[Cover photo credit to Stefan Wallgren]
The dB’s’ debut album Stands for deciBels will be reissued on CD, vinyl, in its first time on vinyl in the US, and all digital platforms on June 6, 2024, through Propeller Sound Recordings.
The first digital single will be “Big Brown Eyes,” due out on April 26, followed by “Cycles Per Second” on May 17. The single “Black and White” will also be released on June 6th.
The album was produced by the band in association with the late Alan Betrock, founder of the seminal Post-Punk publication New York Rocker, with Don Dixon, Scott Litt and Martin Rushent mixing. It was originally issued in 1981 on the UK-based Albion label.
The dB’s are singer/songwriters Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey along with Gene Holder on bass and Will Rigby on drums. The foursome grew up in Winston-Salem, NC, and helped define what would become the North Carolina Indie-Rock scene, but emigrated to New York in the late 1970s and formed the band. They frequently appeared at CBGB, Maxwell’s and other influential venues. The band’s early history is documented on Propeller Sound Recordings’ 2021 release I Thought You Wanted To Know 1978-1981.
Chris Stamey explains:
This was primarily a band-produced and -arranged record, recorded old-school analog in fits and starts at the dawn of what became ‘indie,’ at Blue Rock Studios, with producer Alan Betrock as an éminence grise to intermittently steady the ship. And after we’d filled up all 16 of the tracks on all the songs with a cornucopia of ideas, we lucked out: aces Scott Litt (at Power Station, NYC), Don Dixon (at Drive-In, NC) and Martin Rushent (at Genetic, UK) joined to help mix.
We recorded it in the run-down Manhattan of 1979, in the aftermath of the CBGB explosion, when ‘anything goes’ was the rule; we were Southern expats playing on bills with the likes of the Feelies, Bush Tetras, and X, but felt a special camaraderie with a few of the more musically versatile yet still rebellious bands of the time, the Soft Boys, NRBQ, and the Attractions among them.
The CD edition will include the bonus track “Judy,” a single not included on the original release but available on a late ’80s (long out of print) I.R.S. Records CD reissue.
R.E.M.’s Mike Mills calls his first listen to The dB’s’ Stands for deciBels a defining moment in his – and his band’s – genesis:
This is the one that let me know we weren’t alone, that there were others out there with the same curiosity, the same willingness to dive into melody, structure and pop sensibility with no fear, no reserve, only joy and well-deserved excitement. I still love listening to Stands for deciBels, and I always will.
