 Daniel Amos - Darn Floor Big Bite 20th Anniversary  |
servantsteve 
Disjasked Lerna
Registration Date: 07-02-2002
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Location: Ole Virginny
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Done! I will finally get to hear DFBB after all these years. I am a happy happy boy.
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11-10-2008 13:35 |
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DwDunphy
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Registration Date: 08-18-2003
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Location: Red Bank, New Jersey
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Will there be any notice on the board regarding how the sales have been going for this (for whoever's interested...)
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11-10-2008 13:43 |
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audiori
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Registration Date: 03-12-2002
Posts: 11,145
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I think folks are still just discovering the announcement in their inboxes.
Beyond that, its mostly Arena Rock's business. I don't know if they would want to announce anything or not. We will try to let folks know if we spot them in retail stores or anything like that... hopefully you all will do the same.
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"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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11-10-2008 13:47 |
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colorblind
Mind Peach
Registration Date: 03-05-2008
Posts: 247
Location: in the freezer
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Is this release a digipak?
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11-10-2008 14:41 |
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audiori
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Yes, six panel digipack.
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"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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11-10-2008 14:45 |
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Phalanges Sandwich
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Registration Date: 02-24-2007
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Location: Right in the Mandibles!
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Interesting.....seems FYE.com has some samples up already for our 'bumping shoulders with moles'-fi listening pleasure (do the instrumental tracks make anyone else giddy with the possibilities as much as me?). I'll have to check our local FYE (well, our only local music store) in a couple weeks to see if they're actually going to be carrying in-store copies.
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11-10-2008 15:00 |
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audiori
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The instrumental tracks are very cool. It really gives you an entirely new way of hearing the music... you hear stuff going on in the guitar and bass tracks that you've never heard before. I think folks are really going to dig that stuff.
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"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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11-10-2008 15:03 |
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DwDunphy
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Registration Date: 08-18-2003
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| quote: |
Originally posted by audiori
I think folks are still just discovering the announcement in their inboxes.
Beyond that, its mostly Arena Rock's business. I don't know if they would want to announce anything or not. We will try to let folks know if we spot them in retail stores or anything like that... hopefully you all will do the same. |
I'm just interested in hearing how the sales are going primarily to gauge interest and, possibly, initiative for more.
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11-10-2008 15:28 |
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Mountain Fan
Ubique Epoque
Registration Date: 10-09-2003
Posts: 14,224
Location: NC, Alive and Kicking, BOBD
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| quote: |
Originally posted by audiori
Yes, six panel digipack. |
DAmb i really hate digipaks. Why can't something be put in a proper case that stores more easily? (and is more resistant to fingerprints, spills, etc. 
i don't suppose there's 2 versions like MBD so everyone can be happy?
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11-10-2008 16:09 |
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audiori
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| quote: |
...so everyone can be happy? |
I don't think thats possible.
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"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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11-10-2008 16:12 |
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Mountain Fan
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Registration Date: 10-09-2003
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| quote: |
Originally posted by audiori
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Originally posted by Mountain Fan
The pessimist in me says I still need to make DFBB my first cassette-to-MP3 project with Audigy, though. 
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Licensing is already out of the way... thats generally the hard (and expensive) part. Should be down hill from here. |
| quote: |
Originally posted by audiori
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Originally posted by Mountain Fan
...so everyone can be happy? |
I don't think thats possible. |
nah, i guess not.
i did figure it would take awhile (over a year), converted DFBB to cassette, and have happily been listening to it in the car etc for over a year now. 
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11-10-2008 16:27 |
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audiori
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Yeah, you kind of hinted that you weren't too happy about it from the start. Duely noted.
For those that are... orders are flowing in. I'm counting them right now to see if the prerelease orders are gone.
In case anyone new is joining us..
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Just sent to the DA News list...
>> DARN FLOOR - BIG BITE 20th Anniversary
As many of you have already heard, DA's ahead-of-its-time 1987 release, "Darn Floor Big Bite," is returning as a Deluxe 2 CD set on November 25, 2008. The entire album has been remastered from the original master tapes and includes 20 pages of brand new artwork and photos, interviews, and plenty of bonus material. The Deluxe Reissue, which is being released through a joint effort between Stunt Records and Arena Rock Recording Co. is now available for preorder at www.DanielAmos.com!
(Note: This is a limited preorder. Only 250 copies are available prior to the release date. Preorders through the Daniel Amos webstore will ship immediately from the distributor before orders from other websites.
Beyond the first 250 orders, CDs will ship after the November 25th release date. )
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"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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11-10-2008 17:35 |
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wakachiwaka
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Registration Date: 07-26-2007
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| A Brooding Filbert (or: A Bribing Foretold)... |
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Placed my order first thing this morning! 
