Back in time

I sojourned back up to Athens Friday night to watch The Dashboard Saviors play a show at the Caledonia Lounge.

You have perhaps not heard of this band. They were big in Athens, and other places, in the late ’80s and early-to-mid ’90s before they gave up chasing the dream, but they still get together every now and then to run all the redlights on memory lane.

They are a fantastic rock and roll band. I may be accused of being a little biased, since the founder, songwriter and lead singer, Todd McBride, has been my friend since kindergarten. But you don’t have to just take my word for it. In 1992 they were featured in Rolling Stone magazines “New Faces” section with an enthusiastic writeup. R.E.M. guitarist Pete Buck liked them so much that he produced and played on their first album.

The band toured the United States and even Europe, mostly Germany, I believe. In their heyday they were a hard-driving, tight band playing intelligent rock music, driven by John Crist’s propulsive drumming and Mike Gibson’s Southern-fried shredding on the guitar. (Sorry about that attempt to be a music writer).

But, they never “made it.” They couldn’t get on MTV or on the radio or ever seem to get that one big break that would put them over the top, or at least get them to the point where they could make a living playing music.

Why didn’t they make it? Who knows. Maybe they weren’t pretty enough, or cheesy enough, or just couldn’t get lucky. Instead, other questionable rock and roll bands got big during the period, like Blind Melon and the Goo-Goo Dolls and Hootie and the Blowfish.

Freakin’ Hootie and the freakin’ Blow-freakin’-fish.

I used to go see the Saviors play a lot, mostly in Athens or Atlanta. I hopped on stage with them one night in Greenville, S.C. and delivered a blistering lead vocal on Johnny 99. Too bad that’s not on YouTube somewhere.

Whenever I watched them play, I always wished that I had the guts to get up there and do what they were doing. They did inspire me to teach myself guitar and learn how to write a few songs. They even played one of my songs one night at an Athens club, which was a big thrill.

Their show the other night was good. You couldn’t tell it was the first time they had played together in a couple of years. While they were onstage, I imagine that the boys were transported back to the days when they thought it was going to work, when playing in a band was all they could imagine. When you’re 25, you can’t see yourself at 45.

I felt a little sad when the show was over. I wondered how they felt. Did it make them remember how things used to be? Did it tempt them, ever so briefly, to try and give it another shot? Did they feel like they gave up too soon, or maybe not soon enough?

But when they were onstage, it didn’t matter. In that hot, crowded little Athens nightclub the other night it was 1991 again, everybody was having fun, and I was wishing once more that I was one of the ones up onstage.