By: David de Young
 The Dames at the Turf Club (Photo by David de Young - click for full sized version.) |
Members: Tony Bennett - guitar/vocals Official website: http://www.the-dames.com Interview with Tony Bennett at the Reader Weekly (a good read) |
The Dames play rock the way it should be played, deliberately and with a vengeance. They play music that's often the equivalent of a bulldozer barreling down on you at about 80 miles an hour. And I'm sorry, but you will not have time to get out of the way. Seeing half of the Dames set at their 7th Street Entry CD Release Party in November of 2002 was enough for me to put them on my list of the top 10 live acts in town. Thursday night at the Turf Club, The Dames, led by singer/guitarist Tony Bennett, more than lived up to the expectations I had for them and did an ass-kicking job opening up for headliners, Iowa's House of Large Sizes.
From The Dames opening song, "Séance" off their recent and critically-acclaimed full length CD "Divorce" (Angry Seed Records, 2002) the Dames rocked us with the primal drums of new drummer Ian Prince (also full time drummer for the band Houston) who at times looked like a cross between Iggy Pop and Keith Moon, Bennett's artful and passionate guitar, and the solid and powerful bass of Rusty Johnson, looking strangely disinterested at times with something to the effect of a thousand yard stare in his eyes. (Bennett's eyes, on the other hand, were infrequently visible from behind his mop of a hairdo.)
The thing that first struck me about the Dames is that these guys do not profess to be anything they are not. In fact, they really don't really profess to be anything at all other than three guys on a stage who are there to rock your socks off. Ian Prince (who joined the band following their CD release parties in November) plays drums the way they should be played; he pounds the crap out of them, always driving the song and the energy forward. Bennett wails on his guitar, and Johnson works his bass calmly despite the occasional frenetic nature of the music. This is music that makes you smile in spite of yourself. And it's so over the top at times that it has the odd result of actually making feel calmer inside.
Don't misunderstand me; The Dames are not fucking around. Through song after song, like "Cavewoman" and "Piss Pot" The Dames just kept on keeping an already good thing going.
One song called "Soapbox" kind of reminded me of what might happen if Steppenwolf met the Greg Khin band, but lame analogies aside, it sounded great! The Dames rock, and they don't give a fuck. I couldn't help but laugh to myself as Bennett sang the dramatic whispery parts to this song; which has changeups all over the place and must have gone on a good 6 or 7 minutes.
After the set, Bennett set up an impromptu merch booth out of a plastic tub on the pool table at the back of the bar. Dames disks were selling like hot cakes to enthusiastic fans. For $10, the new CD is steal and a good introduction to their music, featuring a full 52 minutes of rock, 12 songs that are sometimes heavy, sometimes poppy, but either way will grab you at first listen, and you may even find yourself liking if you didn't think you were a fan of the so-called "heavier stuff."
Location Info:
The Turf Club
Artist Info: The Dames
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