The dB's: Stands for Decibels

The dB's: Stands for Decibels

1980

Albion Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Black and White  2.  Dynamite  3. She's Not Worried  4. The Fight  5. Espionage  6. Tearjerkin'  7. Cycles Per Second  8. Bad Reputation  9. Big Brown Eyes  10. I'm in Love  11. Moving in Your Sleep




I had never heard this album until recently...I was familiar with their song "Amplifier" through stray airings on 120 Minutes and from that swank old "Left of the Dial" box-set that came out about 10 years ago...

It's weird...Looking at pictures of that box-set makes me reflect back on its glossy, pink surface and suddenly I'm vaguely nostalgic for my days working at AOL, but I remember at the time listening to it and how nostalgic it made me for my younger high-school days when I had first discovered a lot of the music on it...I bet someday I'll be nostalgic for 2014 when I used to blog about box-sets that made me nostalgic for 2004 that made me nostalgic for the music I used to listen to in 1994! 

Thus, the mobius strip of nostalgia endlessly curves back into itself...Anyway, the point of all this was that I had heard "Amplifier" by the dB's but didn't think much of it...It struck me as a cute novelty song...That was about it...

A few weeks back I was at Eastside Records (for some reason I can't get used to calling it Double Nickels Collective...) and the owner let me take first crack at a big stack of records that he hadn't priced yet...As I browsed through the albums I saw the dB's and was mildly interested...It was one of those days where I could use a good, fun record...I asked the guy how much he wanted for it and the price he gave me seemed fair (six bucks) so I went for it...Honestly not knowing what to expect from it...

I got home, cracked open a Chelada (which is always good record-listening juice) , and tossed the "Stands for Decibels" on the turntable...

When "Black & White" came on, with its introductory big-jangle strums, I knew I had hit the jackpot... Handclaps! Clean, catchy leads! AM radio harmonies! Yes! It was late 70's/Early 80's power-pop in the vein of the Shoes or the Records!

 I settled in, thinking I had the album all figured out when suddenly the second track ("Dynamite") comes on and I hear  nasally, snide voices that sound like they'e singing backwards...huh?  Okay...Art-pop it is...

But waitaminute! "She's Not Worried" immediately follows and its something else completely! Its "Pet Sounds"-era Brian Wilson, scaled down for 80's college radio...And "The Fight" is thorny, shout-y punk rock! Then suddenly it hits me...I'm in love!

Turns out the reason the record is so diverse is because its the work of two distinct song-writers... Peter Holsapple writes luminous pop-rock while Chris Stamey writes the off-kilter experimental stuff, although their styles do overlap quite a bit (Stamey's "I'm in Love" is fine straight-forward pop , and I see Holsapple's name on "Dynamite" which is easily the strangest thing on the record)...

  While Stamey gets in some brilliant moments, I tend to favor the Holsapple material on here...I mean, have you heard "Big Brown Eyes"? It's one of the freakin' greatest pop songs I've ever come across! The song never makes a single wrong move...Every turn the melody takes happens to end up squarely in pop heaven...I'm telling you...It's a thing of wonder!

I can't believe that I missed out on this for all these years...I had heard people sing the band's praises for eons...Hell, I had even listened to them, but dismissed it...I was wrong...The band's fingerprints are all over the 80's alternative jangle-pop that followed, and in addition to being an important album, it's just plain fun as hell to listen to...A perfectly skewed toe-tapper..I should have put down my tinker toys, laced up my Osh Kosh B'Gosh's and drove my big wheel to the record store and bought it on the day it came out...I'm so sorry I went all these years without it...

 "Hey, God, it's me...Jamin...Is there any way I can get a 'do over' so I can go back and buy the dB's record earlier than 2014?" 

Poof!!

"Eh...I knew there would be a catch...I guess it could have been worse...I could have come back as Miley Cyrus or Donald Sterling or something...I've always kind of liked fish...And being an otter isn't a death sentence...There's been lots of great otters throughout history..."

 "Like Otter Von Bismark, Arch-Chancellor of Prussia..."

                                                
                    "...and Alexander the Grape..."

I was about to go into various important otters throughout history, but I've kind of been derailed by that picture of Alexander the Grape...Man, I haven't had an Otter Pop in a million years, but suddenly I have an insatiable lust for them...I can recall not particularly liking them, but I wanted them anyway because of the characters on the box....That trumped the fact that the sharp edges of the plastic tubes used to cut the shit out of the sides of my mouth and when I drank the melted liquid at the bottom it was always so sweet it made my throat-burn...

Wait, what were we talking about? Oh yea, here's "Big Brown Eyes" by the dB's...Enjoy...