Dave Rave is a musician’s musician. To the general public, he’s the manic Teenage Head rhythm guitarist who graduated to lead singer and catapulted the band back into the charts; but musicians know him as a valued session player (Daniel Lanois, Andrew Loog Oldham, Alex Chilton, and countless others) who can play the best version of a song he’s never heard. Dave began his music career in his high school years writing songs and performing driving acoustic rock and folk-pop in and around their native Hamilton. This evolved into the wildly popular, The Shakers, from 1979-1982 with Rick Andrews, Tim Gibbons and Claude DesRoches. They charted many singles with albums produced by Daniel Lanois (U2) and Jack Richardson (Guess Who, Alice Cooper). Their garage rockapunkabilly sound ignited the masses during their reign. Following the break-up of The Shakers, Dave took over as lead singer of the already popular Teenage Head. Dave replaced Frankie Venom who incidentally had worked with Dave on several other projects including a band named Madonna. Dave Rave continued to take Teenage Head on an upward trajectory with radio friendly hits like “Can’t Stop Shakin’”. Dave left Teenage Head after a successful run to try things out on his own.

Often referred to as a Canadian Nick Lowe, Dave was the first North American artist to sign to Russia’s Melodiya record label and recorded Valentino’s Pirates in 1989 as The Dave Rave Group. They were originally known as the Dave Rave Conspiracy but this name was changed to appease cold war era Russian sensibilities. Press surrounding this release included a CBC documentary revisiting Russia with the group as well as 3 promotional videos that were in heavy rotation at Much Music in Canada.