Newspaper ad, clipped from The Boston Phoenix, for a concert with Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey at the Hatch Shell in Boston, MA on August 3, 1991.
My dB’s fandom had been stoked by that multi-hour Orgy on WHRB, yet I had no way to see the band—they had broken up! Then in 1991, Peter Holsapple returned, reunited with onetime bandmate Chris Stamey, now recording as a duo.
Their 1991 album Mavericks was a much gentler, mostly acoustic affair. As a fan of their frenetic, often twisted pop (I named my present-day radio show after one of their weirdest compositions), this was a minor disappointment. But to get a new set of Holsapple and Stamey songs was in and of itself a treat.
And so when I learned the duo would be coming to Boston to play a free concert not long after the release of that record, I started on my game plan. Tape recorder? Check. Autograph-ready copies of 7″es by each member’s relatively obscure pre-dB’s projects? Check.
Since Holsapple and Stamey were opening for Irish folk singer Maura O’Connell, I didn’t have to sit through any opening acts. It was a sunny, clear day in Boston, and I plopped down on a grassy spot on the lawn to enjoy the show, tape recorder capturing their acoustic set.
After their performance, I did seek both of them out to babble excited praise of their music and brandish my records—would they mind signing? Holsapple and Stamey each expressed surprise upon seeing copies of the Sneakers 7″ (1976) and Holsapple’s “Big Black Truck” single (”Wow, I can’t believe you have this!”). Then they each graciously signed their respective musical artifacts.
That concert tape? Well, that’s on my to-digitize list. Having written so much about the dB’s this past week, I may just have to bump that one up in the queue.