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11-10-2008 19:56 |
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brother joel
Luteous Llama
Registration Date: 03-03-2007
Posts: 296
Location: Bernville, PA
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| RE: A Brooding Filbert (or: A Bribing Foretold)... |
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I am so looking forward to this! No more worn out cassette, no more CDR. All DA all the time. I ordered this afternoon. I ordered one for me and one for my dear brother Jef. Happy Birthday Jef!
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11-10-2008 21:09 |
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Space Ghost
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I'm in and stoked!
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11-11-2008 00:31 |
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servantsteve
Disjasked Lerna
Registration Date: 07-02-2002
Posts: 4,168
Location: Ole Virginny
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I ordered it yesterday and I still don't have it!
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11-11-2008 11:09 |
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Mountain Fan
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Registration Date: 10-09-2003
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here's Dw (again?!) to more properly light and stoke everyone's fires.
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http://popdose.com/dw-dunphy-on-darn-floor-big-bite/
« Political Culture: Johnny Mac Went Down to Georgia
No Concessions: A Moving “Elegy” as Summer Movie Season Draws to a Close »
Dw. Dunphy On… Darn Floor Big Bite
Thursday, August 14th, 2008 by Dw. Dunphy
Have you read the entertainment news today? Oh boy. A particularly dreadful tune is set to break some major records for sales, this week’s new movies arriving under a mantle of critical kudos have been trounced at the box office by The Dark Knight, a four-week winner no less, and the spate of mind-numbing reality TV shows, once considered dead in the water by pundits, are not only thriving but multiplying for the 2008/2009 season. It is, as the critics have feared, the grim realization that they have zero effect on the zeitgeist. But then again, we always knew that.
The few critics that actually heard Darn Floor Big Bite, the 1987 release by the band Daniel Amos, were flabbergasted. They praised the textured, atmospheric guitar work as a revelation in contrast to the band’s keyboard-driven previous releases, Vox Humana and Fearful Symmetry. They were keen on the balancing act singer/writer Terry Scott Taylor had struck lyrically, still as literate and mature as before but not as heavy-handed. In a time where guitar groups were hair metal, and regular groups were messing with their synths, Daniel Amos (known at that point as Da to avoid the whole “Which one is Daniel” question. Answer: none) looked to the underground and came up with an angular, nervy winner.
And now you get to say, “Well it can’t be that great, because I’ve never heard of it,” which has been the bane of Da’s musical existence from the start. The band started, of all things, as a thoroughly Christian country act, morphing into a Beatle-esque rock outfit, then fully embracing the original new wave ethic that was coming from CBGB darlings like Talking Heads and Television.
Problematically, they were the antithesis of most bands from the Christian subset. Their Beatles and Beach Boys influences came at a time when outside forces were totally verboten. Their four Alarma Chronicles albums (Alarma, Doppelganger, Vox Humana and Fearful Symmetry) plumbed the sounds of punk, garage, darkwave synth-rock and Krautrock, none of which sat well with the established Christian organizations, record labels and bookstores. They were alternately branded for “consorting,” being too secularly intellectual and just plain too weird. Oddly, the secular music outlets rather much felt the same way in vice-versa terms.
Perhaps the most nadaing charge thrown at them was that they dared to criticize the Church as equally as they looked toward the scriptures. It has been one of the major drawbacks for people in accepting Christian rock as rock music with the specified worldview that discernment with worldly ways was fine, but when it came to investigating the hypocrisies within the institutions, well, it just wasn’t done. Da, however, dared to go to that thorny place.
For their sins, they merely got snagged. Too Christian for them, too secular for those. What, in 1987, should have been a watershed moment, the return of guitar rock from the programmed abyss, ended up as less than a footnote in the book of releases. It also spawned a small but voracious group of dedicated fans, willing at a moment’s notice to attempt turning you on to that which you’ve been missing. Then havoc struck again. Through the shutting down and changing hands of record labels, ownership rights and a dart that hadn’t yet found a target, Darn Floor Big Bite went out of print and stayed there.
Twenty-plus years later, the Arena Rock Recording Company, home of Wilco offshoot the Autumn Defense, Calla, punk-poppers Harvey Danger, and Terry Taylor’s own Stunt Productions company, are about to give the wheel another spin. Darn Floor Big Bite will return as a remastered deluxe double-disc set complete with updated packaging and a lot of hope that, this time, the dart finds dead center. Why an established independent record label believes they’ll find an audience this time depends of your degree of backward glancing. Today the album has a contemporary indie rock feel, excepting some Eighties production giveaways. The guitar work of Greg Flesch is meaty here, dissonant there, comprised of as much drone and feedback as Byrdsian jangle.
