Continuing my look at 1994, first by counting down my own top ten albums of that year.
#7 – Under the Table and Dreaming – Dave Matthews Band
I was shocked, when choosing which song to post today, to realize that I have never featured a song from Dave Matthews Band’s Under the Table and Dreaming through more than 5,000 Songs of the Day. Wild.
I think that’s because my admiration for Dave Matthews Band crested and waned well before I started the blog. It was a decidedly mid- to late-90s love affair.
In 1994, though, this album hit hard. It was unlike anything I was hearing at the time — an alternative rock band featuring horns and a violin and Matthews’ uniquely weird vocals.
This baroque jam band could deliver tight melodies and radio-ready singles on an album that clocked in at over an hour and featured multiple instrumental breaks. And the thing went 6X Platinum, making them unlikely superstars.
It’s hard to deny the appeal of ‘What Would You Say’ and ‘Ants Marching,’ though I was even more drawn to the romanticism of ‘Satellite’ and ‘Lover Lay Down.’ Some of the other tracks don’t hold up as well, but on the whole Under the Table and Dreaming still feels very fresh today.
Slip into my lover’s hands
Kiss me oh won’t you kiss me now
And sleep I would inside your mouth
Don’t be us too shy
Knowing it’s no big surprise
That I will wait for you
I will wait for no one but you
Look please lover lay down
Spend this time with me
Together share this smile
Lover lay down
Walk with me, walk with you
Hold my hand your hands
So much we have dreamed
And you were so much younger
Hard to explain that we are stronger
A million reasons life to deny
Let’s toss them away
See you and me we
Lay down look see
She and he
By my lover’s side
Together share this smile
Each other’s tears to cry
Together share this smile
Lover lay down
Oh please
Look please lover lay down
Oh please lover lay down
And you weep
Lover lay down
Cause it’s over
Lover lay down
Say lover, say lover, say lover, say lover, say lover
Could I love you
Could you love me (4x)
Darling it’s
All the same (4x)
‘Til we dance away (4x)
Chasing me all around
Leading me all around
Leading me all around in circles (2x)
Say…
Meet Me In Montauk 
Amy was just wondering yesterday what we were listening to in 1994. The answer is this album.
Indeed, though I thought it was a year earlier. I guess not. When I taught at Hillel a few years later, a student once signed Ants Marching at a camp Shabbaton, a singular experience that to this day represents this album and band to me.