- There’s music on this page now (31st August 2010), still waiting for photos.
- The Dave Village music player is not very graceful at the moment, but give it time.
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- Music plays on modern smart phones too (tested on an iPhone and Palm Pre).
- It should play the songs sequentially, so you only need to click once to listen to the whole album.
Recorded: 1998 – 2001
This is not Pen LP, recorded 1998 – 2001
– We will write some background spiel for each album; place them in some kind of context, whether that improves the aural experience...
Dave had three successive rubbish jobs in a row (poor Dave): standing behind a cash register selling fridges and microwaves; pushing petroleum gas contacts onto people across the nation; having fun with a theodolite and a factory floor – he even wrote a song about working on a construction site, ’I got Holes in my Eyelids‘. It was time for a change.
Where does one go when life is going nowhere? Yes, that’s correct, Aberdeen. Dave Village went off to study all things aerial, orbiting the Earth, tricks with light and pixelated maps. He even started doing unusual things like going for a swim in the morning, playing squash and shivering.
Love songs, girlie talk and pulling at heart strings had not been part of Dave’s short musical career. This was rectified when he wrote the songs ’Mona Lisa‘ and ’In Times Behind’. He was writing around four songs a year using the same basic finger picking style throughout, this did not change in the following years – don’t call him: ’a risk taker’, don’t call him: ’experimental’. Call him: ’dependable’.
Dave moved back to Cardiff a year later; joined the digital age by purchasing a mini disc recorder; invested in a ’Bob Dylan kit’ - a harmonica; started experimenting with computer editing; took up surfing but even after all this he still found himself without an employment opportunity – eventually he sourced some work in Derby, of all places. Working in the rail industry, of all things.
Spending only four months in the U.S. during the 1990s, we find the strong American twang found on some of these recordings a little confusing. Admittedly, it probably started as a tongue in cheek gesture; he was going through his Mississippi delta/railroad blues listening period during these recordings, which may have provided the largest influence (Jesse Fuller, Lightin’ Hopkins, Blind Willie McTell as well as the continuous background noise of bootleg Bod Dylan), but still it comes across a little heavy. He reined the twang back after this album, claiming it was just a phase (like the Rolling Stones) – ‘US Version’ helps to distinguish the worst offenders.
