Immensely talented but that skill was buttressed by guys like Ravenstine and Maimone. They never topped those first three records. And it's easy to forget that even people like Tim Wright -- who wasn't even in the band for very long -- was still there, geniuses like Charlotte Pressler were hanging out on the periphery. Nothing like that will happen again in Cleveland.
I interviewed him once. I was told he didn't like talking about Peter Laughner, so I asked him about Peter Laughner. To his credit, he said Peter was the most talented person he'd met up until that time, but then disparaged him by saying he was embarrassingly obsessed with NYC -- that might have been partially true. I sensed that David thought Cleveland could do it's own thing without looking up to metropolitan/art-hub cities. I kind of respect that.
He wasn't pleasant to speak with but he was definitely marching to the beat of his own drummer. They hired a PR person who was atrocious. She killed the interview -- we just ran it online as opposed to print. It was the second time I accepted working with PR and it was an even worse experience than the first. I promised to never do it again and I haven't.
He was definitely a genius and his albums (Ubu or solo) were for the most part consistently good. Over that long of a career, that's rare.
