Often referred to as the ‘Canadian Nick Lowe’, the remarkable DAVE RAVE is – for this writer – one of the most exciting talents ever to come out of his vast homeland. Your reviewer came shamefully late to his music, but was converted in no uncertain terms by the magnificent recent ‘Anthology Vol.1’ career overview and has rarely been without a daily fix of Rave’s music since.
Dave has remained active on the scene since appearing on the coffee house scene in his native Hamilton, Ontario with FULCRUM in the early-to-mid 1970s and during the ensuing ten years or so had lengthy stints with the much-celebrated power pop outfits THE SHAKERS and TEENAGE HEAD. Both these bands have fascinating histories and left behind rich legacies (and in fact are subjects that require separate chapters in their own right), but suffice it to say that by the late 1980s, Rave’s desire to move on and explore was beginning to outlive the crowd-pleasing constraints of the popular Teenage Head. Indeed, it says a lot about Dave’s restless muse and desire to push his art to the limits that he was thinking about making such a move in the wake of Teenage Head’s ‘Electric Guitar’ album: a record that many of their fan base still regard as something of a jewel in the crown.
Around the same time as the restless Rave was contemplating his next move, he was introduced to another well-respected and creative guitarist/ songwriter known as Gary Pig Gold. As well as having produced one of Canada’s finest punk/ new wave fanzines in ‘Pig Paper’ (which, in a move pre-dating ‘Mojo’ by about 20 years, celebrated vintage pop acts like The Dave Clark Five and Beach Boys, as well as contemporary and local acts), Gary was also stuck in a similar group situation to Dave with a band called Endless Summer, Canada’s number one Beach Boys clones. Both were playing lucrative gigs but struggling to break out artistically on their own at the time.
To read the intriguing story of how these two hugely talented characters got together to start work on one of Rave’s most enduring albums ‘Valentino’s Pirates’ then check out Dawn Eden’s tremendous liner notes on Bullseye’s splendid re-issue of the CD, but suffice it to say that the record would – artistically at least – take both Dave and Gary to another level altogether. Listening to it now, it’s certainly fair to say that ‘Valentino’s Pirates’ does indeed deserve to be referred to as both a classic album that screams for recognition after the fact and a career highpoint by anyone’s standards. Not to mention being the first Western rock’n’roll album to be officially released by Russian label Melodiya, but let’s get to that in a while.
The song that set the tone for the album as a whole was and remains the epic ‘Farmer Needs Rain’: almost seven minutes of cinematic atmosphere, it’s an incredible suite-like piece put together predominantly by just Rave and Gold which recalls the pioneering spirit of Neil Young’s ‘Broken Arrow’ every bit as much as it does the Brian Wilson/ Van Dyke Parks influence of the legendary ‘Smile’ and finds room for everything from glockenspiels to Moog synth and is guaranteed to bring anyone up short who automatically associates the Raver with simply the Power Pop prowess of The Shakers or Teenage Head.
‘Farmer…’ is a truly incredible achievement, but it’s not the only time that long-time Rave watchers may have been jolted by the exploratory nature of ‘Valentino’s Pirates’. Indeed, if you require further proof, then head straight for both ‘Good News’ and ‘Painted Rose’. Despite its’ title, ‘Good News’ – built predominantly around a jagged piano riff and lurking bassline – does anything but live up to its’ title. With its’ references to NYC landmarks such as Coney Island it’s eminently wintry and initially sounds every bit as dislocated as some of the stuff on Big Star’s superb-but-broken ‘Third’ before concluding with Rave howling “the good news is so hard to find down the line!” It’s excellent, but fractured and strange, though not half as unfamiliar as ‘Painted Rose’: a nervy and brooding collage which finds Rave seemingly singing against the melody and coming on more like Can than anything usually associated with New Wave and/ or Power Pop.
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Tracks like these are spiky and dislocated and typical of the unusually downbeat feel of ‘Valentino’s Pirates’ and this mood is reinforced by the album’s acoustic outings such as the unadorned ‘Silk Stockings’ (produced by Daniel Lanois, no less), the beautifully skeletal ‘Freedom’ (which could almost be taken from Lanois’ own wonderful ‘Acadie’ LP) and the extremely moving ‘Father Be Brave’: a eulogy written and performed for Dave’s then terminally-ill father. It’s a measure of the new, boundary-pushing attitude adopted by Rave and Gold that this track actually introduces us to the album instead of the more familiar, power pop approach of ‘Do It All Over’: arguably the album’s most typically recognisable Rave moment.
Of course, while ‘Valentino’s Pirates’ flies the experimental sonic flag, there are still some utterly sublime pop moments as well. ‘Do It All Over’ aside, there’s the anthemic, but world-weary ‘Weight Of The World’ from Dave and Gary’s first NYC recording session, the classic sad’n’blue melancholy of the glorious ‘When Patti Rocked’ and the superficially more straightforward ‘Everyday’s A Holiday’, even though this latter attempt at the sort of rocker Rave usually excels in sounds notably rather more resigned that usual.
If pushed to the limit, though, this writer would probably choose the delicious ‘All Over The World’ as his favourite cut from this groundbreaking album. Very much touched by the hand of Dylan/ Robbie Robertson guitarist/ bassist Bill Dillon, this gorgeously crestfallen sigh of a song is caressed by one of Rave’s finest vocals and after a few plays it’s difficult not to get lost in the life-affirming depths of the arrangement. Lovely and then some, you might say.
Ironically, the album’s exploratory recording approach ended up being matched by its’ unlikely introduction to the marketplace. With Dave’s then manager unable to obtain a regular North American continent label to bite at the time, the owner of a dusty Russian record store in New York’s East 14th Street stepped in. Hearing lots of things he liked, he arranged for much-vaunted Russian label Melodiya to allow the album to be the first full-blooded western rock’n’roll record to be released in what was still just about known as the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and - while Nirvana and the whole Grunge storm broke in the UK and America - The Dave Rave Group wowed ‘em on an extensive Russian tour which the band members and audiences still speak of today.
Dave Rave has since gone on to score numerous artistic successes with albums as diverse as ‘Cowboy Flowers Sessions’, ‘Everyday Magic’ and the recent ‘In The Blue Of My Dreams’ with Mark McCarron, and as always he’s intent on pushing forward into the 21st Century. The wealth of music he’s already left us is a wondrous thing, though, and with Bullseye having secured the CD release of ‘Valentino’s Pirates’ it’s great to know that a brilliant, lost album has finally come in from the cold for the duration.
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