Throwback 13th (#003)

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If you were a punk and a Canadian in the 1990’s you were aware of a pubescent band from Vancouver called d.b.s. (always lowercase). There was a great deal of speculation about what d.b.s actually stood for. One of their earliest demo tapes says ‘Dirty Black Summer’ on it, so I’m gonna go with that. I seem to remember the liner notes of their first LP asking people to write to them with ideas of what it might stand for.

None of this is important.

What matters is they were fiercely energetic and a talented band. I used to go to their shows in the gymnasium of a preschool in North Van. Their home audience was not always friendly towards them. Especially after they appeared on MuchMusic, in studio, with Sook Yin Lee (couldn’t find the d.b.s one). They even had a music video in circulation, and they toured with Rancid. Their history as a band took them from adolescent pop punk, to screamy emo through the span of their career from the early 90’s to the early 2000’s.

Someone has been kind enough to create a bandcamp page featuring all of their releases, including some live performances and an appearance on Vancouver CoOp radio station, CiTR. The video below is a skateboarding feature on a Canadian show called Power 30. It has footage of the band skateboarding, and from their performance on CiTR with Nardwaur. If you were a teenager around this time (1994?) this video will be a nostalgia-overload for you. Especially if you had a skateboard or purple hair before everyone and their mom had skateboards and purple hair. Literally, their moms. There are probably more moms with purple hair now than there were punks with purple hair in 1994.