The dB’s will be embarking on a rare tour in September, and this coincides with the June reissue of their debut album, Stands for deciBels, its first time on vinyl in the US, and the October reissue of their second album, Repercussion. Both albums arrive courtesy of Propeller Sound Recordings, who previously released some dB’s rarities, but both albums originally arrived via the UK-based Albion label. This major aspect of dB’s history is often discussed and debated, why US labels failed to pick up a band whose work was later hailed by many musicians and fans as ground-breaking and impactful. However, the influence behind their actual recording processes remained quite American, with Alan Betrock associated with the first album’s recording in New York, and with Scott Litt producing their London-recorded second album.
Consisting of singer/songwriters Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey along with Gene Holder on bass and Will Rigby on drums, the dB’s cast their musical nets wide when it came to influences and experiments, and some of that diversity of sound obvious on Stands for deciBels made them outliers in the eyes of record companies. But that same quality is part of their enduring legacy. I spoke with Peter Holsapple and Will Rigby ahead of their autumn tour about the dB’s first two ground-breaking albums.
How much live performance had the songs on Stands for deciBels gotten before you all went into the studio to record them in New York? Had you played together much as a band yet?
Will Rigby: For Stands for deciBels, we’d pretty much been playing all of the songs, some of them for quite a while. Maybe a couple of them, not so much. But none of them on that album were a studio creation. They were all heavily rehearsed.
These songs feel somewhat experimental, but it seems like you were thinking about the ability to play them live, too. I hear a lot of experimentation, but nothing so wild that you couldn’t reproduce it on stage. Is that fair?
Peter Holsapple: Probably. The experimentation really came from Chris [Stamey]. I’m more cut-and-dry as a songwriter, frankly. There’s nothing terribly challenging about my songs, but Chris really made his into exercises. He studied composition in college and could read music. His songs are expansive, and break ground. Mine are just kind of dumb Rock ‘n Roll songs, ultimately.
That sounds like an understatement to me, Peter. I’m familiar with your work. But I hear what you’re saying. There is a live energy to these songs, even though they are in the studio, so I did suspect that they’d been played live. How did you track them?
Peter: The tracks were, largely, two guitars, bass, and drums, going in. There wasn’t a lot of complex layering until after we had a basic track that we liked. But we worked really hard to get basic tracks that didn’t require a lot of “fixing”. Fixing tracks is a lot easier now in the digital age than it was back in the stone age of the 70s and 80s. [Laughs]
All the songs that were released as singles for Stands for deciBels are very different. “Big Brown Eyes” feels pretty classic, and there are Power Pop elements, but it also feels more British-influenced than I might have assumed.
Peter: Chris has said in the past that the song was really short until we added a solo at his request. It still clocks in at less than two minutes long! A lot of the songs that I write are pretty directly Beatles-informed, and I think that one is, in particular. I go from the melody backwards, mostly. I feel like you can’t pull off a lot of tricks in a song that’s less than two minutes long! By nature, it has to be kind of direct.
“Cycles Per Second” is radically different and very unusual. It’s still unusual. Do you feel that way about it?
Will: I’m a big fan of that song. One thing that can be said about that album is that the songs are all fairly distinct, and aren’t written one way, or played in one way. It’s a really good album in terms of variety.
Peter: That also might be the album’s biggest failing, that it doesn’t have a single linear thread. If you listen to an XTC record, you can tell what it is. But here, we careened around between sounds, trying to do right by each song. I think it holds together, but it’s hard to tell from the inside. When you pick up a dB’s record, I don’t know if it sounds like the dB’s, or a collection of artists.
Do you think that impacted how the album was released and received back then? I know that you had to release it on a British label, and it made it all over the world but it didn’t get that US release you wanted.
Peter: I don’t know. There’s been a myopia that’s been a regular business for record companies. If a record company can’t figure you out, they’re not going to be able to do anything with you. I can’t think of an American label that really would’ve known what to do with us, in retrospect. I think they would’ve thrown up their hands and said, “Why can’t you sound more like this?” It might have been more than they could deal with. That’s my Monday-morning-quarter-backing 40 years later.
My uninformed hot take is that if this music had been released significantly earlier, during the age of singles, or significantly later, during the current age of singles, it probably would have been a lot easier to break in.
Peter: Maybe so. We’re just a band outta time! [Laughs]
Will: The clock is ticking!
