Dave Mathews Band 24/7? Are you f'n kidding me? (Dallas)

The BBQ Pit
41

Last time I listened to 92.5, they were playing “country rock” or “Texas rock”. Not what I want to hear, I really don’t care for most recorded country. I cannot STAND the Eagles. I will listen to some live country and folk music, but commercial country has lost its soul. I think that they call themselves “Lone Star” now. I’m still pissed about the Zoo, too.

I don’t think it’s effective. Generally, when a station does something like that, I’ll just turn it off and NOT think about them. I’ll switch their car button to another station. I won’t be curious, I’ll just move on with my life.

This sort of thing might have worked on me when I was a teenager, and talked about radio stations with my friends, always searching for the best station in the Metroplex. We discussed the merits of the various DJs, and gossiped about them for hours. However, I no longer care about broadcast music the way that I used to. I think that radio stations have an exagerated sense of their own importance and influence. It ain’t the 60s and 70s any longer. We’ve got subscriber radio, we have cable TV, and we have the internet.

I used to love the Bone when they first came out. Except, of course, that they had to work bone double entendres into their chatter, which I always thought made them sound about 15 years old. However, I enjoyed just about all of the music they played.

I don’t like Bo and Jim, but then I don’t like most morning shows, or afternoon drive shows either. I just want radio stations to play music, and mention the artist and song title occasionally. THAT’S why I listen to Jack, even though Jack’s mix isn’t that close to what I want. I know that Jack won’t be having an interview with someone, won’t be broadcasting a ball game, and most important to me, it won’t have a radio personality trying to engage me over the air. Yeah, it plays commercials, and while I don’t like commercials, I accept them as the price of the music. The other stuff I mentioned doesn’t pay for the music, and as far as I’m concerned, is wasted air time.

42

In the New York area it seems like every station is going Top 40. Which means you are not the demographic they are looking for. They want the teenager you used to be, the one that would talk about radio stations. At least as their base. Once they have a base they can work on building a bigger audience. Stunting may seem stupid to you (I’m not fond of it either) but it is a way to create buzz and its a lot cheaper than a mass media campaign.

43

No. IMO, commercial radio is dying.

44

As a fraternity guy and graduate of pretty much the definition of a frat school back in the 90s, I can field this one. The Dave Mathews Band is often characterized as a “jam band” or “American trad rock” (short for traditional). Basically these are blues and jazz based rock bands, typically characterized by live concerts, long improvised instrumentals, eclectic lyrics and a laidback hippy sensibility. They include bands like The Grateful Dead, Phish, Blues Traveler, Rusted Root, O.A.R., Widespread Panic, Wilco and many others. Counting Crows, Train, Hootie and the Blowfish, The Wallflowers, Big Head Todd and the Monsters and many others could be considered more commercialized versions of jam bands or share many jam band sensibilities, as could many adult alternative singer/songwriters like Jack Johnson, John Mayer, and Jason Mraz.

Jam bands are popular with conspicuously unpreteneous (as in look how causal I look in my distressed white baseball cap, Martha’s Vineyard Black Dog or Hog’s Breath Saloon T-shirt and $70 Ambercrombie shirt tied around my ass) white semi-affluent outdoorsey college students types (at least they were in the 90s when I was in college). Part of the reason is that white chicks can dance to the unstructured, improvised “jams”. For example, the other day, I’m listening to some rap and hip hop (Three 6 Mafia IIRC) and my GF (a white sorority girl) tries to dance to it…badly). She realizes she has no rhythm so I’m like “try dancing to this” and put on a DMB song. Much better. Another reason is that the inoffensive droning of endless jam band music makes good background when for playing ultimate frisbee in the quad, barbequeing in front of your fraternity house, or smoking a doobie on the porch of your friends beach house while playing flip-cup. As it happens, these people are also the type of people most likely to join fraternities and sororities.

Anyhow, that’s my lesson on white people music for today.

45

The Bone? “Independent”? BWAHAHAHA! There are at least three stations in the US using that brand, all of them owned by Cumulus Media.

In any event, they’ve switched to a format they’re calling “Quality Rock,” which apparently means playing stuff that was pretty edgy for pop music 10-20 years ago. They’re also dumping their morning show guys and piping in a couple of guys in Alabama.

46

Yet another reason to leave my dial on The Musers in the morning.

And yes, The Ticket is also owned by Cumulous.

