Don Dixon - Most Of The Girls Like To Dance But Only Some Of The Boys Like To

For some odd reason, an old post from ten years back, Marti Jones's Unsophisticated Time (her solo debut), has been getting a lot of views this week. With that, I thought I'd take the opportunity to pen a few words regarding her future husband's first album, also put out later that year.

Don Dixon was born in South Carolina in 1950, later moving to Charlotte, North Carolina. He got into music while in junior high school there, starting with bass guitar (a cheap Danelectro Silvertone from Sears department store), which he played in a pickup band he formed with some school friends.  Later, while in high school, he moved to upright bass, and began playing with a local jazz band as an established member.

After his high school graduation, Dixon attended the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where in 1969, with a number of other UNC freshmen, he formed the band Arrogance. Arrogance started out as a covers band, doing versions of songs by The Beatles, Mountain, Cream and Black Sabbath, but soon began penning and performing their own original tunes. The band gained a huge following in the Piedmont area, but despite several attempts to broaden their reach and audience (including a couple of major label releases on Vanguard Records and Warner Brothers Records) and changes in their musical approach (from straight-ahead rock, to early '70s folk, late '70s New Wave/power pop and early '80s post-punk), they never managed to break out nationally. After a final series of local North Carolina concerts, Arrogance disbanded after fourteen years in 1983.

However, in late 1982, with the band obviously on its last legs, Dixon was contacted by an old friend and fellow musician, Mitch Easter, who wanted his assistance in producing the debut album by a band from Athens, Georgia who Easter had worked with the year before, a four-member combo called R.E.M. In 1981 at his small studio located in his parents' garage in Winston-Salem, Easter had produced the band's first single, "Radio Free Europe", an independent release that put R.E.M. on the map and led directly to them being signed by industry giant I.R.S. Records. The group had begun recording their first album with this major label in Boston in the fall of 1982, but the sessions had not gone well, so the band pleaded with I.R.S. to allow them to travel back to North Carolina to let Easter try his hand at producing once again. The label granted conditional permission to R.E.M. to record one song with Easter, that I.R.S. would then assess and determine if it was good enough to allow the rest of the album's recording to take place there. Easter knew he was under a lot of pressure to deliver, and therefore called upon Dixon and his trusted ear to assist him in this tryout.

Well, the rest is history: R.E.M. recorded "Pilgrimage" with Easter and Dixon producing, a song that I.R.S. subsequently flipped over, and the rest of the album, titled Murmur, was OKed for recording with the producing duo. Murmur was a huge critical success, eventually reaching #36 on the Billboard Album charts, and the reputations of both Easter and Dixon were made. From then on, a steady stream of bands came through North Carolina to have their records produced by the pair, or by Easter or Dixon separately, including Guadalcanal Diary, The Smithereens, Chris Stamey, Fetchin Bones, Game Theory, Pylon, The Connells, The Waxing Poetics, and many, many more. The sound being produced by the pair - characterized mainly by minimal/no guitar distortion and "dry" drumming - was described/celebrated as "jangle pop", and in the mid-'80s, it was the sound of college and independent alternative radio nationwide.

[Dixon's mid-eighties work in particular with Fetchin Bones, a North Carolina early proto-grunge band, almost paid big dividends for him a few years later, as he was a top choice to produce the sophomore album by a Washington State group on the verge of superstardom. As Dixon tells the story: "Fetchin Bones was definitely an early, quirky grunge band, you know, pre-grunge, because this was all in the ’80s. I got called to do that Nirvana

record [Nevermind]. Went out to spend some time with them before ”[Smells Like] Teen Spirit.” They were playing some version of it, but it didn’t have any real words yet. That was ’91. We actually worked out a deal, but they ultimately thought I wanted too much money ... Butch Vig was going to engineer, I was going to produce, but they came to their senses and didn’t give me all that money I was asking for. Butch ended up making the record and did a great job ... It only increased my respect for them that they didn’t want to waste money, because they didn’t need me. They really didn’t."]

In 1985, Dixon was assigned production duties by A&M Records for Marti Jones, who had just come off a disastrous stint with Color Me Gone and was looking to establish herself as an individual artist. Her first solo album, Unsophisticated Time, was a great critical success; although it didn't make any big waves commercially, it got her noticed in certain areas (I mentioned before how songs from this disc were in heavy rotation in the Washington, DC area in 1985-86). And it began a longstanding professional collaboration between Jones and Dixon (he produced her next four albums) that blossomed into a romance; the pair married in 1988.

But in 1985, on the strength of his reputation as a producer and residual word-of-mouth praise for his work with the now-defunct Arrogance, Enigma Records gave Dixon the opportunity to release his own solo record. His initial outing, titled Most Of The Girls Like To Dance But Only Some Of The Boys Like To, contains recordings and reworkings of songs from his personal music stash of demos and singles written and performed over the previous five years.  Some dated back from his Arrogance days, others were 4-track home recordings and one had been recently recorded at Mitch Easter’s garage studio (a cover of Nick Lowe's "Skin Deep", featuring Easter on lead guitar).   But all of them showcase Dixon's clever, sometimes biting wordplay, vocal adeptness, and affection for ’60s pop and R&B. I found the entire disc to be pretty good.

This album did practically nothing on the mainstream charts (reaching a high of only #162 on the Billboard Album rankings).  But it was championed by alternative and college radio; the disc's lead single "Praying Mantis" was played constantly on DC's WHFS for weeks in late 1985/early 1986.  Here's the video:

Dixon recorded prolifically for the next three decades, mostly between producing duties, releasing eleven more albums either individually or in collaboration with other artists, including his wife.  He hasn't put out a record of his own since 2013's High & Filthy & Borderline. But he still occasionally performs, usually with Marti Jones, and they are both still beloved and appreciated by generations of music fans, myself included.

Despite containing one of Dixon's most popular, enduring songs, his debut album has long been out of print, and rather difficult to track down online.  Therefore, here it is for your enjoyment: Don Dixon's impossibly hard-to-find solo debut album, Most Of The Girls Like To Dance But Only Some Of The Boys Like To, released on Enigma Records in the latter half of 1985.   Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

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