It's too band the band's commercial fortunes declined drastically around this time, and they broke up soon thereafter, because this is when they started to get really good and interesting, in my opinion. Dave Dee left the band near the end of 1969. Although he was a lead singer, his departure wasn't a big loss in my opinion, judging by the paltry results of his short-lived solo career.
The rest of the band carried on. No doubt tired by their unwieldy name, they renamed themselves "D, B, M & T." They put out an album in 1970 called "Fresh Ear." It contained mostly original material instead of songs by professional songwriters Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, which had been the norm for them up until then. I'll quote from one review at rateyourmusic.com: "A highly underrated album. Don't be fooled by the personnel here - this is light years ahead of the quirky but dated late 60's pop that Dave Dee and co. were doing." I think that album is so strong that I'm tempted to post it here with some of the stray tracks they did around that time.
But anyway, the first five songs here date to 1969, when Dave Dee was still part of the band. The next two songs are also still from 1969, but are with DBMT only - they're versions of an A- and B-side. Then there's a switch to the "Fresh Ear" songs by DBMT. Note the covers of "Helplessly Hoping" by Crosby, Stills and Nash and "Bluebird" by Buffalo Springfield (a band led, of course, by Stills and Young). On the last volume, they also did "Mr. Soul" by Buffalo Springfield. Clearly, they were heavily influenced by the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sound, and that's a very good thing, in my book.
The last three songs are from an April 1971 BBC session. I'm just speculating here, but I think Dave Dee reunited with his band mates for this session, because two out of the three songs, "Wedding Bells" and "Sweden," were the A- and B-sides of a solo single Dave Dee just released. Yet all three songs have the lust multi-part (and very CSNY influenced) harmony vocals that DBMT were doing at the time. If anyone knows for sure who was involved, I'd be curious to find out. (For simplicity's sake, I've used the same band name for all the tracks here, even though some should be sans Dave Dee.)
In retrospect, it probably would have been smart for DMBT to have given themselves a totally different name and ditched their 1960s past entirely. Because despite the quality of their 1970 album, they weren't popular enough to put out another album, only a few singles, and faded away, breaking up in 1973. The band has gotten back as a nostalgia act in the years since, sometimes with Dave Dee and sometimes not, but they never again put out any of their own new material.
By the way, three of the songs have "[Edit]" in their titles, due to BBC DJs still talking over the music into the early 1970s. Sigh! I did the usual thing of wiping out the talking using the audio editing program X-Minus.
This album is 42 minutes long.
01 Don Juan (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
02 Run Colorado (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
03 Bora Bora (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
04 Snake in the Grass (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
05 Tonight Today (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
06 Bad News [Edit] (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
07 Talk to You [Edit] (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
08 Mr. President (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
09 Rain [Edit] (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
10 Leader of a Rock and Roll Band (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
11 Helplessly Hoping (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
12 Bluebird (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
13 Wedding Bells (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
14 Sweden (Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich)
https://www.upload.ee/files/15281000/DaveDBMT_1969-1971_BBSessionsVolum3_atse.zip.html
Because the band dropped drastically in popularity from 1969 onwards, I couldn't find any good photos of them that weren't already used on official releases. So this photo dates from 1968, an appearance on the "Morecambe and Wise" TV show.
No comments:
Post a Comment