47

Even Hootie has gone country.

48

The Eagles aren’t country. Not with songs such as “Life In the Fast Lane” or “Get Over It.” Or even songs such as “Fast Company” or “Business As Usual” from their newest one. The Eagles and their individual members such as Joe Walsh and Don Henley are a staple of most classic rock stations. They may have had a country influence, especially in their early days with Linda Ronstadt, but since 1975, with the addition of Walsh, they’ve been able to hold their own on the rock and roll charts alongside the likes of Van Halen or Aerosmith. To me, they’re more like California or L.A. rock, but to call them a country band is to miscategorize them.

49

Yeah, I should have said “I don’t like recorded country, or country-influenced rock.” And I really don’t. I don’t care if they’re classified as rock, they have too much country influence for my taste, and I don’t want to listen to them. I think they were overplayed when they came out, and I think they’re overplayed at many classic rock stations.

One of my biggest complaints about classic rock stations is their very limited playlist. They’ll have one or two songs from each artist that they will play constantly. I used to LIKE “Another Brick In The Wall”, but that was before I heard it every day for thirty years. Come on, Pink Floyd did other great songs, too! For that matter, contemporary rock stations do this too. I don’t want to listen to the same songs every hour.

50

Your mileage obviously varies from mine. Different strokes. I’ll admit the Eagles do have a heavy cross-over with country, but I’ll take a healthy helping of them along with John Mellencamp, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and any other country-influenced rock you can name. And I like a wide range of rock and pop. You can throw them alongside Bob Seger, Led Zeppelin, and even Huey Lewis and I’ll listen for hours.

51

Re: the OP

Just thought I’d point out that DMB is playing Dallas this Saturday.

I’d be hard pressed to believe these two things are entirely unrelated.

52

Fascinating; I had always categorized most of this as chick music (except the Grateful Dead & Phish, which is hippy music), since I can’t imagine anyone with testosterone responding to it on any level. The people I’ve known who really love Dave Matthews and his ilk are all girls. I’m blessedly ignorant of the culture of the fraternity (we didn’t have any at my school), but this is a revelation.

53

Well, it’s frat rock in that it’s what frat boys play when there are girls around because they want something that appeals to girls, but they can’t play Tori Amos can they? And so they play Dave Mathews. Disclaimer: may not apply to any decade other than the 1990s.

54

As I said, it’s not so much music that guys “respond” to as have in the background. And when you throw frat parties, every song can’t be Green Day or Nine Inch Nails otherwise you’ll have a party with nothing but dudes.

55

When I lived in Dallas the Eagle, I forget the call numbers for the radio station now, decided they were going to change formats. They started playing Hotel California by the band the Eagles for a 24 hour period uninterrupted by DJs or commercials. This happened sometime in the 1990s.

Odesio

56

Yep, that was my experience. Sometimes they would want to seem a bit rebellious and bad-boy to the girls, and they’d put on some Red Hot Chili Peppers. Then it might escalate to Nine Inch Nails, but this scared too many of the girls away because you couldn’t dance to it and they started milling about nervously like a herd of zebras that smell cheetahs on the wind. The “frat party defcon 5” signal subconsciously spread and someone rapidly switched out to put on some Steve Miller Band, or Jimmy Buffet. The nervousness subsided, and the girls once again started dancing, beer-bonging, and belly shooting.

57

So if you find a girl that likes NIN, hold onto her? Or run far away, I’m not sure which!

58

So are you saying that the guys really couldn’t have cared less for the Dave Matthews Band (DMB) and only played it for its non-threatening, mildly danceable qualities? Because I’ve seen at least some (what seem to be) guys in this thread claiming to like the band on its own merits, and it seems like that’s how the frat connection came up. I’m not being judgmental – attracting girls is an admirable use of music, and guys liking DMB is just fine by me if that’s the way they swing, so to speak. Really I just want to know if I should revise my impression that most of DMB’s genuine fans are female.

59

Agreed.

O.A.R. and Dave Matthews were the frat-rock/white blues bands of 1999-2003.

60

I wouldn’t call myself a “fan” of DMB, I’ve heard they give great concerts but although I know of at least three times they’ve been in my town I’ve never bothered to go see them. Still I like some of their stuff. Pretty sure I’m not using it to get sorority chicks or that I ever did so. In fact if you asked my wife who Dave Mathews is she’d probably give you a blank stare.

Enjoy,
Steven