago. As far as I know, there's nothing really on the internet about the band. Someone started a Myspace, but it was a poor attempt. The touring lineup had a reunion show last year in Tucson and I heard they may do another one in Phoenix.
ReplyDeleteI'll pull together our first album (it was cassette only and pretty rough), our 7" and a pretty good live recording we did for a local radio show and post them soon.
Hell, I'm just glad someone remembers our records. We never had any label support, never made any Moon comps, and didn't tour much, so we never got much notice outside of Arizona.
This is Dave's Big Deluxe's first release, a self-titled cassette. It was recorded in a high-end home studio on some kind of video cassette format. It was some weird set-up. It sounds pretty weak by today's standards, but recording was not so easy back then, and we didn't have a lot of money to spend (we self-financed this one). It was released by Third World Underground, which was a very small local label that focused mostly on punk rock. The label owner, Jack, would soon start a new label, Slimstyle, that focused on ska and swing.
ReplyDeleteMy memory's fuzzy about most of the details, but I think we'd been together a couple years at this point. This was what I'd consider our first "real" line-up. In those days we just let anyone with a passing interest play. If you could hold a wind instrument, you were in. At one point we had 12 people in the band; 7 horns. And we (sadly) didn't have an organ player, that was done by the producer.
There were two Guitarists/Singers back then; Dave and Doug. Doug was into space rock and trippy stoner stuff. "Hardest Thing," "World Full of Ugly" and "New Start Tomorrow" were his songs. Dave was really political back then, as you can hear in most of the lyrics not written by Doug. If I recall, "Idle Gossip" was written by our first bassist, Gordon, who was heavy into Mod culture at the time. I wrote most of the horn parts. Not that they're particularly intricate.
The lineup on this record is basically the same as "Sounds from the Credenza," but would change drastically between there and "Miss Fortune." In fact, only Dave and I stuck around for the next "era." You can really hear a difference in the rhythm section. Gordon played this awesome Vox Cougar bass that had that old plunky sound that really defined us early on. His lines really moved. I think Dave was playing a vintage Mosrite through a vintage Fender Twin (killer vintage equipment was cheap and plentiful in Tucson in those days...sigh.) the guitar solos were all played by Doug. You may notice as we "grew" as a group, our guitar parts disappeared. Dave hated playing leads, and when Doug left, so did our guitar solos. But our horn section got a lot better, and started playing more and more solos. You'll notice the horns on this record...um...suck. I hadn't really played in two years, but I was the only one with more than high-school band experience, which is why the mix is so heavy on trumpet.
I did the "artwork" for all our releases (except the 45). In 1992 I didn't own a computer, so I hand-lettered the logo and set the credits with a typewriter. Remember, this was 1992/3. In the next couple years, desktop publishing would really take off, and I got significantly better at design (and got access to a computer). This one is kind of embarrassing, but also reflects the DIY way we did things back then.
I don't even remember how many cassettes we pressed or how many we sold - if any. Frankly, I think we just gave most of them away. We never made any money in the band. Anything we made from shows or merch went into the band fund for equipment and expenses, and later touring.
And that's officially more than anyone needs or wants to know about the early days of Dave's Big Deluxe.
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=3f88950f6f8ce8acd2db6fb9a8902bda
I'll post a couple other things soon.