The Blind Dates - Rain In Athens - 1985from the S/T cassette
A few weeks ago I made a trip down to Charlotte to visit my pal Jamie Hoover. He had two LARGE boxes of cassettes waiting for me. Specifically for the purpose of this web site. I have to admit its a daunting task to dig through this much history. One of things that I stumbled across almost right away was the cassette by The Blind Dates. Being from Winston-Salem, I have never been all that familiar with the Charlotte music scene, so tons of cassettes from Jamie were a breath of fresh air, well dusty air. So anyway, I really liked this song and thought I'd share with everyone. In the coming months there will be many more bands such as this that I had no clue about. Hey, isn't that what this site is all about?
The Blind Dates were an all-girl trio from Charlotte, NC. The one fact I do know is that Deanna Campbell (guitar and vocals) went on to form 2nd Skin, Violet Strange and continues to perform today. If anyone has some decent insight into The Blind Dates and any of its members please share.
Thanks to Jamie for saving all this stuff and letting me scavenge through it.
Band Members:
Gina Stewart - Bass, Vocals
Penneye Craver - Drums, Vocals
Deanna Campbell - Guitar, Vocals
3 comments:
Hi Pat, Thanks for the great insight.
Patrick has the story pretty much the way I remember it. I worked for WDAV's Flipsides show at the time, and helped organize the "Play And Record" contest, which is what the event was called. We sponsored it with Jeff Lowery who was running the Milestone at the time. As I recall, the contest was one of the Blind Dates' earliest shows.
The judges were Bob Okamoto (School Kids)and Jeff Borden (Observer.) I also remember the reasoning about the Dates having the most commercial viability. Ironic since SCOTS is still going strong and has ended up with much national notoriety. If I'm remembering correctly, SCOTS had a horn section then.
One more note about Gina. She was in Charlotte band Doubting Thomas for many years, and she was the original bassist for Fetchin Bones.
Michael - thanks for this whole damn site. I'm ginning from ear to ear as I read about these bands I haven't heard in so long.
Rachel Stewart
Davidson, NC
Gina is currently in Volatile Baby with long-time bandmate Brenda Gambill. Gina was also an original member of Fetchin' Bones. She was very good to a lot of younger bands in the Charlotte area, offering them opening slots on Blind Dates shows. My first original rock band club gig was opening for them at the 4808 club back in the late 80s.
Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC
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