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The Dammitheads are a rock and roll entity about as alternative as The Clash. While the name seems to allude to a group of people, it actually serves as the creative writing/recording vehicle and schizophrenic alter ego for one otherwise begrudgingly titled singer/songwriter named David Tomaloff. "It’s not exactly the way I’d have planned it," admits Tomaloff AKA The Dammitheads, "I mean, I’ve always thought and written in terms of the great rock and roll ‘band’ as an entity. Somehow, though, it’s a bit more interesting this way and the vision seems to remain a lot more true." Eschewing the prototypical singer/songwriter banner of the given name for the statelier aesthetic of the whole, The Dammitheads are a strange contradiction that refuses to be defined by today’s oft too matter-of-course musical precepts, currently performing live in various incarnations including full-on band, drums/guitar/vocal and, yes, even solo. Freeze Motherstickers… is a record pared down from about 40 songs and then pared down again, forming two distinctively different records; one all out rocker and one largely inspired by the sights and sounds of driving through a city at night. These two records were pared down again to become one record whose end result is a bit of both. It’s Rock/Not Rock…the record’s wiry, angular beats and rhythms seem sometimes almost deliberately mechanical; sonically analogous to the way Keith Richards moves on stage, bobbing and weaving rhythmically as if to avoid being held onto. The sound is not retro but awkwardly modern as if the entire history of Rock and Roll were chopped up, condensed and beamed through satellite transmissions to some future generation to put back together; a machine with a heart. Freeze was recorded at The Dammitheads’ own Hey! Low Sound System by David Tomaloff with the help of Steve Hawkins. Hawkins played drums, a little percussion and assisted in running the machine while Tomaloff took care of most of everything else. "It was an interesting process", says Tomaloff of the recording, "This was my first real experience with being at the helm of a serious recording. I learned a lot and had the time to do the things I really wanted to do." The record, which is currently set to be
self-released in mid-January 2004, was mixed at John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone
studio in San Francisco by Jay Pellicci with David Tomaloff and Steve Hawkins and mastered
by John Golden.
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