The Chapel-Hill based pop-rock band The dBs—fronted by 2012 Fall Conference workshop leader Peter Holsapple—rocked Raleigh’s Hopscotch Music Festival this weekend. They played the Long View Center on Friday night, “and sounded fantastic on classics like ‘Love is for Lovers’ and ‘Ask for Jill,’ as well as new tunes like ‘World to Cry’ and ‘Collide-oOo-Scope.'”
Check out their new jam, “That Time Is Gone,” in the YouTube clip here.
From the Hopscotch website:
….it is fitting to speak of The dB’s in such Biblical terms, as the band is of holy importance when it comes to North Carolina music. With its early work quite possibly the oft-forgotten but not entirely missing link between Big Star and R.E.M., the influence stretches well beyond this state, too. After all, the guys helped launch the Southern indie-rock movement….
The band’s first two records, 1981’s Stands for Decibels and ‘82’s Repercussion, presented pop/rock at its most brainy and brazen. The arrangements were unconventional but not afraid to bounce and jangle, and having two songwriters—Stamey the more angular, Holsapple the more accessible—added dynamics. In short, it was music both for scholars and for those just out looking for a good hook.
Peter Holsapple and David Menconi will lead a “Music Writing” workshop at the North Carolina Writers’ Network 2012 Fall Conference, November 2-4 at the Embassy Suites in Cary. The workshop will address how to capture “the temporal, elusive, sometimes mysterious qualities of great music in the permanent, concrete clarity of great words.”
Registration for the 2012 Fall Conference is now open.