Dave Matthews Band - Remember Two Things

Before RCA, before the stadiums, before "Crash Into Me," Dave Matthews Band pressed their own record and sold it out of a van. Released in November 1993 on the band's own Bama Rags label, Remember Two Things is mostly live material captured at Trax in Charlottesville and the Flood Zone in Richmond, with a few studio cuts mixed in. It went platinum nine years later on word of mouth alone.

It is the loosest thing in the catalogue and, for a large and vocal contingent, the best. "Ants Marching," "Satellite" and "Tripping Billies" appear here in earlier, scrappier forms, several years before the versions that made radio, and the difference is not subtle. "Minarets" and "Seek Up" stretch out the way the band actually did in a room. "Christmas Song" runs past ten minutes and never received a proper studio version, which means this is the definitive one. Tim Reynolds plays across most of the record, and his guitar is a large part of why these arrangements breathe the way they do.

What you get is a document of a band before management, before producers, before a label had opinions about what they should sound like. For anyone who came to Dave Matthews Band through the hits and wondered what the fuss was about live, this is the answer.

This 180-gram double LP reissue was mastered by David Glasser at Airshow with lacquers cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman, and includes a download of the album plus two unreleased outtakes. On Bama Rags / RCA / Legacy.