The Magnificent Seven: Under the Table and Dreaming

This is the fourth in a series of articles that looks at seven albums the authors appreciate. In terms of criteria: they must be albums listened to only in their entirety…content and form together like houses in motion. They also must have enormous personal relevance: they are corner stones. They may not be cool, but they are us.

#4

Under the Table and Dreaming, Dave Matthews Band

There was a time when, to me, they were the best band in the world—and I’d fight anyone who challenged it.

I wore flip flops, cargo shorts, rocked pearl-white pooka shells around my neck, and smoked a lot of weed. I never, though I don’t really know why, called them Dave.

But then I went to college, had a culture-changing experience thanks to my freshman roommate, and just lost all interest in the music of Dave Matthews Band. The timeline of appreciation ended at Stand Up.

But for a solid eight or so years, and I stress solid, there was nary a time I wasn’t listening to that band on the headphones, on the PC, or on my stereo in my room. I was obsessed. In 8th and 9th grade I would stay up until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, searching Napster or Kazaa or that ms-dos looking one I can’t remember for rare live sets (unheard collabs with Tim Reynolds), b-sides and rarities (The Lillywhite Sessions), and trying in vain to get a strong enough connection to finish downloading the “Cortez the Killer” cover—it never happened.

Chuck Klosterman wrote about Led Zeppelin owning a piece of every man’s adolescence, of having an interconnectedness to the content, the sound, and the meditation they elicited. And while I agree that I got the Led out for a solid three years, I don’t agree with another Zeppelin adage written by Klosterman: 

“Every straight man[…]has at least one transitory period in his life when he believes Led Zeppelin is the only good band that ever existed. And there is no other rock group that generates that experience.”

I disagree with the second part while whole-heartedly agreeing with the former, only I’d add that most men experience multiple periods of intense band conviction. My years 11-19, and specifically 15-18, were deeply DMB.

What’s weird for me is that it’s nearly been twenty years since I first heard of this band and fell for their music, but I haven’t returned or picked back up with their recent alums, shows, or really even re-explored the oeuvre. One of my best friends is a massive fan, way longer withstanding the tides and seasons, and sees them every summer in his hometown. He’s been inviting me for years. And although I want to go, it hasn’t happened, nor have I made a truly strong effort to make it happen.

But one thing has endured, resisted actually, my changes and preferences: Under the Table and Dreaming. Writing that title, my body humming like a line of one thousand volts running through.

Great albums transcend an artist’s total body of work as well as your appreciation of them as a whole. Great albums withstand changing trends in the musical genre they support. Most importantly, great albums, which justifies this series, don’t wear on you. No matter how much you’ve changed, certain albums are like fragments of golden eras. They simply don’t change no matter how much you do.

Klosterman’s appropriation of what makes up “a straight man’s” connection to Led Zeppelin is based on many dark and pointed emotions that are often associated with the angst that accompanies those years:

For a time, I thought it was Robert Plant's overt misogyny fused with Jimmy Page's obsession with the occult, since that combination allows adolescent males to reconcile the alienation of unhinged teenage sexuality with their own inescapable geekiness[...]Led Zeppelin sounds like who they are, but they also sound like who they are not. They sound like an English blues band. They sound like a warm-blooded brachiosaur. They sound like Hannibal's assault across the Alps. They sound sexy and sexist and sexless. The sound dark but stoned; they sound smart but dumb; they seem older than you, but just barely. Led Zeppelin sounds like the way a cool guy acts. Or - more specifically - Led Zeppelin sounds like a certain kind of cool guy; they sound like the kind of cool guy every man vaguely thinks he has the potential to be, if just a few things about the world were somehow different.

And while I mostly agree with that explanation of Zep, the converse, I think, is what grabbed ahold of me so strongly as a teen listening to DMB, specifically this album. There’s a genuinely positive and lighthearted philosophy behind Under the Table. The image on the cover perfectly translates the feelings of lightness that invite you: the album feels like a breeze blown between your toes, in the suspended lightness of swing. The tunes are all at once familiar and spare but unique, bombastic, and layered (“#34”); the messages in the songs edicts of familial and romantic love, the power of friendship, the worth of hope, the importance of public responsibility, policies of simple honesty, the potential for relief, the key to presence, and the virtues of humility (“The Best of What’s Around,” “What Would You Say,” “Satellite”); and an overall belief that the world, though often a malevolent place, should be taken seriously, not for granted, and cherished individually by each of its citizens (“Typical Situation”).

And Dave Matthews Band has always sounded exactly like who they are. They are cool, because they are honest with who they are—which may be a jammy, hippie, summery gypsy cult.

For me, this music, this album, was marked point of pure, unadulterated happiness. A representation of no-qualms, mellow, happy-go-lucky-but-with-intent period of #zeroangstgiven. No concerns for “the cool guy’s repertoire,” only concern for the guy himself and if he’s having fun.

I still listen to this record. My alarm is set to “Lover Lay Down,” because, along with “#34,” it’s still one of the most beautiful tunes I’ve ever heard. And “The Best of What’s Around” remains one of my all-time favorite songs. The opening drums, the opening seconds, some of the strongest stimuli to immediate nostalgia that I can still experience.

Key Tracks: “The Best of What’s Around,” “Lover Lay Down,” “#34”     

 Pat Marino appreciates not biting the mailman.