Dead Moon… those guys were from Portland but they felt like they belonged to all of us who loved this music.
I first heard them when a friend played me “Unknown Passage.” Fred and Toody Cole just had this way of playing that felt honest and tough at the same time. They weren’t trying to sound like anyone else — they just sounded like themselves. You could tell they’d been doing this for years and they didn’t give a damn about trends or what was cool at the moment.
I saw them live on April 28th, 1995 at the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle. It was a good night. The place wasn’t huge but it was packed, and they played like they always did — straight ahead, no nonsense, no fancy lights or poses. You could tell they’d been doing this for a long time and they weren’t going to change for anybody. It was one of those shows where you just felt lucky to be in the room.
They never got famous the way some of the other bands did, but a lot of us who were around considered them one of the real ones. They just kept making records and playing shows for the people who cared. Fred and Toody have been together forever, both in life and in music, and that comes through in every song.
These days in 2002 they’re still out there doing their thing. I still listen to them when I want to remember that part of the scene that wasn’t about the big magazines or MTV. They were just about the music and doing it their own way. No compromises.