DYS (band)

Formation

DYS was founded in the 1980s by singer Dave Smalley and bassist Jonathan Anastas. At the time, Smalley was a freshman at Boston College, while Anastas had previously founded the short-lived band Decadence, whose song "Slam" was featured on "This Is Boston, Not LA", and later adopted for a long-running MTV advertising campaign titled "Santa, the Man, the Myth, the Slam Dancer."

DYS took its name from the Department of Youth Services, a Massachusetts governmental organization where delinquent youth were housed, as well as the Alice Cooper teen power anthem "Department of Youth." Smalley and Anastas were joined by guitarist Andy Strachan and drummer Dave Collins. In 1983, the band released their debut album Brotherhood, produced by punk recording legend Lou Giordano. In 1985, they added now Jerry's Kid guitar player Ross Luongo and released their second self-titled album, DYS, which took them in a metal direction and included the first power ballad ever attempted by a hardcore band. During their metal period, live sound was handled by noted hard rock producer Andrew Murdock, who works under the professional name "Mudrock."

Breakup

After DYS, broke up. Anastas became a founding member of Slapshot. Dave Smalley went on to sing for Dag Nasty, ALL and Down By Law, before founding The Jam-influenced band The Sharpshooters. Strachan co-founded the more rock-focused band Slaughter Shack, before quitting music and converting to Sikhism. Both of DYS's 1980s albums were re-issued together on CD and in digital formats by Taang! Records (titled Fire and Ice). Brotherhood has also been reissued on CD and on iTunes in early 2005 by Taang! Records with the addition of the Wolfpack demo tape, featuring Hüsker Dü singing back-up vocals.

Reformation

On August 29, 2010 DYS headlined a reunion show in front of over 1,000 fans, along with fellow Boston hardcore punk pioneers Jerry's Kids, Gang Green and The F.U.'s, as well as New York City’s Antidote and Slapshot. The reunion line-up included an additional guitar player, Bobby Frankenheim (Ex-Deathwish), and new drummer Jack Clark of Jerry's Kids and Unnatural Axe. The show was shot for the movie xxx ALL AGES xxx, a documentary about the hardcore punk scene in Boston in the early 1980s. A live album of the performance was released on August 9, 2011, on Bridge 9 Records, as "More than Fashion: LIVE from the Gallery East Reunion" on vinyl and Digital formats.

After that show, Smalley and Anastas recruited a new DYS lineup featuring ex-Foo Fighters and current Scream guitarist Franz Stahl, ex-Powerman 5000 drummer Al Pahanish Jr., and guitarist Adam Porris, who played in Far From Finished. They played the 2010 "Hometown Throwdown" at the House of Blues in Boston, in support of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and again at the same venue in support of the Dropkick Murphys annual St. Patrick's Day stand in 2012. The band also completed 2011 and 2012 recording sessions with their old sound man, Andrew "Mudrock" Murdock, in Los Angeles. Recordings from these sessions were released as Digital singles from Fall 2011 through Fall 2012 on Bridge 9, the first being "Wild Card," released November 8, 2011, followed by "Sound of our Town" featuring Dicky Barrett of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones on guest vocals, released December 13, 2011, "Unloaded" released on January 24, 2012, a cover of Motörhead's "Road Crew" in February 2012, a re-make of "Brotherhood" (Brotherhood 2012) in July 2012 and "True Believers" in October 2012.

This line-up of DYS played around 35 live shows in the US and Europe between 2010 and 2014. Major festival dates included the 2011 Rumble Fest in Chicago, the 2011 Sound and Fury Fest in Santa Barbara, the 2012 Black n' Blue Bowl, the 2012 SXSW Festival, the 2012 Groezrock Festival, the 2012 My Fest in Berlin, the 2012 Tsunami East Fest, the 2014 Southeast Beast Fest, and the 2014 EIPER Fest.

Discography