Dawes

Dear Readers,

Just when I start to lose faith in new bands, a band like Dawes comes along. They’re a refreshing group of young guys from California who play the guitar and the drums and they sing. I just discovered them on the Internet today, and if I wasn’t such a tightwad I would buy their one and only album, North Hills. Someday I’ll buy it. And maybe I’ll see them in concert someday. But I’ve listened to a few of their songs, and all I have to say is, “Wow, they’re awesome.”

In an attempt to describe their sound to you through written form, I would call Dawes indie mellow folk rock. I only throw “indie” in there because they aren’t really well known, but I think they will be better known soon. Talent and passion this great can’t remain in obscurity for too long.

But wait! Before I buy that album, I need to remember the time when I heard “Postcards from Hell” by the Wood Brothers on Pandora Internet Radio, and it had such a good first impression on me that I quickly spent about twenty bucks on their albums, Ways Not To Lose and Loaded. But now those two albums sit in my CD case, and I never feel like listening to them, and I don’t really even like the Wood Brothers anymore. I think it’s the singer that bugs me. I think he’s trying too hard to be all folksy and Southern. Of course, early critics of Bob Dylan probably said he was trying to hard to be someone he wasn’t, but whatever.

Dawes is awesome.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa

P.S. I think that Dawes is better than 90% of the music you hear on the radio. If I was in charge of a radio station, I would play the music I wanted to play, like Dawes and the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan until the radio station went out of business because nobody would listen to it anymore. Then I would get bitter at the people who stopped listening to my radio station. I would think I was smarter than them. I would think I had better taste.

But if I had my own radio station, I would play music that was objectively better, from my point of view, than the stuff they play on the radio these days. I would play music that would be good for people to hear, whether they liked it or not. I would impose my superior values and musical tastes on all those tuning in.

Maybe I’m not much different than Judge Vaughn Walker who thinks he knows what’s best for the country. (You know, the Proposition 8 gay marriage in California thing going on.) I still think his ruling was wrong and I hope it gets overturned either by the court of appeals or the Supreme Court, but sometimes it’s good to try to identify with your political opponents.

Gosh, couldn’t I go one blog post without getting political? Oh, I’m a stranger in a strange land. But some of you seem pretty cool. You know, sometime we should get together and sip beverages. We could yak about the weather while avoiding eye contact.