Dave Matthews Band, "Crash"

Mitch wears nothing but wears it so well

, and

Jul 06, 2022

Mitch’s Pitch:

In the 1990s the Dave Matthews Band spread across college campuses like a cold sore in a frat house. At the time, the most famous Dave in America sold square hamburgers, and seemingly overnight a new Dave came to town, selling square jam music for people who found the Dead too scary and Phish too weird.

From the beginning, Dave was a polarizing figure, both incredibly popular but also incredibly uncool. Jambands fans thought his sound was too soft and his crowd was too fratty. Rock music fans thought that he was too jammy and his crowd was too fratty.

Nonetheless, the sounds of ants marching and satellites filled the air as we convened our daily hacky sack circles. In many ways Dave was the human embodiment of the hacky sack - always getting kicked around while somehow uniting us deadheads with the jocks and the frat boys.

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Dave wasn’t alone in creating peace in our times between the various Clinton-era cliques, as another young celebrity singing silly lyrics in a growling voice was also gaining momentum. The Billy Madison-Happy Gilmour twofer made Adam Sandler a star, signaling a larger comedic pivot from the snobs versus slobs comedies of the 1980s (Caddyshack, Stripes, et. al.) to the manchild comedies of the 1990s (Tommy Boy, Dumb and Dumber, et. al.) And while people laughed at the Sandman’s movies, they certainly didn’t respect them.

The Dave Matthews Band represented a pivot in the jamband world, too, bringing a worldbeat perspective and unique instrumentation into a decidedly American form of music that was rooted in jazz, blues, and folk. Like Sandler, Dave was innovative and popular, but he wasn’t respected.

At long last, Adam Sandler is getting his due. With a long list of Oscar-worthy acting performances behind him (The Meyerwitz Chronicles, Uncut Gems, Jack and Jill) and the recognition that his comedies are full of laughs and heart, people are finally showing Adam Sandler some respect.

Well, it’s time for Dave to get his due too, in the virtual dorm room we call the Newbury St. Collection.

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Crash is now considered Dave’s second album, but at the time it was his fourth album after Remember Two Things, Recently, and Under the Table and Dreaming, in that weird way that record companies erase the independent start of artists’ careers. As a result, Crash is a fully-formed album, as the band had totally found their sound and vibe after three years of woodshedding on stage.

What makes the Dave Matthew Band sound unique isn’t just Dave’s distinctive voice - which can be quite warm and pleasant on the slower songs and quite guttural on the rockers; the weird thing is that the band’s sound isn’t dominated by guitar, as most jambands tend to be. Now don’t get me wrong - Dave is a fantastic guitar player, especially in a duo setting with Tim Reynolds - but in the DMB format, Dave’s acoustic guitar just provides the foundation for the songs, while the sound is dominated by the heavy rhythm section of Carter Beauford and Steffan Lessard, and the soloing is led by LeRoi Moore’s saxophone and Boyd Tinsley’s violins.

Most jambands are full of excellent players. What separates the patchouli from the nag champa are the songs, and as songwriters is where Dave and the crew really shine. Crash is bursting with great tunes, one of the rare CD-era bloated releases that uses its run-time well.

“Two Step” and “Tripping Billies” are signature songs and perfectly capture the sound of the band - that potent combination of flailing drums and wailing violins, with a hint of guitar and sax. It’s the real DMB sound and it’s spectacular.

My favorite song on the album has always been “Say Goodbye” - a funky, sexy, slinky jam that makes the greatest pitch for infidelity since Frank Sinatra’s “Dont’cha Go Away Mad” and is custom-built for twirling on the lawn.

But in many ways, it’s the softer and more thoughtful songs that add so much dimension and beauty to this album. The yearning “Cry Freedom”, the mournful “Let You Down”, the tender “#41”, and the languorous closing jam of “Proudest Monkey” show that this band has the patience to stretch it out and take it slow.

