Dave Adams

Based out of Raleigh, NC, multi-instrumentalist Dave Adams helped create the ambitious sounds of the band Glass Moon in the '80s and then went on to become a respected producer and studio musician, working with artists such as Terry Anderson and the Fabulous Knobs. Adams' professional gigging began in high school and he certainly wasn't someone who could claim to have never seen any of his teenage buddies once he grew up; in fact, in later years all Adams had to do to keep up with the activities of his old high-school bandmembers was to pick up a rock fanzine, since several of his friends, including guitarists Chris Jones and Rod Dash, also continued in the music business. The early-'70s band Tera Nova included Adams on keyboards as well as Jerry Peek looking in on bass a few years before he became a collaborator in the fusion Steve Morse code. Legend has it that the Glass Moon band, circa 1974 through 1977, could stand up to a comparison with Morse and the Dixie Dregs, featuring progressive instrumental music and lengthy solos rolled in by guitarist John Wheeliss. By the early '80s, the band had secured the interest of the Warner Bros. conglomerate, but the three albums that came out were synth pop, the focus not on extemporized jamming but on quite clear arrangements and melodic hooks. The band's main score was "Simon," adding another ditty to the wonderful subgenre of songs with people's names in the title, but staying on the hit charts for even less time than Jerry Falwell kept his promise to stay out of trouble. Retrospectively, there seems to be much respect for the Glass Moon albums as well as a single solo album Adams made for Elektra and entitled Dancing in My Sleep. Undiscovered pop gems and what some critics have described as a perfect radio voice are some of...