I wanna be ...

I can’t remember with certainty when I first started hoping Dave Matthews Band would cover Peter Gabriel. It could go as far back as 10-12 years ago, when I first bought a used copy of Gabriel’s “So” album because I liked “In Your Eyes” and quickly fell in love with it and, in short time, most of the rest of his discography. It could have been sometime later, though, maybe as the result of a thread at (now dearly departed) Nancies asking what covers we’d like to see. Or it could have been driving down the road one day, rocking out, and having it suddenly hit me.

I don’t know exactly when, but the idea has been kicking around my head for a long time. I remember talking to Romi about it (I was probably trying to convert her into being a Gabriel fan) and the last time I saw her was 2001.

There are a lot of songs in Gabriel’s catalog that DMB could take on nicely. I can imagine LeRoi whistling through “Games Without Frontiers,” and a roaring solo at the end. I think of how well the band can take on the dark rock sound of a tune like “Eh Hee” and know that they could do marvelous things with “Digging In The Dirt.” But, really, the best candidate was always “Sledgehammer.”

While it was one of his biggest hits, a hugely popular video, and still one of his best-known songs, “Sledgehammer” is not one that most fans of Peter Gabriel would count among his greatest songs. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s a little more pop and a lot less substance than the majority of his work. But that’s a huge part of what made it such an appealing cover tune.

I have never really thought of DMB as a band that does many covers—what covers they do play tend to be arranged in a way that is very unique to the band (“All Along The Watchtower,” “The Maker”). Most of the covers they do play are hardly of the typical variety. Most bands play covers for a good time; it’s another song the audience is likely to know even if they didn’t write it. But DMB has played three different songs by Daniel Lanois who is and will always be far more well-known as a producer than as a musician himself—all three of those (“The Maker,” “For The Beauty of Wynona,” and “Still Water”) are either dark or quiet tunes. Other covers the full band has taken on over the years include “Long Black Veil” and “Cortez The Killer”—cheery these songs aren’t. Sure, “Exodus” showed up once every five years or so, and “Watchtower” is fun in a sort of loud and dark way, but that was about it until 2005, when they debuted a cover of “Time of the Season.” 2006’s Fenway Park gigs saw them try “Sweet Caroline.” At two shows in Las Vegas in early 2007 the band played four cover songs at each show, an unheard of ratio for them (though weak compared to a Pearl Jam show I once saw in the same arena which featured seven cover songs). And still, while “Sweet Caroline” was played for only the second time and “Time of the Season” came out after a year away, most of the covers were still of the dark variety—“Still Water,” “The Maker,” and “Down By The River.” As such, the idea of DMB performing a cover of “Sledgehammer” seemed unlikely at best.

There were small signs of hope. In the online community, as it turned out, I was by no means the only person who saw the genius of the idea—inasmuch as there is ever widespread agreement in online forums, the thought that DMB could do a killer cover of “Sledgehammer” was widely agreed upon. Furthermore, during the Dave & Friends tour of 2003-4, that band betrayed Dave’s obvious appreciation of Gabriel by doing a cover of “Solsbury Hill.” That was fine and all, but “Solsbury Hill” is about the least interesting Gabriel cover possible and I was neither going to any Dave & Friends shows nor did I have much burning desire to do so.

Starting in 2008, prospects got even better. The first month of the tour has been full of new (and mostly upbeat) covers—“Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin,” “Money” [the Pink Floyd Version], “Money (That’s What I Want)” [the Beatles song], “Bitch,” and “Hey Hey My My” have all been in rotation. There were even rumors that “Sledgehammer” was being soundchecked, though I always find soundcheck rumors questionable at best.

But, Saturday night, it happened. And they rocked it. Even better than I’d always imagined.

Now, I just can’t wait to get to a show. (Amazing that after seeing 17 shows since 2004 this is the summer I’m only going to see two.) A festival seems like a good place for a cover like “Sledgehammer,” right? Like, say, the Mile High Music Festival? Or, if not, then surely Saturday night in Phoenix says, “Sledgehammer,” no? That Saturday night when they visit Phoenix this year is my birthday—one guess as to what ‘present’ I’m hoping for most.