Dynamite: Peter Holsapple on Reigniting The dB’s
Reissues and a tour are reminders of the ‘80s band’s brilliance
“All four of us spoke the same dialect,” says Peter Holsapple of The dB’s. He’s not talking about regional slang.
The band’s first two albums— 1981’s Stands for deciBels and 1982’s Repercussion — explode with expert pop songcraft, ambition, imagination, and a gift for tweaking the power pop/New Wave template into unexpected but enticing new shapes. But lacking a U.S. label, they were limited to underground cult status.
The albums, long unavailable domestically in any format (including streaming), are being reintroduced to America by Propeller Sound Recordings. And the original dB’s lineup is reconvening for a tour this autumn to mark the long-overdue event.
Co-frontmen Holsapple and Chris Stamey, bassist Gene Holder and drummer Will Rigby came up together in Winston-Salem, NC, with a lingua franca based around the broad array of sounds they soaked up. Big Star was an important part of the picture, and Stamey would eventually work with that band’s main driver, Alex Chilton.
“Chris was the first guy we knew that heard ‘When My Baby’s Beside me’ on the radio in Winston-Salem,” recalls Holsapple, “and Will was the first guy who owned a copy of #1 Record, and that was definitely part of our DNA.”
Rattling off a litany of other key inspirations, Holsapple adds, “We loved The MC5, The Move, The Flamin’ Groovies, Mott the Hoople—the first record in particular—the first two Little Feat records… Judee Sill’s record Heart Food, I bought that when I was a kid when that record first came out, that’s always been a big deal for me. There was a regional hit, a song from Philadelphia by a group called The Kit Kats, ‘Let’s Get Lost on a Country Road,’ it’s beautiful kind of baroque pop like the Left Banke. We loved ‘Hot Smoke & Sasafrass’ by Bubble Puppy—our high school band played both sides of that single. We just absorbed it all.”
The dB’s moved to New York City in the late ‘70s and became a fixture of the downtown rock clubs but couldn’t secure a domestic album deal. Eventually they dipped into their own (not very deep) pockets to fund their debut album and found a home for it on British indie Albion Records.
Stands for deciBels may not have gained much commercial traction, but music journalists and aficionados of the scene were blown away by the record. And more than four decades later there’s still enough love to warrant the aforementioned reissue campaign and tour. “We’re a happy footnote and grateful for any attention so many years later,” says Holsapple. “The fact that anybody remembers us at all is a real compliment and I think it says something about the songs and about the records. So that feels really good.”
Today Holsapple keeps his hands full, playing with The Paranoid Style, readying a new solo album for an expected January release, and more. “I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire,” he confirms. “I’m 68 years old and it’s exciting to feel relevant at this age. A lot of people are busy hanging up their spurs at this point, but I’m buying new spurs.”
Fortunately, he still found time to take us on a track-by-track stroll through Stands for deciBels.
“Black and White”
“‘Black and White’ had been a single on the label Shake Records, which was [New York Rocker founder] Alan Betrock’s small label in New York…. It was neat because we had a picture sleeve, and we were able to bring it to Meg Griffin who had a radio show on [WNEW] in New York. And I remember waking up on a Saturday morning and listening to her show and she played ‘Black and White,’ and it had that great radio compression. If I could have done backflips I would have done ‘em, it was very exciting. And it’s still probably my favorite song on the record.”
“Dynamite”
“That’s sort of like ‘Flying’ for The Beatles, that’s the only song that all four of the dB’s contributed [compositionally] to. Chris and I had done a two-person demo of it when we were rehearsing at New York Rocker magazine, and I played drums and organ I think, and Chris played guitar and bass. We both sang. We did a four-person demo of it too. I think either one or the other of those is on that I Thought You Wanted to Know 1978-1981 that Propeller Sound put out a couple of years ago. And then we recorded it for this record. It’s got that nice little effect that the Acetone organ Chris owned has, which is that when you turn the rocker switch off, the notes kind of go aowww, we used that to great effect when we were doing a cover of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ by The Beatles. I was able to sort of approximate the seagull sound with that. But that’s always been a song that people really like by the band. That was our first single in England also, on Albion.”
“She’s Not Worried”
“Chris and I had been playing that in the duo form recently and we had worked it out to play live [for the reunion tour]. I played organ on the original but I’m playing guitar on this now. I think it’s a beautiful song. It’s one of Chris’s songs that has a lot of Beach Boys influence, has a lot of Zombies influence, I think. It’s a beautiful song, even today I’m a huge fan of that song. We didn’t really play that one much live, but we probably should have. But I think we’re gonna make up for it now.”
“The Fight”
“‘The Fight’ is a song that I actually had recorded as a demo before I moved to New York. I had been working with Mitch Easter on his four-track machine in Chapel Hill. And we did a bunch of songs, I think ‘Bad Reputation’ also got recorded there originally, and then I moved to Memphis briefly for a few months before I moved to New York…. In the hopes that a little bit of Big Star might rub off, I did a little work there. And I recorded a version of ‘The Fight’ there. And then I brought that up and we ended up recording it for this record. One of the things we did that was kind of fun was, there’s a great American composer, Lukas Foss, and I think he’s from Philadelphia. When I was a youngster working in a record store I heard this beautiful [Foss] piece called Phorion, and one of the sounds in there is glass bottles being broken in a burlap bag. So, we did that, just to make a little reference point to that.”