It is not hyperbole to say Flesch is a rocket scientist because, in his day job, he actually is a rocket scientist. That analytical approach to playing, squeezing any and every sound imaginable from his instrument, indicates what a labor of love this was. Equally impressive is Tim Chandler, who’s walking basslines do more than gird the rhythm. Acting as much as a secondary guitar than simply padding the bottom end, he achieves at times the interplay found on Television’s landmark Marquee Moon. Drummer Ed McTaggart has garnered over the years a reputation for being a Charlie Watts kind of player - light on flash, heavy on precise timekeeping. It’s a fair cop but, in the context of these songs, Bonzo flips or Keith Moon freakouts would have been far too much. His restraint allows the rest of the elements to truly be noticed.
Then there are the songs: “Return Of The Beat Menace” addresses the heart of the matter, that moment when the church elders looked down their nose at what the band was doing and deemed it inappropriate. The beat menace, if you hadn’t assumed, was rock with the Christian worldview. “You live to correct / those who reject / the sins you connect to the beat menace / we’ve come to lay you low / we’ve come to vex your soul” - essentially: baby plus bathwater equals “out you go!”
“Darn Floor - Big Bite” brings about a theme found throughout Terry Taylor’s work, being that the enormity and mystery of a divine presence is so much and so foreign to us that we don’t have the slightest clue about it. The title refers to Koko the gorilla, famous for communicating in sign language. Her description of an earthquake, “darn floor, big bite!” Humans, in our efforts to put the divine in a box and say this is what it is evokes the same broken thought pattern as Koko. Heady stuff, especially for any institution conflicted with the notion of simian intelligence. The spare sound and off-kilter guitar only magnifies the foreignness.
“The Unattainable Earth,” a personal favorite of mine, is primo Byrds-styled California jangle pop yet restates the theme that we can’t possibly assume we know what it’s all about, but we keep trying, through hope, through faith, through the miracle of human nature and our last remnant of innocence, our curiosity. It all comes together with the finale “The Shape Of Air” which, in its odd way, is a hymn to the surreal. “Pour cement ’round things / let it dry / break away things / see the design…” and “It’s the shape of air / I can sit and stare / ‘Til it’s almost clear.” And while the lyrics seem abstract, the vocals en mass at the close acts as a thesis - you have to admit there’s something going on out there that we have no understanding of.
Da, now once again Daniel Amos, has been quasi-active even to the present. They sometimes slip into alter egos The Swirling Eddies (a story for another day) and Taylor has been a frequent musical collaborator with designer Doug TenNapel, providing music for his Neverhood and Boombots games as well as the Catscratch television show. McTaggart is a graphic designer, Chandler still does session work as a bassist and Flesch has that gig at NASA. Still, they repeatedly get the word out that, given their druthers, they’d rather be full-time members of Daniel Amos once more. If the rerelease of Darn Floor Big Bite makes an impact on the world of indie rock, that may yet happen.
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The official request from Camp Da was that Popdose not run MP3s of the tracks from Darn Floor Big Bite. However, here is a medley of songs from the disc to give the readers a feel for the sound of the album.
[Click to listen] Darn Floor Big Bite Medley
Tags: Arena Rock Recording Company, CBGB, Charlie Watts, Da, Daniel Amos, Dw. Dunphy, Ed McTaggart, Greg Flesch, Popdose, Stunt Productions, Talking Heads, Television, Terry Scott Taylor, Tim Chandler
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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 5:30 pm and is filed under Dw. Dunphy On..., Music, Popdose. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Got a few miles left ...
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11-11-2008 11:24 |
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audiori
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| quote: |
Originally posted by servantsteve
Thanks so much for making this available. I have never even heard it in any media. When it has come up on ebay, it always goes for so much I can't afford it. This way, I get what so many have told is their favorite DA album and the artists actually make money off of it. It is quite the deal and I appreciate it.
I was kidding about not having it yet. I know you pups get alot of criticism and I don't want you to think I am criticizing. I have been away for like a year, come back, and get to preorder DFBB like 3 days later. That, my friends, is a sweet deal.
When it does come, I'll have to wrap it up and put it under the tree. My wife will be so pleased to have bought me something I will enjoy so much without knowing it herself. |
Thats appreciated Steve. Hope you do enjoy it when you receive it.
PS: I knew you were joking.
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"Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything" -St. Francis of Assisi
"A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality." - GK Chesterton
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11-11-2008 11:27 |
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joey
Platyhelminth
Registration Date: 01-08-2003
Posts: 7,231
Location: the biggest fans are often the biggest critics ... sometimes taken as complaining ... get used to it. :P - mountain fan
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i am interested...
i was hoping there would be more songs from that era that i have never heard before..
i listened to the little snippet there of sacred heart, and my only response was, "oh, i can see why they left that out..."
it just doesn't fit with the rest of the cd...
that's not to say i'm not gonna order it....
not gonna pre-order it...
we've already discussed that..... 
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11-11-2008 11:30 |
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