So Much to Say

June 1, 2011

Light, fan-friendly look at one of today's most successful American touring bands.

It's tough to tell whether journalist and first-time author Van Noy's book on the Dave Matthews Band is more about the band's impact on its fans or the fans' impact on the band. Whatever the case, this portrait of the Charlottesville, Va., band's unlikely rise to fame reads like a 200-page press release. The book relies heavily on interviews with DMB fanatics who unconditionally praise the band. Van Noy's writing resembles the sort of depthless amateurism you'd expect from a college newspaper and not from a professional writer. The author seems incredibly protective of her subject and never allows for much behind-the-scenes access to the band members or to their music. Much of the research consists of statistics and figures that reflect the band's consummate popular success. The author provides tons of data on how much money the band makes on tour, how many records they sell, how many seats the venues they play hold and even how many gallons of bio-diesel fuel they burn in a year. Of course, there's nothing wrong with writing a one-sided book from a fan's perspective, but Van Noy is positive to a fault.

An adequate resource for hardcore DMB fans content to have their sycophantic reverence for the band repeatedly reinforced.

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