Back in the last music revolution, there was this band called the dB's. These guys from Winston-Salem (with ties to Chapel Hill and NYC) mined the territory opened up by the Beatles that Big Star made into an "alternative pop" mainstay. By the time they got to be pop stars, they had two guys trading off on lead: Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple. Now Holsapple is the fifth member of REM and Chris has moved back to Chapel Hill to restart his musical career for the third or fourth time. The two releases with the original line-up (Stands for deciBels and Repercussion) are both great and deserve the limited cult status they enjoy. Holsapple and Stamey re-united a couple of years ago and put out a pretty good release on Rhino, to which there have been several follow-ups (mostly Stamey archival stuff).
Ride the Wild TomTom is the last lonely and unreleased dB's archival material, principally recorded in 1978 and 1979. At that point, Chris was definitely the key figure, so the people like me who prefer his songs will be happier with this. (Bob Boster)