The Dragons: Diggin' in the Sand

Ninja Tune records uncovers a psychedelic-pop album with a curiously circuitous back story

Comments (0) By Scott Thill Wednesday, Nov 14 2007

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Really?

“I honestly don’t! Actually, Jim Morrison took my girlfriend away.”

Really?

“I came to her door once and this guy about six-three answered and, whoops, I just left. I was living with her and I just left.”

The story ends well, of course. Daryl finds Toni Tenille, Dennis finds work with pillars of pop, and Doug finds himself on the slope of a Hawaiian volcano after splitting Malibu following the Dragons’ implosion. DJ Food then finds the Dragons, and the circle is complete. It’s an L.A. story.

“We were all hanging out in Malibu,” Dennis recalls. “We were beach people. It was a different time. Less stress, less cars, less people, especially on PCH. It was trippy, now that I think about it. Malibu was much more rural at the time. And there wasn’t a whole lot going on.”

But the new millennium’s postmodern velocity has caught up with the Dragons, at the hands of crate-digging DJs and sound collagists. Whatever works, dude. Whatever works.

THE DRAGONS | BFI | Ninja Tune