Dishwalla :: essays research papers

Dishwalla Listen closely to Dishwalla, and you discover there is blood on these tracks. Twelve years and five albums after the band from Santa Barbara, California made their debut, Dishwalla endures. Together the group – lead singer JR Richards, guitarist Rodney Browning, bassist Scot Alexander, keyboardist Jim Wood and drummer Pete Maloney - have survived record company musical chairs, countless musical trends, and even the curious challenge of having their very own smash hit right out of the box. Through it all – the good, the bad and the ugly – Dishwalla have emerged stronger than ever, and in the process have established themselves as that rock & roll rarity: a real, working band that stays together to play together. Fittingly, then, Dishwalla (a self titled CD) is very much an album about survival and transcendence – an inspired song cycle about rising â€Å"Above The Wreckage† to borrow a phrase from one of the album’s numerous standout tracks. Recorded with three diverse yet distinguished producers – Bill Szymczyk (The Eagles, B.B. King), Sylvia Massy (Tool, System of a Down) and Ryan Greene (NOFX, Lag Wagon) – the new CD is, in the words of the group’s JR Richards, â€Å"very representative of our whole journey.† It’s a journey that, for many, began with Dishwalla’s 1996 platinum debut Pet Your Friends that included â€Å"Counting Blue Cars,† the compelling hit track that would define the band for its more casual fans. â€Å"A hit can be a blessing and a curse in the making,† Richards says with a smile. â€Å"We had a song so big that it overshadowed everything else we came up with for the next few years. You end up competing with yourself. It’s been a mixed blessing but one that’s helped us to keep working and keep going.† It’s also a song that’s led some to wrongly typecast Dishwalla as everything from a hardcore Christian band to hardcore feminists. For Richards, â€Å"It’s been interesting because some people thought we were a Christian band – and yet there’d be Christian groups protesting outside a club because we used `God’ as a feminine pronoun. Ultimately, what we learned is how that song really connected with so many people on such a lyrical level.† Dishwalla enjoyed less commercial success with their second album, 1998’s And You Think You Know What’s Life About, at least partially the result of record company downsizing and its resultant turmoil. Leaving their label, A&M Records, the band proceeded to release the lovely, introspective Opaline on the small Immergent label in 2002. â€Å"We were pretty beat up after our first two records and our third record was very