Dave Rave

In the decade after New York punk rock burst onto the scene, numerous East Coast post-punk acts that had drawn scant mainstream notice during their active years later surfaced as influential reference points for insiders and devoted followers, even when their catalogs remained slim or their time together proved brief. The Dave Rave Conspiracy exemplified this pattern.

During spring 1988, Dave Rave, born Dave DesRoches, crossed paths with underground pop figure Gary Pig Gold at a gathering inside a suburban Toronto apartment. Gold, already an experienced musician and songwriter who was then performing with the Beach Boys-styled group Endless Summer, had also founded and edited Pig Paper, the pioneering Canadian punk and new wave fanzine. At that moment DesRoches, after the breakup of his influential Hamilton, Ontario, band the Shakers, was fronting Teenage Head, the gold- and platinum-selling act often dubbed the Canadian Ramones. Each man was looking to exit an unsatisfying musical situation, and each held the other’s work in high regard, yet only after sustained encouragement from mutual acquaintance and music writer Dawn Eden did they begin collaborating. DesRoches eventually played Gold a series of spare solo demos he had been developing, pieces shaped less by punk than by his growing fascination with the experimental pop of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, particularly the albums Smile and Song Cycle. Gold responded with enthusiasm, and in April 1989 the pair entered Daniel Lanois’ Grant Avenue Studio in Hamilton to track the extended, intricate piece “Farmer Needs Rain,” which would form the centerpiece of what became Valentino’s Pirates, with Gold serving as producer. The resulting recording, though captured in modest circumstances, matched the refinement of its inspirations while remaining equally uncommercial, and it sealed the creative alliance between the two principals.

They next turned to the many unreleased DesRoches compositions and began playing live, delivering their debut performance during a visit to New York while making contact with like-minded pop artists such as Richard X. Heyman, Mark Johnson, Shane Faubert, and Michael Mazzarella. By July, DesRoches had recruited drummer Jack Pedler, a former Teenage Head member who had also toured with the Canadian edition of the Kasenetz-Katz Super Cirkus, along with local guitarist Coyote Shivers; the group spent much of the following month at Grant Avenue laying down tracks. In September, DesRoches and Gold formally departed their prior bands and relocated to New York, taking an apartment on the Upper East Side. Shivers soon followed, and work on Valentino’s Pirates resumed.

Initial efforts to secure a label deal proved unsuccessful. At the close of the next year Mole Recordings issued the album briefly in Canada on cassette. Then Rudolf Solovyov, who presented himself as the American A&R contact for the Russian imprint Melodiya Records and had attended one of DesRoches and Gold’s early Greenwich Village shows, extended a contract offer. By this stage the ensemble, newly named the Dave Rave Conspiracy and now featuring ex-Washington Squares bassist Lauren Agnelli and former Television drummer Billy Ficca alongside DesRoches, Gold, and Shivers, performed regularly in New York City and Hamilton.

Three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Melodiya released Valentino’s Pirates on vinyl, thereby making the Dave Rave Conspiracy—listed as the Dave Rave Group on the sleeve at the label’s request—the first Western act signed directly and exclusively to a company operated by the former Soviet state. The agreement encompassed sessions at a St. Petersburg studio and the filming of promotional footage for the band’s debut single, “Weight of the World.” The album found favor in Russia and generated several singles, yet it attracted no domestic label interest back home. Even so, its restricted and atypical initial distribution did not prevent it from acquiring a strong reputation within the international pop underground for outstanding songwriting.

Not long after Gritty City Records issued the Conspiracy’s second album, Three Octave Fantastic Hexagram, exclusively in Canada in 1994, the group disbanded as its members pursued other major endeavors. DesRoches and Agnelli formed the duo Agnelli & Rave; Shivers launched a solo recording career and moved into film work with appearances in Johnny Mnemonic and Empire Records; Ficca remained active on the downtown New York scene amid periodic Television reunions; and Gold helped establish the maximum rhythm & bluegrass outfit the Ghost Rockets.

Near the end of 2000, Gold gathered the original session reels and archival recordings for Valentino’s Pirates and began remastering the material for reissue. The project prompted a reunion at the July 2001 International Pop Overthrow Festival in Los Angeles, where DesRoches and Gold were joined by guitarist Jason Frederick and the rhythm section of Lisa Mychols and Robbie Rist from the Masticators. One month later Bullseye Records released the tenth-anniversary edition of Valentino’s Pirates on CD, expanded and digitally restored. In December another reunion took place in New York City under the auspices of Not Lame Recordings, again featuring DesRoches and Gold along with Rist, Agnelli, and guitarist Mark McCarron. In January 2002 To M’Lou Music, the label Gold operated with Shane Faubert, issued the definitive worldwide Anniversary Edition. In 2003 the Dave Rave Group returned with their first collection of new songs in fourteen years; Everyday Magic appeared on Bullseye that August.