Alvin Dahn
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alvin Skylar Dahn is an outsider musician who gained fame within the growing outsider music community after his singular work was featured frequently on the Incorrect Music Hour. One of his most popular songs, the apocoliptic, "You're Driving Me Mad" has been described as sounding like "a metal song sung by Ned Flanders".[1] He has also been referred to as "Dahn Halen" for the iron edge of this amazingly infectious tune.
Alvin has long resided in the Buffalo, New York area and has worked chiefly as a custodian at several small colleges. Following a particularly painful divorce some years ago he was pushed into insolvency which led him to living in a men's shelter in Buffalo and working at a local food pantry. Sadly, his musical output waned in the unlucky years that followed.
Dahn recorded just one full album produced by noted actor/author Geoffrey Giuliano at Mark Studios in Clarence, New York in the early 1990s. Entitled "Let Your Mind Out To Play" this, only half serious recording, features several over the top interviews with the infamous "singing custoadian" as well as samples of his chaotic recording sessions, several completed musical works and even an outragious mock concert promo. A description from Giuliano's website (which is the only known source for the obscure CD/download) delares Dahn to be not only "oddly" talented but also a really "nice" guy.
The truth is that Dahn is indeed a serious artist that has lived life very close to the bone and has created his music depite a world that seems to have consipred against him from the very beginning. Says producer and longtime patron Giuliano. "Alvin is good because he's so very, very bad. He can't sing certainly, but his music is very catchy and frightfully innocent and sincere. He believes in himself 100% and should thus be an inspiration to people whom have been given much more; which is just about everyone. He is the hero of his own life as a man who fought to create and achieved his goal And for that, and his music, he will be long remembered."
[edit] Dahn's Musical Works
His topsy turvy, evocative music ranges in style from rock to metal, blues and to ballads accompanied by strings. He appeared on a noted British documentary about outsider music, revealing that he personally met the considerable cost of hiring string section of the Buffalo Philharmonic used in his song Don't Throw Your Dreams Away himself.
The Incorrect Music Hour once played over forty minutes of a Dahn studio session. Much of the show consisted of Dahn's half of a convoluted dialogue with sound engineer Fred Betcheun as he discusses (often critically) his performances and requests dozens of retakes. It is clear from these sessions that Dahn's music is produced with a perfectionist's zeal in professional studios; his music is the result of painstaking work and great studio expense.
