Some version of The Stacks existed from as far back as 2002 until Katrina hit.
The most recorded and photographed line up was (L to R): Dave Rhoden, Steve Walkup, Doug Di Rienzo, and Trey Ledford.



Conspicuously absent from this rather sober-appearing crew (appearances are deceptive, by the way) is lead guitarist/M.C. Chandra Menon , pictured at left. The story of The Stacks is basically incomplete without mention of this incredible genius/mental case, however, the lineup pictured above recorded the only Stacks material to ever see release. That being:

"Spell It Out (For You)"

from some Tulane University compilation that has a bunch of costume/yuppie/electrocrap bands that are even more forgettable than us. Seriously, I gave my copy away and I forget who they are.

You can buy it at Amazon or just walk down the street in New Orleans and look at the ground...eventually you'll find one.

The original Stacks happened because Dave (me) was in a fun pajama-wearing band called The Sleepy Heads (page coming soon) that broke up due to me and Jay both being stubborn. Jay wanted the band to rehearse and be tight like The Woggles; I wanted to just learn a million easy songs and be like The Mummies. I was right but Jay didn't see it that way so he broke up the band and reformed it (Jay's way of canning you) as "Doctor a-Go-Go"--also a good band but the gimmick was way dumber. They're more like the Woggles.

So my wife Sara (Sleepy Heads' bass) and I got together with a drummer named Ron Bocian and a sax player named Paul Grass, both out of a happy, popular band called Egg Yolk Jubilee, and this guy Chandra Menon, with whom I had been flirting via e-mail, because his 'band wanted' ad sounded cool and because I thought he was a girl. Ron was an amazing drummer who hated almost everything about being in a band. He finally got replaced by Steve, who loved everything about being in a band though in The Stacks' case, that means loving a lot of late-night equipment moving for no money. And getting yelled at by me. Paul, the happiest, most well-adjusted person to ever remain in my presence for more than an hour, stayed with us for a few gigs before moving to New York. Chandra, or Chan, or Chan-Dar, was pretty awesome, as you can probably tell from the photographs; a real chip off Chuck Berry's block. Chan stuck with the band for its whole run--minus the summer he spent in New York City when we got all the pictures taken and actually got our shit together enough to record a song. I wonder if that fact is meaningful.

The Stacks was basically a fun, ridiculous bar band whose reputation and enjoyability was marred by my wish for it to be something else. I sort of wanted to make some music that was....sensitive. If you know me at all, you're saying: what was he thinking? When we started we promised ourselves we would only play covers (thus the name--we're named after stacks of records). We did half the Sleepy Heads material, which meant that both us and Doctor a-Go-Go had "Super Stuff" in the set for a while. We dropped a lot of songs and picked up other ones. I wrote a couple. I decided I wanted to be a musical artist. I went off and started another band, All-Night Movers in the middle of the thing and went to law school, too...man, that was dumb. Looking back on it all it's really obvious I had no idea what I was doing. It's amazing that it worked at all.



(The pretty pictures? Elizabeth Underwood took 'em.) The truth about the band was that we were not sensitive at all: we were spastic. Look, there's a picture of Chan in a cowboy tuxedo pouring a drink from a giant novelty bottle, and yes, it is full of booze. Here are some shots from the little rehearsal we held after the photo shoot seen above.




Yes, I am in my underpants, I tripped my rousers doing a somersault off the couch.

"(You Got My Mind Going In The) Wrong Direction"

I listened to bad advice. I cared what other people thought. I took garbage gigs. I drank a lot and made sure everybody else did too. It wasn't an easy band to be in. Most of the time, the shows were great but the recordings of the same shows were horrible. You really, really had to be there. At times, though, something would jell. For instance, here's a recording from a party for a bunch of law students who were all bowling at the time:

"Snacky Poo"

Given the chance to perform for an audience that was paying approximately no attention to us, we managed to find a safe space to grow and create as one. I don't know why Trey's mike is turned up so high on this though.

Let's just say we were not at our best when I wasn't ready to just spazz out, which is what the Power-That-Bes put me here to do, to the chagrin and consternation of parents, siblings, spouses, friends, and myself. But when I was ready to play, we could take the shabby two-bit material it was our fate to perform and sometimes make the feet tap a litle bit.

We played in Cliff Davis' backyard a bunch. We even recorded a "live album" there, at his behest. It sounds like shit.

I passed out on Cliff's workbench after one show. I was covered with metal shavings.

Sometimes there was a belly dancer. Or sometimes you could melt Barbie's at Cliff's.

What else? I usually did the flyering for the band...I would silkscreen a few dozen flyers, the wind would mess up about half of those, and the rest we (usually me and Trey) would put on a two-block stretch of Magazine Street, starting, with good reason, at Ms. Mae's and ending at the Brothers Three.

Flyer Gallery.

Pictures from a show at Ernie K-Doe's Mother-In-Law Lounge (again by Elizabeth Underwood.)





We were a bar band plain and simple. I know it sounds bad, it sounds bad to me, but I also wish it had lasted a little longer.

"Pills"

Ernie K-Doe's is under water. My house got wrecked and I moved to Brooklyn. And that was the end of the Stacks. No nasty break-up, no pathetic descent into hawaiian shirt reunions, just a little hurricane and that's it. Sorry if you missed it.

Yes, the car is rolling.



Trey demonstrates some yoga moves while the rest of us just stand around wondering where we set the whiskey bottle down.


I look puffier than Alex McMurray in this shot.

Two more mp3s (from the Dave/Chan/Sara/Ron/Paul lineup?): a little encore.

"The Boo Boo Song." Originally by the astonishing King Coleman. Don't know what happened in the middle there.
"The Alligator." Quintron asked me if I wrote this. I didn't. It has one and a half chords...God wrote it. I totally remember this now! This is possibly the most alive and best thing we ever did...

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