“Espionage”
“Another great song of Chris’s. I’m featured on plastic school ruler, where you hit it and you move it on the table and it just goes ehrrr like that. There’s all kinds of fun stuff on there. Chris is funny about his songs, he doesn’t feel like he was really a fully developed songwriter at this point, but I tend to disagree, I think that these are all very well thought out songs. This is another one that’s a fascinating construction, very orchestral piece.”
“Tear Jerkin’”
“I really like that song of Chris’s a lot. One of the things that we used to do is, there was a Dan Armstrong effect that you could plug into your guitar…it’s called an Orange Squeezer. Basically, it’s a compressor. We were able to put that on the Acetone organ, so that beginning part is that kind of grinding sound that’s really heavily compressed. I haven’t listened to that song in a long time, but I do remember it as something that I like very much of Chris’s. I don’t think Chris loves that song anymore, we haven’t really worked that one up, but miracles can happen.”
“Cycles Per Second”
“We love that song. That’s one of the ones with little bits of musique concrete sounds, and we worked that back up [for the tour], that’s a lot of fun to play. The drums on that are really incredibly powerful, Will Rigby at his most articulate on drums. And of course, Gene Holder our bass player is a phenomenal bass player. Chris and I have done [duo] records together—Mavericks and Here and Now and Our Back Pages—but the thing that really separates that from The dB’s is always gonna be WIll and Gene, who make it so powerful and so unique.
“Bad Reputation”
“That’s a song I don’t like to sing anymore because it’s of a time and a place and it just doesn’t feel like a 68-year-old man has any business singing about a ‘new girl in school.’ That ship has sailed. But it’s a fun song, and it’s interesting because as the years have passed, it’s been brought up to me by some people that it’s basically ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ kind of sped up. We’ve treaded lightly on that one. But again, we don’t play that song much anymore. Don Dixon did a nice cover of that some years ago. And he’s even older than I am!”
“Big Brown Eyes”
“That’s a song that has had a very nice life. A friend of ours, Emily Hubley, who is the sister of Georgia Hubley who plays drums with Yo La Tengo—who are also old dear friends—Emily did a beautiful animated video for ‘Big Brown Eyes,’ which is so cool, and it debuted on HBO before the first showing of Chariots of Fire, so a lot of people saw it. Emily and Georgia’s parents were animators also, John and Faith Hubley…so Emily comes from film stock, if you will. [Interviewer approximates rimshot] And it’s a great little song. It was a short song to begin with and Chris helped make it longer. We still love playing that. It’s a nice little miniature, I’m very proud of it.”
“I’m In Love”
We are working that up. That’s a lot of fun, that to me is like a hurricane happening, it’s beautiful, there’s so much power in that song. That’s one of my favorites that Chris has written. And again, some of these songs are of the vintage where he’s not as sure that he likes them as much and I totally get that, but we have done our level best to get him to understand that these are really great songs, and that’s one of my favorites.”
“Moving in Your Sleep”
“We loved Big Star and somewhere along the road I got given a cassette and one side was one of the iterations of Big Star’s Third and the other side was the WLIR broadcast. We played that in the van constantly, so I wouldn’t be surprised [if there’s an influence]. But to me it’s just kind of a ballad, and it’s a little doo-woppy in the middle. Gene actually plays guitar on that, and Chris played bass on a cello. I do love that song very much. I don’t think we’re probably gonna do that [live] but…I like that song a lot, it’s a pretty one. [Former Beat Rodeo frontman] Steve Almaas cut a version of that. I feel very fortunate that people have discovered these songs and decided that they want to record their own versions of them.”
“Judy” (bonus track)
“‘Judy’ was a song that I wrote before we went on tour in England. Our record company over there, Albion Records, asked us to cancel a tour of the Netherlands…. But they were able to get us some time with a recording producer [Roger Bechirian] who had worked with Squeeze and with Nick Lowe and was very well thought of. And we went into Nick’s studio called Ampro in London and we cut that over a day or two I guess, and it was a single. I still like that song a lot. I did the accordion on that with a rented 120 bass accordion, which just about broke my back. The other thing that the producer had me do was to break the [guitar] solo into three parts…so I think there’s some stereo panning going on, so that was kind of fun.”
Stands for deciBels is out now on Propeller Sound Recordings, with Repercussion forthcoming. The dB’s will tour the U.S. this fall.
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April 19, 2022 -
February 22, 2019
“The albums, which only ever got a short-lived CD reissue from I.R.S. in 1989 and have otherwise remained unavailable domestically… ” actually got another re-issue in 2001 by Collectors Choice. Both albums on 1 CD with bonus tracks “Judy” and “Soul Kiss”.
I stand corrected, thanks Howie! I’ll ask my esteemed editor to make the correction!