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Dave Matthews' Band of Judases by C. Bottomley Let's talk about music for a change. Because the hottest debate raging around the top 40 is whether Dave Matthews has decided to stop making it. Or rather, whether the Dave Matthews Band's chart-topping album Everyday represents this grass-roots hero waggling his middle finger at his core constituency while jumping into bed with the masses. The Internet is buzzing with "new Dave vs. old Dave" quarrels. "This album is much closer to the mainstream stuff you hear everyday," LearnAboutMusic posted on the VH1.com message boards. CrashN2Me on DMBCrash.com went further. "Everyday is a joke ... Not ONE jam on the album. Not ONE solo by any of them." The main culprit seems to be Alanis Morissette producer and Michael Jackson songwriter Glen Ballard, with whom Matthews began writing after scrapping an album's worth of material recorded with longtime producer Steve Lillywhite. If Dave wanted to be shaken out of his post-platinum malaise, he got it. A VH1 boarder by the name of Mcbinetti summed it up: "Dave let Wilson Phillips' producer write all the songs on his album, let him play keys on every song, and let the guy talk him into playing electric guitar on every track but three." Undeniably, Ballard has done some severe liposuction. The DMB no longer wend their way through a thicket of solos to get to the choruses, with only the funky "Sleep to Dream Her" bearing any resemblance to woozy workouts like "Crush." Kickoff single "I Did It" may boast the ingenious stop/starts typical of DMB's arrangements, but it also starts off with a - gasp! - riffing electric guitar, while "The Space Between" is so FM friendly you'd think it was a Morissette castoff. Everyday is in fact classic Matthews - the ex-bartender trying to keep everyone's cup running over. As he explained to Rolling Stone, he chose to try out Ballard after RCA listened to the Lillywhite sessions and asked him where the next "Tripping Billies" was. Hung up about success and facing the challenges of his recent marriage to longtime girlfriend Ashley, he just didn't feel comfortable scaring fans with morose navel-gazing. Hence the relocation to L.A., the rock guitar, and an album bursting with glossy "Billies." It hasn't backfired. Everyday sold more than 700,000 copies in its first week. But at the opening night of his summer 2001 tour in their Charlottesville, Va., hometown, DMB drew mixed responses. "This is the bloated, complacent, overconfident beginning of Rocky III version of DMB," cried Coachman76 to Nancies.org, "not the lean and hungry end of Rocky II version we saw at the beginning of last year." "I actually sat down TWICE during this show," posted Matt. "I've never been able to do that in 16 shows. It scared me a little." "It's official: DMBallard is here," moaned Dan Phelps. IS DAVE LIKE DYLAN? GO TO PAGE TWO > |
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