Dot Dash opened up for Chameleons Vox the other night and I took some pics. Good thing I like blurry 'cause most of these look like I was running for a bus when I was taking 'em! Still, you get a sense of the live action and that's cool.
Dot Dash did a tight set featuring approximately 7 new songs.
Here's the setlist which involved a few last minute changes as you can see.
The final song -- "Shouting In The Rain" according to that list -- was a stomper! It was more raucous than other stuff these guys do and there was a hint of the unhinged in the song that I really enjoyed. For a few seconds, it sounded like it was about to fall apart but these are tight players and things always click and the song roared to its conclusion.
I'm working on a radioblue retrospective for this blog which I'm going to try to post before year's end. You'll see comments from Dot Dash drummer Danny Ingram in that piece.
I also went back and listened to the Julie Ocean Long Gone And Nearly There (2008) CD again. Hunter Bennett and Terry Banks from Dot Dash were in Julie Ocean with Jim Spellman from Velocity Girl and Alex Daniels from Severin.
This is really criminally underrated power pop! From "Here Comes Danny" which seems like the best Teenage Fanclub song never written by Teenage Fanclub, to "Ten Lonely Words" with its spin on the formula of early Jam singles, this is a solid collection that rivals some of the best work of The Posies -- it's certainly a more consistent record overall than any of their full-length releases with the exception of Frosting On The Beater (1993) -- and early postpunk singles from Rich Kids and The Records.You can get Long Gone And Nearly There by Julie Ocean on iTunes.
Terry Banks also did time in Tree Fort Angst and I'd urge you to seek out their compilation Last Page In The Book of Love (2002) if you don't already have it. It's on iTunes and it contains 30 nuggets of US indie pop from what started as a one-man project for Mr. Banks. It turned into a 3-piece band briefly before Terry went on to join Black Tambourine's Pam Berry in Glo-Worm and Velocity Girl's Archie Moore in The Saturday People.
Dot Dash
The Chameleons/Chameleons Vox
I was not a huge Chameleons fan before the gig the other night but I am now. Sure, I knew Strange Times (1986), but I was a bigger fan of the work of Mark Burgess and John Lever in 1988's The Sun And The Moon. Lever and Burgess delivered an awesome set of tunes Monday night.
I only wish that more of my pictures had come out good, especially since I was *very* near the stage.
Dot Dash
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You can buy the album, Spark>Flame>Ember>Ash, from Dot Dash, as a download via Amazon.com.
You can also get Spark>Flame>Ember>Ash, from Dot Dash, via iTunes in the US here.
And the physical CD is available from TheBeautifulMusic.com.