And then there’s “Crash into Me”. One of the most beguiling and cringeworthy love songs ever, with a couplet that could have been written by Adam Sandler himself:

Hike up your skirt a little more and show your world to me

In a boy’s dream

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World’s collided in 2007 when Dave Matthews appeared in the Adam Sandler movie “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry”. Since then, Dave has become a regular player in the Happy Madison universe, bringing together two of Generation X’s most important stars, who together elevated the frat house to the art house and made an indelible impact on our culture.

Now it’s time to put them in our house.

Ken’s Response:

Mitch hit this one right on the head. I’ve always wondered what it was about Dave Matthew Band music that made me not just dislike it, but it actually makes me a bit angry. It's too “fratty”. I’m not going to denigrate the entire collegiate greek system- and for you fraternity boys out there, denigrate means “to put down”- I’ve had many friends in my life that were once in fraternities and sororities. But something about the DMB sounds like the culmination of every bad cliche we have about those greek-lettered institutions.

I don’t even consider them a jam band; they play songs with some extended solos but it’s a stretch to put them in the same company as The Grateful Dead, Phish, North Mississippi Allstars, Widespread Panic, or the best new jam band in the world, Goose.

Dave is a great musician and his songwriting is complex and layered. He’s a much better than average guitar player and his band is loaded with talent. That’s yet another reason it’s so disappointing that the final product is such a terrible listening experience. His geeky look and his grating voice are like nails on a chalkboard and they overwhelm anything else going on in the background. The vocal theatrics that go on in “So Much To Say” and “Crash Into Me” are reminiscent of the whining that Adam Durtiz has always been accused of. The difference, of course, is that Duritz’s Counting Crows pulled it off and Dave, well, crashed!

Maybe Dave himself said it best about halfway through this travesty. It’s just “Too Much.” Sorry Mitch, but Adam Sandler is a phenomenal talent that reaches fans across multiple generations. Dave Matthews Band doesn’t even get the respect of a good portion of his own GenX.

Pitch Failed (sorry to let you down, but we have to say goodbye to this album)

CJ’s Response:

I’ve been on the creative side of advertising for over thirty years now. In that time, I’ve gone from working on TV campaigns with $250K production budgets to scribbling out a script for a Facebook video that some kid shoots on his iPhone for a hundred bucks and a bag of weed. But that’s not what bothers me.

What bothers me is the current sweet spot demographic of 25-42 year-olds. Every time I write a social ad directed at these people, I’m told that I can’t do anything that’s too “sales-y” because, above all, this target market craves authenticity.

Bullshit.

This group is easily the most inauthentic collection of individuals to ever inhabit this planet. Everything they do is filtered and doctored and curated to make it appear as though they are living the life of Jay Gatsby when they are actually scraping by like Wilkins Micawber. So, the idea that these great pretenders would turn up their noses at an ad with the Taco Bell logo in favor of a Tik Tok with three bros scarfing down chalupas at a skateboard park is utterly laughable.

The Dave Matthews Band sounds like it was put together by a bunch of Gen Xers who were told that their target audience would never listen to something as passé as the Grateful Dead. With that in mind, they assembled some talented bros and had them play “authentic” jam band music while scarfing down chalupas at a skateboard park. (Figuratively speaking, of course. I see the DMB as more of an Olive Garden crowd.)

In fairness, I did recognize over half the songs on this album so clearly it entered that popular consciousness. And the music isn’t terrible, it’s just silly. (The Adam Sandler comp may be most apt here.) Never is it more ridiculous than in the line that Mitch called out. You have every right to be offended by Matthews telling you to “Hike up your skirt…and show your world to me.” Aside from being crass, it makes David Lee Roth come-ons seem like Pablo Neruda love sonnets.

Oh well. The 25-42 audience we all want so much to impress may never be truly authentic. But at least they’ve got a house band.

Pitch Failed (I like the little way the line runs up the back of the stockings. I’ve always liked those kind of high heels, too. No, no, no, no don’t take ‘em off. Leave ‘em on.)

Mitch’s pitch was not successful and the Dave Matthews Band’s Crash has been sent back to campus to clean up a few missing credits.

What would you say about the Dave Matthews Band? Please march over to the comments section and let us know if Crash is the best of what’s around or just too much.

Exile on Newbury St.

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