East Coast power-pop legends the dB's play rare San Francisco show at the Chapel
Beloved NYC power-pop band the dB's bring their first tour in 12 years to San Francisco Thursday, with the quartet's original line-up playing songs from its first two albums at the Chapel.
While vocalists/guitarists Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple, bassist Gene Holder and drummer Will Rigby grew up in the North Carolina city of Winston-Salem, the band came together in New York City in 1978 and became part of the developing underground punk scene centered around CBGB's, Maxwell's and other influential Manhattan venues. An active participant in a number of North Carolina bands including Sneakers, Stamey moved north and was playing bass in Alex Chilton's post-Big Star band in New York that also featured Television guitarist Richard Lloyd when he wound up recording a version of Lloyd's song "(I Thought) You Wanted to Know."
Though the recording only featured Stamey and Lloyd, it would be released in 1978 as a single by Chris Stamey and the dB's (Rigby and Holder contributed to the single's b-side, "If and When"). The original quartet's line-up was completed when Holsapple joined the group later that year. The guitarist and songwriter had previously collaborated with Stamey in the bands Soup and Rittenhouse Square while he was still a teen and later joined Rigby in the garage-rock outfit Little Diesel.
Taking an approach inspired by the punchy, melodic music Chilton made with Big Star as well as '60s psychedelic pop, the band worked up an album worth of tunes evenly split between Holsapple's hook-heavy originals and Stamey's more angular and quirky songs. Released by British imprint Albion Records in early 1981, Stands for Decibels didn't make much of a commercial impact, but would be widely praised by critics, coming in at #26 in the Village Voice's annual year-end "Pazz and Jop" poll.
Despite the lack of sales, the record would retrospectively be hailed as an important early document of the kind of tuneful post-punk music that would dominate college radio and a precursor of the "jangle-pop" movement that would emerge in the American south. Issued later that same year, the band's follow-up effort Repercussions would meet a similar fate, but also earned wide critical accolades. By the spring of 1982, Stamey would leave the band to start a moderately successful solo career.
The dB's soldiered on as a trio with Holsapple writing all of the songs on their third album Like This in 1984, their first to receive U.S. release after the group signed to Bearsville Records. Unfortunately, the death of label owner Albert Grossman left the dB's adrift as Grossman's estate was sorted out by lawyers. The group enjoyed its first moderate chart success three years later with the release of The Sound of Music on I.R.S., but the dB's would call it quits in 1988.
The band members would pursue other outlets, most notably with Holsapple becoming an auxiliary member of R.E.M. and Hootie & the Blowfish. However the guitarist would also reunited with Stamey to release the collaborative album Mavericks in 1991 as the dB's reputation as an important early band of the college-radio revolution continued to grow with reissues of their earlier songs on compilations. The classic lineup of the dB's reunited in 2005 and performed a handful of shows, eventually putting out a well-received new album in 2012 entitled Falling Off the Sky.
In 2021, Propeller Sound Recordings issued a compilation of early singles, demos and live recording -- I Thought You Wanted To Know 1978-1981 that was met with an ecstatic response. Three years later, the company has remastered and reissued of the band's first two albums, marking the first time the records have been released on vinyl in the U.S. ever. The glowing reception of the reissues has spurred another reunion by the band -- and its most extensive tour in a dozen years -- that comes to the Chapel on Thursday night. They will be joined by special guests, Paisley Underground favorites the Rain Parade.
Founded in Los Angeles in 1981 David Roback and Matt Piucci (who were roommates while attending Carlton College in Minnesota), the band originally played punk-informed garage rock under the moniker the Sidewalks. Growing to include Roback's brother on bass, Will Glenn on keyboards and violin and later Eddie Kalwa on drums, the group changed its name as it moved in a different direction, drawing on the sounds of seminal LA bands Love and the Byrds for a modern take on psychedelic rock.
The chiming guitars of the band's self-released 1982 debut single "What She's Done To Your Mind" and a growing local following led to a deal with Enigma Records, who issued the band's landmark first full-length album Third Rail Power Trip. The record established the Rain Parade as one of the leading lights of the burgeoning Paisley Underground scene that included the Bangles, the Dream Syndicate, Green on Red and the Three O'Clock. While David Roback would depart the band to form Opal (which later evolved into the popular alternative-rock group Mazzy Star), the Rain Parade continued, releasing the celebrated EP Explosions in the Glass Palace followed by a move to Island Records for a live album recorded in Tokyo and their sophomore record Crashing Dream before splitting up in 1986.
The band eventually reformed in 2012, playing its first reunion gig at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco and teaming with fellow Paisley Underground favorites the Dream Syndicate, the Three O'Clock and the Bangles for a pair of shows in SF and LA the following year. Those bands collaborated on the 3 x 4 collection in 2018 that featured those four bands covering each others' songs. Last summer, the Rain Parade released its first new album in almost four decades, the well-reviewed Last Rays of a Dying Sun. The Rain Parade plays a special stripped-down acoustic set to open this show.
The dB's with Rain Parade
Thursday, Nov. 14, 7 p.m. $35
The Chapel
