Dancing Dave and Friends

Dancing Dave and Friends is a project to put more radical soul into the Digital Underground. I try to dance through my whole life, so I've learned how to dance and do other things at the same time. I've discovered that I actually play keyboards better if I dance at the same time. You know, that's how dynamic players used to rock the house. Or sometime I play in sitting Zen meditation position, to clear and focus my mind, that is all. Now keyboardists can choose from hundreds of sounds and tweak the ambience and groove in so many ways, but there are universal roots in natural rhythms and energy flows and you've still gotta find a way to express yourself in a groove. I started banging on pots and pans before I even hit Kindergarden, and then switched to piano as soon as I could lay my hands on one. By the time I was a teen-ager I was playing electric keyboards in a band with my brother, a guitarist. I learned about the roots of groove music from a colorfully eccentric old Cajun Bluesmaster and chef known as Mighty Shu-Bee Villery. This guy has played with everyone from Clifton Chenier to Muddy Waters to Willie Nelson. And his gumbo is second to none. To the right you can see me teaching my baby NEICE CAMMY to jam, though it may be a few years before she turns up on a Dancing Dave and Friends recording. How often did you hear the TV "news" report the fact that the Bush and Bin Ladin families have been partners in business and crime for decades? ! Does it take an intense underground cultural revolution before the crimes of Presidents such as Nixon or Bush can be exposed? The rapper Paris was raising consciousness about all the official 9/11 lies long before New York newspapers dared to do any such thing! Sometimes music can reach it's highest level helping people through their darkest passages...think of Jimi Hendrix. Music can be a powerful way of raising consciousness. It sticks in peoples hearts and minds and changes how they see things. John Lennon, Bob Marley and Alanis Morissette understood that well. Regime change involves a change of groove. My most popular station at mp3.com was the positive movement music station "How Does It Feel to be One of the Beautiful People". It included pictures of both musicians and peace protestors, and that turned out to be a powerful combination all over the planet. A British Samba Groove band says ONLY MUSIC CAN SAVE US NOW. that only someone like , , ,, Cheryl Seal, Aaron McGruder,, , or Al Franken can face the terrible hidden truth about it? Well, we know Britney Spears won't help us make sense of our Orwellian nightmare! Those guys rock! So here we are getting into the biggest wave of movement culture and political activism since the '60's and '70's. We've got a corrupt Presidential Administration in Washington guilty of So will we get the satisfaction of watching the Bush gang be tried for their crimes? Only if more Democrats are elected to the U.S. Congress and some powerful progressive songs from anywhere bring people together and open up our minds and media. Then all the evidence of the Bush Regime's crimes will be able to make a difference. So get involved in the movement wherever you are, and give Freedom, Peace, Truth and Justice a chance! Musicians from Ani DiFranco to Public Enemy to the Asian Dub Foundation have contributed to these sonic manifestos. There's plenty of popular recordings on the net for free, so if you want people to support your music by buying it, you have STAND FOR SOMETHING. It's been a long road, but now we have a MOVEMENT. We need the movement to save our future, and the movement needs music to channel people's energy into grooves that bring us together all around the planet. TIMES LIKE RIGHT NOW OR THE NIXON ERA ARE ACTUALLY WHEN MUSIC IS MOST NEEDED AND IMPORTANT.

