No band has ever left me as split on my opinion quite like Dave Matthews Band. My enjoyment of their music is constant in flux between one of my favorite bands of the 90's and one of my least favorite bands of all time. My opinion changes daily.
When I first heard Dave Matthews Band I hated them. I remember the first song I ever heard by them was Ants Marching. Right off the bat the rocker in me wasn't pleased. I wanted to hear Soundgarden and Smashing Pumpkins and Alanis Morissette. I was rock and rock only (with some minor hip-hop exceptions) and this folk-y shit with Kenny G sax was not what I wanted on my MTV
I continued to hate most of the Dave Matthews Songs I heard (I didn't mind What Would You Say too much) and as I got older it felt like my school was filling up with more and more DMB fans. Ironically as much as I disliked Dave Matthews Band by the time I was in High School the only song I did like was now Ants Marching. That should have been my first hint that this was a band that I'd having a changing opinion towards.
I remember the first time I heard a song by DMB that I genuinely loved. I was laying in bed listening to y100 and they played a Dave Matthews Song (yuck), god it was so slow and stupid… although I do like that bassline… this is pretty bluesy actually… I kinda dig it. Wait what was that Dave? Crazy I'm thinking just knowing that the world is round and here I'm standing on the ground am I right side up or upside down and is this real at all or am I dreaming? You know Dave? that's a pretty good question.
It wasn't until college I finally found out the name of that song (Crush if you're curious) somehow I didn't hear it more than two or three times after that night in high school. By then the internet had introduced me to Napster… and then took it away… and introduced Limewire… and took it away… so using frostwire I finally owned the stupid song.
I can't explain what lead to me buying five Dave Matthews Band albums. I blame it on Crush. I enjoyed that song so much that I became curious of what else was out there and since people are always unloading their Dave Matthews albums for $1 or less at used CD stores and flea markets I figured what the fuck and bought a few. Unsurprisingly to me I found every album completely mediocre, I loved a few songs (but most of them radio songs that I liked more out of nostalgia than anything) and was bored by others.
Last week I found myself questioning why I still own those albums and decided to listen to them again. Under the Table and Dreaming I thought was great when it started but around the mid-way point I felt bored… it wasn't terrible I just wasn't interested in it. Crash however I loved suddenly. So much so that I wanted to listen to it again the next day… and then I disliked it again. The exact same thing happened with Before These Crowded Streets (although Crush is still a masterpiece). Quite literally in less than 24 hours songs I loved became songs that bored me to death.
Talking to other people I discovered that I'm not alone in this opinion, for some reason your enjoyment of Dave's music hinges strictly on the mood of the day. I don't have an logical explanation for this though, so I'm gonna blame it on the sax player.
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