[quote][i]Originally posted by Treesgirl[/i]
<br>
Hi Everyone!
This is Marisa Conover, Dane's wife. First of all, thanks so much for being such devoted fans. We really appreciate it! I just wanted to clear up a couple of things related to "Sleep Convention". Yes it's true that MCA had a complete staff change right when Dane's album was released and unfortunately "died on the vine". If that had not happened, who knows??...it definately would have been a big hit. KROQ did play "Shock Of The New" back to back with "Shock The Monkey". KROQ loved the Trees album, but in the land of radio nationwide, it wasn't enough. Some radio jocks around the country called Dane at the time to say how much they loved the album, fans would call into the station to find out who did this magical song "Delta Sleep". The various jocks would tell fans it was Trees and fans called back to say the album was not in stores. You can thank MCA for that. A year before Trees, Dane was in a great quirky new wave band out of San Diego call Puppies. They were signed to Stiff America along with Men Without Hats. "Mechanical Beat" (produced by Liam Sternberg, writer of "Walk Like An Egyptian"/Bangles) was the single Stiff released (ultra rare). Anyone who is curious about Puppies can go to
http://www.myspace.com/puppiessandiego Richard, Dane's Puppies bandmate set up the site and you can hear recorded as well as live music and a lot of really cool photos of Dane and the band from personal archives. Dane has never stopped recording great music and records almost everyday! Keep your eyes on Youtube, Dane will be posting a lot more great stuff soon! Spread the word, don't keep Dane a secret!!
Many thanks to all...Rock Ohm....Marisa
[quote][i]Originally posted by wiota[/i]
<br>[quote][i]Originally posted by Glen[/i]
<br>So Mike, why did he quit making music? There's really not a bad song on that album.
[/quote]
The album, Sleep Convention, probably didn't sell enough copies. I have two copies and they are promo albums, every copy that I have seen on Ebay also has had the promo stamp. Here in Los Angeles, Trees didn't get any airplay on KROQ and I don't even recall hearing it on Rodney on the Roq either. In 1982, the year the album was released, there weren't a lot of radio stations that played New Wave and if a national flagship station like KROQ wasn't playing it, then the odds were good that it wasn't getting played in New York or elsewhere. By 1982 the KROQ playlist was jammed (no pun intended) full of great music and their stricly "Top 40" style format didn't have a lot of room for experimentation.
I first heard of Trees in 1984 from a friend's girlfriend. She had an actual copy of Sleep Convention and made everyone cassette copies of the album. She eventually wore the album out and I eventually lost the cassette. Just a few years ago, I finally got a copy on GEMM. But at the time, in my circle of friends, "Red Car" was the track that we all talked about, but my favorite was "Shock of the New". I recall thinking that those two songs were worthy of KROQ airplay and that the other songs were good album cuts. Today, I think that the entire album is a classic and I play it often.
Mike, I didn't know that there were multiple video's made from the album. That tells me that MCA was actually trying to push the album and they just couldn't break it. Damn unfortunate that KROQ didn't find a spot for "Red Car", I think that Dane would have got a shot at making another album.
[/quote]
[/quote]