Tuesday 3 January 2012

Dean's Eleventh Dream by the James Dean Driving Experience

I know, it's the start of the year and perhaps I should be declaring what the year's greatest new group is, but in the absence of credible candidates these past three days, let's call for a James Dean Driving Experience retrospective.

11 songs mining The Byrds' jangle with rare aplomb, similar to what Primal Scream did for a short time and what Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes did for a couple of years. Only better. They were better than most.

Their debut single Dean's Eleventh Dream is one of my favourite singles of all time. Send all of their songs back out into the world and there'll be new fans: as long as there are romantics, daydreamers and teenagers there'll be a new audience to love the James Dean Driving Experience.

4 comments:

  1. figure one day the matinee retrospective will get put out...but must have fell through? Now how about a Veronica Lake retrospective.. Love your blog, please post some more St. Christopher !!

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  2. There have got to be at least 6 labels that'd jump at releasing a JDDE retrospective. Perhaps the band aren't interested.

    A quick search (and maybe I should've done this before) shows that their entire back catalogue, including the tape which I don't have, has already been uploaded. Perhaps that takes some of the viability out of it.

    St Christopher? I do have a few more demos, but not a lot of time. I will be digitising more tapes at some point, just don't hold your breath!

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  3. Ben - any idea where I can find the entire James Dean Driving Experience back catalogue?

    Googled but can't find it...

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    1. Sorry, I don’t. Maybe Optic Nerve will do a career retrospective. Worth suggesting it (or nudging them - I bet they’ve thought about it).

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