Indie rock veteran’s bag of goodies
Singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Dennis Davison has been at this a while. He formed his first punk band in Baltimore in 1977, at age 17. Then he moved out to Los Angeles in the mid-eighties and spent twenty-five years fronting The Jigsaw Seen. The indie band released nine albums with cool, retro album covers. Zenith, released in 2000, even earned a Grammy nomination for Best Recording Package. The Jigsaw Seen called it quits in 2017, and since then, Davison has focused on solo work. One of his more off-the-wall solo records is Voice Memorandum.
The recording, released in 2023, compiles several years of guitar and voice demos he recorded into the Voice Memos app on his iPhone. As he explained on his website, “these are recordings of the first time that I attempted to sing the songs out loud, usually right after they’d been written.” Davison’s performances are sparse and loose, without too much thought into what the finished song might sound like. “Sometimes I bothered tuning the guitar and other times I just went with ‘close enough.’ You can even hear my dog breathing during quiet sections on a few of the songs!” As a kicker, Davison offered Voice Memorandum as a free download.
When Dennis Davison formed Ebenezer & The Bludgeons as a teenager, he didn’t know how to play an instrument. “I did everything backwards,” he told Klemen Breznikar in 2020. “I formed my first band in 1977 without knowing how to play a musical instrument or sing.” Renaming the band Alter Legion, they moved from Baltimore to Los Angeles in 1982 to make it big. Instead, they broke up after just a few months. Dennis returned to Baltimore and was asked to the join United States of Existence as their singer. The psychedelic garage band, who looked and sounded like the year 1967, released one album but never played a live gig. In 1986, Davison returned to L.A., making it a permanent move.
In Los Angeles, he formed The Playground, but after learning of another band with the same name, they became The Jigsaw Seen. The group released their first single, “Jim is the Devil” in 1989, followed by a holiday song, their version of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” A year later came their first full-length LP, Shortcut Through Clown Alley. Like the United States of Existence, The Jigsaw Seen’s music has a 1960s spirit, and they recorded or shared the stage with Brian Wilson, Terry Reid, and Dave Davies of The Kinks. Perhaps fitting, the band’s last album in November 2015, was another collection of holiday tunes, this time with all original songs. They put a final lid on the band with a singles and rarities collection, The Jigsaw Seen for the Discriminating Completist, with covers of the pre-disco Bee Gees’ “Melody Fair,” and “Luci Baines,” written by Love’s Arthur Lee.
Dennis Davison has a few singles and albums under his own name, including The Book of Strongman in 2020, and the Creaturefeature EP in 2023. Jack Rabid ranked Voice Memorandum number nine on his 200 Best Recordings of 2023 list for his weekly Big Takeover radio show. In his Big Takeover magazine review, Rabid wrote, “the LP’s condensed, spikey recording quality oddly adds bonus, non-bogus intimacy to an already personal, un-overdubbed, alive, unadorned format.” I would also add it’s an enjoyable listen. Whether it’s rough cuts or tossed-off ideas, Voice Memorandum proves a lot can be created with a little.