When I first became involved in the Earthwide Internet Music Underground, we were not so politicial...and we didn't need to be concerned about CD sales because mp3.com paid us pretty good royalties when our songs were played or downloaded. It was a more carefree time for on-line musicians and lots of other folks too. On mp3.com I first made a splash with my Brian Eno-esque? You Bet! station, which ran a special Funky Halloween Ambience issue in Fall 2000 which satisfied Halloween partiers around the planet. "The Spiritual Path of Space Groove Dudes and Chicks" was another popular Enoesque issue I came out with in those days of unplifting on-line idealism. Actually, all kinds of recording artists in the mp3 2000 class were influenced by Eno, his spirit just seemed to be in the atmosphere. Eno and his friends Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, David Bowie and Robert Fripp influenced such classic mp3 stars as ATP,Ikarus,Sunburn in Cyprus, Voice of Golden Eagle, Dark Ryders, Something Different, and Tweakheadz Lab. Then along came the Eno produced U2 album "All That You Can't Leave Behind", proving once again how many million Earthlings love the Eno sound. No problem selling that CD! But when a rigged court decided that G.W. Bush would be President, I felt that our light hearted party days might soon be terminated by political disaster. I remember that right a way I wrote Taata, ATP's female vocalist over in Japan, telling her about the "Blue Day" I and other rockers were experiencing when we got the bad news. The idea of that e-mail soon grew into a whole mp3.com station called "Bush Dynasty Blues". E.T. Cool Groovespace and Drop Dead Gorgeous Valentines Day were 2 more influential stations I assembled in darkening times. In the Summer of 2002, I was the first person to introduce the band Evanescence to an audience outside Mr. Bill's homestate of Arkansas, and look what big Hollywood Rock Stars they are now! Thanks to mp3.com, they became the Beverly Hillbillies of Goth Rock. I was visiting a guitarist friend of mine in Little Rock when I accidentally discovered Evanescence. I could hear an interesting mixture in what Evanescence was doing, their groove had some gorgeous ethereal electronic sounds, but also viceral spontaneous blues rock type phrasing. That kind of mixture of roots and electronic experimentation helped make the music of the Psychedelic Era such a fresh and powerful world-changing force. With the internet, we could have even more positive impact in helping people through today's crisis. In 2003, my most popular stations were all IN THE MOVEMENT: How Does It Feel To Be One Of The Beautiful People, Break The Bogus 9/11 Cover-Up and Earthican Dance Tunes. But I still jam with all kinds of people and now I'm developing some heady contemporary production values in my groove tune recordings as well. Now I know what I need to produce, so I can figure out how to do it. We have an earth-wide musical and political movement going now, no doubt about it. The music is a mixture of electronics and various roots--a mixture which actually began happening in the '60's. The political and social dimension is blossoming as people express themselves in relation to what they can learn on the web. ! There's even I like jamming with lots of people. I don't see a reason to settle on one band line up now.

I love to play live, and I'm sad that there aren't so many opportunities to do so as there used to be. In the dismal Summer of 2002, they couldn't even get a Kansas City Blues and Jazz Festival together, though that scene swung right through the Great Depression. What's goin' on here???? Now the Kansas City music scene seems to be bouncing back and even in the coldest weather there's people on the streets protesting the outrages of the Bush Regime...it's all about FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION. When peoples attitudes become more radical, searching and progressive, they come out and come together to music much more often. Compare how often people were coming out for music in 2002 and 1972. Not that I personally remember what the scene was like in '72, but you can talk to older musicians and fans or look at the industry statistics: compared to 1972, American music just barely existed in 2002! A few websites like jambands.com, Acid Planet and mp3.com got us through that dark 2002 passage by the skin of our teeth. Many less musicians could make a living in the oppressive bad attitude cultural environment of the Bush Regime. Now that real Democracy is coming together in big anti-war and anti-Bush street protests, we will be able to get a real music scene going to. Of all the jamin' songs I've written the tantric tune Spring Force is the one that really uplifts people off their asses and gets 'em dancing. Once I played with some friends of mine who live down in Little Rock Arkansas, we just walked in and did it on an open mike night. After we got done playing I thought those hillbillie chicks were gonna tear me to pieces, they just all wanted to dance with me at once! Why is music universally cool? Strangely enough, it harmonizes all our human energy flows.

John Lennon, B.B. King, Booker T. and the MG's, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Brian Eno, David Bowie, Robert Fripp, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, Tom Jobim, Arto Lindsay, infinite-e, Tom Aragon, Ikarus, ATP, Embryo, Dark Ryders, Sunburn in Cyprus.

Japanese Synthesizers (mainly Korg and Yamaha),Cajun Accordians, whatever piano you've got in the joint, whatever drum someone brings to the jam...mainly I like to record with Acid/Sound Forge software to tweak both ambience and groove 'till it all feels right.

What's so funny 'bout Peace, Love and Understanding?