“Black and White” is one that came along with a video. Is that a particular favorite? If any song on Stands for deciBels could say, “This is who we are”, I do feel it fits well.
Peter: Of all the songs on the record, that’s probably the one that I like the most. We recorded that, originally, long before the bulk of Stands for deciBels was recorded. That was a 45 that came out on Shake Records. It was a song that opened a lot of doors for us, ultimately. It has a lot of significant harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic parts that became kind of standard form for what is conveniently called “jangle pop” or “Power Pop.” I get that now.
But at the time, it was just another song that we recorded. It was a big burst of energy coming out of the radio when we’d hear it on a station in New York, for instance. When it burst out of the speakers, it was marvelous and felt so good to hear, and we hoped that the people listening felt the same way. I’m grateful for where it lies in the pantheon.
I think the energy there is something that connects a lot of songs on the album. The energy feels so unalloyed. It wasn’t moderated or tempered by glossiness that a lot of bands fall into.
Peter: We were a very excited group of guys. We were very excited to be out of North Carolina and up in New York. It was like the energy of living up there in 1978 and 1980 was absolutely informative in the music that we played. Then there was the stuff that we were listening to, like Elvis Costello, just explosive stuff. We loved that. I don’t think it was possible to live the lives that we lived in New York without it sounding explosive on our records. I think that influenced how we were feeling, too.
Will: We were super young, very young.
Peter: By the time that we cut Stands for deciBels properly, around 1980, we were 24 years old.
Will: I think that we probably started on that when Peter and I were 23. Chris and Gene [Holder] were a year older than us. We were all 25 or under.
Was there a feeling of optimism in New York about music at that time? People talk about it being a bit of a mishmash, where lots were happening, but people were a little unsure where things were headed.
Will: There were a bunch of other bands that we hung out with, and we didn’t necessarily have a lot in common with each other, but there was some camaraderie. I don’t remember there being any negative feelings. Everyone was having a good time and trying to make good music.
Peter: We were friends with so many of those bands you’ll see if you look at the club listings for those days. We did a show in London at The Rainbow that we were brought over to do at the beginning of the tour for Stands for deciBels. The other bands on the bill were The Bongos, and The Bush Tetras, and The Raybeats, and The Fleshtones, and us. There was this other group called Polyrock, who we didn’t know very well. But the other five bands all hung out in the same places and knew each other socially, which was really cool.
I always date my arrival in New York as two weeks after Television played their last gigs at The Bottom Line. It was definitely that second wave of bands, not Talking Heads, or Television, or The Ramones, although they were sort of around. They had moved on to bigger venues and touring internationally. What they left behind was this club scene in New York, and it was a lot of fun. It was a nice social scene. I assume other cities had something like that, but we just happened to be in New York and got to experience the energy of Manhattan. It’s been pointed out to us that it was probably one of the last times that you could live in Manhattan and be a broke-ass musician!
What was it like going over to the UK to record your second record, Repercussion? Were you big fans of UK bands?
Will: We grew up on the British Invasion, so it was pretty exciting to us, in that way, to be visiting where all that music came from. We literally played in The Cavern where The Beatles had played. It was very exciting! If we could have traded that for success in the United States, though, we probably would have.
Are there sonic differences that you think stand out between the first and second album?
Peter: Yes. The first album was recorded in parts, as the money came in. It was not all of a piece. The fact that it hangs together is a kind of a miracle. But the second album was recorded with a Producer, Scott Litt, in a single recording studio, with the exception of “Ask for Jill”. It was all recorded in London, at Ramport Studios, which was The Who’s studio. It was a project that had a start and an end, I would say. With Stands for deciBels, we had a certain number of songs, so we thought the album was finished, but with Repercussion, it was definitely a project that began and ended. That was very cool. Having a single Producer was also very important.
Will: There was also a recording budget that was fairly generous, unlike the first one. I think it’s the highest recording budget that I’ve ever been on.
Do you think that doing the album in a finite period meant the sound and the themes hung together more distinctly?
Peter: It probably has a more contiguous aspect to it, sonically. We had all the same instruments, and all the same amps. I doubt we had all the same gear for Stands for deciBels. Microphone selection at Ramport was what we used. Again, I’m saying this years later, but I think that’s a logical presumption to make about it. That’s the record that people like the best. That’s the album of the dB’s that people have always informed me that they like the best. They like songs on the other records, but they like Repercussion as a whole.
