Dave DiMatteo started his musical career in 1988 playing bass for Happy Hour, a crossover hard rock-punk
band based in then West Berlin featuring members from Vellocet, No Allegiance and Squandered Message.

He studied at the Grove School of Music, completing the bass program run by Joel Di Bartolo in 1993 as the famous West Coast jazz school was going bankrupt. His upright bass teacher was Tim Emmons. Armed with more academic knowledge than time allowed to digest, Dave learned to play jazz as he worked with a slew of local L.A. acts. One group enabled him to win an award for L.A. region California Country Music Bass Player of the Year 1996. The band talked him into wearing a bolo tie to accept the award. He quit soon after. Today Dave keeps marginally busy with noncommittal bass-for-hire gigs in the rock & jazz world.

Some rock heads and some jazz geeks have become suspicious of his lack of narrow-minded musical focus.
“I'm not an uptight purist of any particular style,” he recently said at a gig in Little Tokyo. Later that night he
did not get pissed at the tired old “drummer” for telling him to play “long notes” on a medium tempo tune.
“I did this gig weekly to memorize more standards, but for 30 bucks I should rather be home masturbating
to old bible stories than put up with these tired old guys playing ding.” He may say that off record, but he seems to enjoy playing.

For a decade Dave has been in a jazz trio he named Spherbie, that plays predominantly Thelonious Monk and
Herbie Nichols tunes, but the talented piano player Hugh Schick packed up his bong and moved to northern Cal in 2004.
"I tried to keep the group playing but it’s hard to hear the piano when its 500 miles away.” When asked why he
doesn’t get another pianist he said, "Hugh’s approach to the piano made it sound like the keyboard had
one hundred twenty-three keys and that’s not easy to replace...and the drummer (Max Acosta-Rubio)...... nah, I miss it but my stress level’s way down now.”

-FGS 2004 view flyer