'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

Dean Dyson

Dean is the narrator of the ‘Eggs Benedict’ trilogy of stories, and is currently recording something else I wrote, which I hope will be freely available to listen to and download from my audio site (the link to which is at the bottom of this article). However, I am not here to publicise my audio books, but to turn the spotlight on Dean himself.

Dean is a songwriter and recording artist, who has three albums of his own and a presence on myspace which I understand to be growing at the rate of 1,000 downloads a month.   http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=167481372 will get you there and will probably get you listening to ‘I Found You’ (the title of his second album). This, I regard as Dean’s signature recording, but of course no one song is definitive in itself.

There is a certain balance to Dean’s work, and he follows his own star with a gentle insistence which as gentle as it is, is probably harder to turn back than the Viking hoards. Not that he hasn’t worked successfully with some of the top songwriters in the western hemisphere, and is generally a cooperative soul, but he is a man who has his own vision and is not about to lose sight of it.

On visits to The States, I have taken his CD’s with me, and have played them when on car trips with friends. They thought they were listening to the radio, which is understandable. His music is main stream, well produced, and features Dean’s own incredibly rich and vibrant vocals; well suited to the play-lists of thousands of radio stations around the world.

Not for the first time, I find myself listening to songs which could easily be part of our common culture, but are not. The reasons are invariably the same, old reasons. Success in the world of popular music consists of a subtle mix of talent, technical and promotional back-up, arranged under the umbrella of big business commitment. Yes, you have your internet success stories, and Dean is on that route with his thousand downloads a month, but at this point in time, the media’s attention is not his to command and neither major stage tours nor plum recording contracts are being waved in his face.

If you are in London, Dean appears at ‘The Green Note’ in Camden Town, accompanied by Chris Newland on guitar, but for my money The Dean Dyson Band provides the handle to the cup, so to speak. Nevertheless, catch him at ‘The Green Note’ if you can.

You might assume that my aim is to bring Dean’s music to your attention, but that is only partially true. It is the man who I salute; the man who without being indiscriminate in his affections, is a major fan of so many other performing and recording artists, who is always there to go that extra mile for you, who makes what is best out of life, in  both a creative and a personal sense.

“Bad, bad boy,” he says on reading some of my grubbier stuff. Not his forte perhaps, but he will delight in it anyway. He will delight in my delight. In my experience this is the essential quality of those who are truly capable of delighting us all.

Send your opinions regarding Mr. Benedict's writings to bbenedict@netlistings.com