In memoriam

Dave Egan, 1961 - 2000

by Jon Garelick

Dave Egan, who died on December 6 at the age of 38 after a 10-month battle with soft-tissue sarcoma, was not what you'd call a high-profile figure on the Boston music scene. A guitarist from Syracuse, New York, he worked in the music-distribution business on Long Island and in London before he moved to Boston in 1991. He got a job at Planet Records in Kenmore Square (where he met his wife, Julia Blocker) and played in bands including the mid-'90s Boston India-rock band Sumac, the experimental keyboard group Frost Giant, and the cocktail-rock band Penguin. If you didn't know Dave from the bands and clubs, maybe you knew him from Planet -- tall, blond, bespectacled, with a soft voice and an easy sense of humor. He was a manager in the Kenmore Square store until it burned down in 1998, and then worked at the newer store in Harvard Square. Dave was a music junkie and a regular at Tower Records on Monday nights, where he waited for the latest releases to go on sale at midnight.

EGAN made the Boston music scene a better place.

"He had an unending thirst for music. He was incredibly well versed, read everything including the European magazines," Planet owner John Damroth recently recalled, "and he was a major talent in that he could retain all that -- stuff that I've long since forgotten."

In Syracuse, Dave had played with a Joy Division cover band called Ian's Kitchen, among other groups. Tom Valicenti, who knew Dave in Syracuse, then worked with him at Planet and played with him in Sumac, describes him as a talented musician. "Dave was the most naturally gifted guitar player that I've ever played with, but very self-effacing about his abilities," he says. "He also had a beautiful singing voice, but that's something he was also very humble about."

When he lived in New York, Dave worked at another record store, the Desert Shore. It was "the best record store on campus," says Valenti. "All the musicians knew him. He got me into a lot of interesting stuff. He convinced me to buy a Wire album in 1987 -- I'd never really heard them before and it was really mind-blowing. He literally loved everything musical. He was into krautrock -- Kraftwerk, Can -- classic rock, post-punk like Joy Division, Wire, Gang of Four, then alternative stuff like Stereolab and Radiohead, pop like Matthew Sweet and Teenage Fanclub."

In the store, Dave was known not only for his expertise, but also for his sense of humor and, as Damroth puts it, his ability to avoid "any situation that's negative, which is really helpful in retail."

In his way, Dave Egan was like a lot of music fiends who move to Boston. And, of course, a lot of us move here to be around people like Dave.