There was a time, a lifetime or two ago, when I used to spend a lot of time in dark clubs and sleazy bars, listening to bands give it all up for audiences that only sometimes got it.

Some of these bands today are names you know; CDs you have in your collection, if sometimes under different names than I knew them.

I used to roadie – hump amps, drive gear to gigs, sometimes help sound guys. I tried and tried to play, but found my musical gifts tended to the listening and lifting, not the creation.

Of all the bands I loved, one above all stood out. They were my friends, people I know and love still today. But before they were my friends, they were one of the greatest live bands I’ve ever seen.

Dot 3, they were called, a name I always thought had to do with the elipsis (the final dot on the end, meaning, what comes after). Years later, I found out the origin was more mundane; that there was a can of break fluid on the windowsill in the room where the practiced, and they kept looking at DOT 3 on the label and took a liking to the name.

They called themselves “Tribal Funk”; I to describe them as ‘one part old XTC (‘white music’ era), one part new King Crimson (‘discipline’ era), and one part James Brown. This didn’t really cover it, but it gives one a very vague idea.

This was a band that were doing that thrash-funk thing before Primus or the Limbomaniacs or the Chili Peppers did it; in fact they inspired all three of those bands. Primus opened for them all the time, as did the RHCP.

Dot 3 worked that same territory, yet there was something more intensely primal in what they did.

The night I first saw them, the drummer played a stange, stand-up drum kit, pounding and whipping his head, dancing as he played. The singer played Chapman Stick. They had a horn section – something none of the bands playing the san jose scene at the time had.

They opened the show with two of them – Mark, the bass/stick player and lead singer, and Ken (yes, that Ken, my dear friend still) pounding out complex drum parts while wearing empty budweiser cartons on their heads. The rest of them band entered from the back of the club – also in beer cartons – playing other drum parts on various small portable drums.

I knew from the first tune I’d love this band; I just didn’t know how much.

As with so many brilliant local bands, they never really left a record of what they were. The few studio recordings never sounded like them; and the bizarre, hard-to-classify style made them generally un-interesting to record companies. They were a band without a pretty front man, without a hit song, without a hook record labels would understand. Yet, they were ahead of a great wave of funk-rock bands to come, and with only some luck and timing, they might have been a band we’d all know of.

Such is the story of so many brilliant bands.

What little record we have is rough, recorded live, with hand-held video cameras. It doesn’t really capture it; you can’t hear the collective scream of an entire audience yelling the words, you can’t catch a room throbbing with the beat on hot, sweaty nights. You can’t get the primal beat everything they did was based on. You can’t hear the incredibly energy, the incredible talent.

I remember though, and so, if you’re lucky enough ever to have seen them, do you.

This is a clip made by my friend Eric Predoehl, a long time ago. I keep begging for more; I know he has it. But this one, for all the rough sound and un-edited form, reminds me of a band that made a permenent impression on me, both musically and personally.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6_kWaxw6rc&rel=1]

I love finding a new band; or at least, a band that’s new to me. I love that goofy NRE that comes from finding something I’m so overwhelmingly into that it’s all I want.

It’s like a crush – a band crush.

You know what I mean. The first time you heard a band that lit you up like a bong-hit. I don’t care who it is – beatles or spice girls, genesis or david cassidy, verve or louis prima, coltrane or monk or bb king or the bee gees.

What matters is that moment of discovery-rapture when you realize you just found the greatest music ever.

And it doesn’t matter if it lasts; it could be over tomorrow or it could be the band whose t-shirt you want to be buried in. It just matters how exciting it is when you put on that third or fouth song, or play that album for the second time straight through, when you realize you’ve found something that matters.

Now, sometimes that’s a brand new band. I felt that way when I first saw a local band called Dot3, when I knew after ten minutes that I had a new favorite band.

But it can be something really old. When I put on Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue I realized I’d found not just an artist and an album that would change my life, I knew I’d really found a genre that would define my listening for a long time. I went nuts when I bought a Funakdelic collection a few years ago; I’d heard Parliament and lots of other funk artists, but Funkadelic were different, and I wanted nothing else for a month. I’d just missed hearing them, for all the other funk albums I owned.

Lately, inspired by Spiritualized, I’ve been poking around in the wide swath of bands loosely grouped under the sobriquet ‘shoegaze‘. Now, all sorts of bands get lumped in with this (as happens with lables like emo, or a generation ago, punk or new wave) that I wouldn’t even remotely describe as such; but then, I also can’t really define what is really shoegaze, and what of that, I actually like.

But I’ve used it as a jumping point into all sorts of interesting bands; some bands I knew a bit, some I know of by name only, and some wholly new to me. I found gems – true gems – like Swervedriver, and some bands that are generally loved that I struggle with (my bloody valentine – love the music, hate the singing), and a lot of bands that are loosely grouped only by things like “Listeners also bought” lists on iTunes or someone’s “essentials” lists. Bands like BMRC, for example, who are not so much shoegaze but turn up along with said bands now and then.

One band whose name I’ve always heard (both in connection to shoegaze and otherwise) but never paied attention to is the subject of my current ‘band crush’; Dinosaur Jr.

Sure, I’d heard their name; they get some airplay on alternarock stations, and had a cover of the Cure’s ‘just like heaven’ which was a minor hit locally a while back (I didn’t care for it, and still don’t).

But I was looking at an ‘also bought’ list on iTunes earlier this week and said, oh, right, that band, I can’t remember what they sound like. I need to check them out.

This would be what they sound like, for the few of you who didn’t know:

Turnip Farm

Forget It

(play these fucking loud, particularly the first, Turnip Farm)

I sampled three songs, bought an album (You’re Living All Over Me), and played it three times. Halfway through the second play, I realized I needed a second album.

By the next day, I’d bought eight albums – the dangers of one-click purchase. And as those of you who have me on various IM buddy lists will know from my ‘status’, I’ve had them playing pretty much without a break ever since.

The amount I love this band defies my ability to describe. I don’t even like the singer’s voice that much; I sort of have to get past it. But the guitar playing is what gets me, and it gets me so much I never want to stop hearing them.

J. Mascis pretty much could have come to me and said, dude (cause he’s address me as dude, you know he would), what is your absolute favorite guitar tone? And I would have described it in words like fuzz, growl, dirty, crunch, distortion, howl. When I used to play, that’s what I was always trying to get, with my limited equipment (a tiny amp that sounded like a pocket-sized marshall stack), and even more minimal skill. It’s the (musical) sound I love best. But I don’t wanna hear it in heavy metal bands; I wanna hear it in music that’s otherwise more sophisticated, more melodic. The contrast is what makes it work, as when Richard Lloyd howls and screams behind Matthew Sweet’s beautiful, heartfelt songs of misery.

My best description of them is one part Neil Young, one part Foo Fighters, one part Replacements. Though I’m missing some fourth part somehow, I can’t quite put a finger on it. Whatever it is, though, to me, it’s the shit.

This is one of those bands where my friends say, wait, how did you not know this band already. My best defense is not listening to much radio anymore. I’ve commuted on a motorcycle for years, and now, even when I commute in a car, I have only a three mile commute. So it’s been fifteen years or more since I regularly listened to radio, meaning here and there, great bands have whipped by me un-noticed. I’m ok with that; I now get to discover them as if they were really brand spankin’ new, AND I get to find them when they have whole catalogs for me to go buy.

I dunno how long I’ll be in this phase. Might be over my monday. Or I might be driving everyone in the car nuts next week as we drive back from Southern CA. But however long, I sure as hell have me a new Favorite Band for the moment.