06.07.08

We have a show coming up.

The Merry Month of May.

Here's what's been happening.

Recent GDV sessions have included work on several new songs, the reworking of some older material, as well as significant rearrangements of two of Fred's newer songs. After considering the aural results our efforts have engendered, Nick has proposed that the band now offer such a service to other bands and composers. Sometimes one needs a little help, and we are prepared to give very little help indeed. And so, without further fanfare, we now present:

GDV Music Repair Services, LLC

* Music Composition repair services are available online, inline, and over-the-line.

* On-site visits, via our fleet of specially equipped vehicles (featuring Nick's blue Toyota truck), may be scheduled during business hours as well as afterwards.

* We specialize in changing tempos, keys, intros and outros; editing and re-rhyming lyrics, or whole verses if required.

* Special transformational service include: genre surgery, whole note liposuction, and lyrical transplants.

* Services include injections of prescription grade sonaceutical harmonic intervals, recombinate notation, therapeutic genre modification (TGM).

"Contact us today for an initial consultation," suggests Nick, "stardom may be but a key change away."

In other madman drummer news, Nick has been doing some Google searching, and has discovered a few doctoral doppelgangers that could make up an entirely different version of GDV, were they to band together with such nefarious intent:

Dr. Richard J. Murnane is the Juliana and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Dr. Steven Hinks is the Professor of Cultural History, South Carolina Institute of Archeology and Athropology.

Dr. Frederick Goodhue practices at the Spokane Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic in the state of Washington.

Dr. Nicholas Dines is a Professor of Cultural Geography in the UK, and author of: "Public spaces, social relations and well being in East London."

Says Nick, "This is clearly an updated version of "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," and indicates a plot to take advantage of our individual fame for personal gain. Talk about identity theft!"

And finally, we would like to announce that Group DeVille unanimously supports Barack Obama for president.

Thanks for stopping by.

Band Portrait.

GDV Live.


Hannah Zahn Photo

This pic was snapped by our friend Hannah at the benefit we played back in January. I finally sorted through some files and discovered a bunch of photos. I sent this one and the small image (above, top right) to MassLive for them to use on their featured downloads page, too. It's not often that we get a proper stage with flies and a proscenium and can get creative with lighting and and backdrop. But we did at that show. And we even dressed nice.

It's Not What You Think.

We only seem inactive.

See, the trouble with letting so much time go by between posts on the GDV blog is that some of you readers can get the impression that there's not much going on in band land. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's all a matter of perception. You can choose to think that we're lazing in the sun, or you can choose to think that we're busy — so busy, in fact, that there's no time to write about it. It might be one or the other. It might be both. We're versatile.

Okay, so Steve is lazing in the sun. In Cancun, in fact. All this week. Admittedly too, the rest of us have been outdoors a lot now that spring is finally here. There's yard work to do. And grilling. This past weekend had plenty of both mixed into it.

But there has also been musical activity, fear not. Songwriting, for example. I have no less than four new tunes ready to audition for the band. We have worked on new arrangements of two of Fred's songs, and Nick has been busy organizing our new Musical Repair Service (more information to follow).

In other news, this past weekend also marked the end of an era, with the demolition of the small Shinto shrine which graced the Mill River Institute campus for many years. The once-popular meditation and garden tool storage facility had fallen so far into disrepair that it was in danger of falling into the Mill River itself.

So you see, activity continues apace here in Williamsburg. Thanks for your concern, thanks for checking in, and thanks for listening.

Roadhouse Pop.

It's what we do.

People have been asking us for years what sort of music we write and perform. We'd shuffle our feet and look sideways and we would try to explain: "...there's a lot of British Invasion influence in there, but also some Chicago Blues and Bebop, and plenty of jangly American Roots Rock, so..." and "...look, if you put the Kinks and the Byrds or maybe Creedence and the Yardbirds in a blender..." or "...you've got your jazz guy and your blues guy, sort of an Elton Joel guy, and a short guitar player, and..." like that. Well, it finally came to me that our sound can be described in the simple two-word phrase, Roadhouse Pop.

Come hear what we mean. We'll be at McFadden's Pub on Friday April 4th, from 8:30 to midnight. Route 9, Haydenville MA. No cover.

Getting Caught Up.

We've been away from our desk.

Here at GDV Headquarters, all is much of a muchness. Not to mention much ado about nothing. And what's more, everything else besides. We have not felt much like posting, so are getting caught up with all the goings-on as of this post right here. Hopefully, this will tide you all over into the near future or whenever we post again, whichever comes first.

You're probably wondering why we haven't felt like posting. We have had some periodontal surgery, if you must know, in which portions of bone were carved away from our mandible in what's called a crown-lengthening procedure. You shall be spared the bloody details. Suffice to say we (and yes, I'm using the editorial we here — not everyone in the band had to go through the operation) are living with what feels like a broken jaw on the mend. Our diet for the next six to eight weeks will be mostly antibiotics and painkillers. At least we are finally off the (very effective) prescription painkillers, and are now merely gobbling extra-strength Excedrin at frequent intervals.

To cheer ourselves up, we have bought a new amplifier. New to us, at any rate. It's a 1965 Reissue Fender Deluxe Reverb. It looks like this:




The very first good amplifier I ever played through was an actual mid-sixties Fender Deluxe Reverb. It belonged to my friend John Follis, and as I'm talking about the very early seventies, the amp at the time was only a few years old. The mind boggles. Anyway, I have always longed for one. I've had a mess of Fender amps over the years, but never this particular model. The vintage ones are way more expensive than the new reissues, and I can't even afford the new ones. The one I got was used, and I traded one of my other amps towards it. Thing is, you'd never know it's used looking at it or listening to it. It's in virtually mint condition, without so much as a coffee mug ring on the tolex, and the speaker doesn't even sound broken-in yet. This thing rocks.

In other news, we have begun recording some new material up at the Quincy Room Studio. We've tracked the basics for two of Fred's songs and one of Steve's. Actually, I should say that we've got one of Fred's recorded. We have to re-do the second one of Fred's, because our producer-engineer (that would be me) neglected to load a new file after saving the tracks to Fred's tune, and then happily proceeded to record Steve's song over it. It was late, I was tired, and should have never tried to squeeze another tune into the session. Live and learn.

We have also been practicing a bit for the upcoming show at McFadden's Pub. Remember? It's Friday, April 4th — we're on from 8:30 to midnight. McFadden's is just down the road from us, on Route 9 in Haydenville.

And now, it's time for our medication. My medication, that is. Enough of the "editorial we" crap. The others can go get their own Excedrin.

Blarney Alert.

Nick writes:

As St. Patrick's Day draws near, carrying with it all of the lore and iconic symbolism of Irish culture, it is important that GDV steers clear of sham rock. We should only be associated with genuine rock of our own making in order to lay truthful claim to the title, "An original rock band from Western Massachusetts." We must pledge to shun sham rock!