Don’t ask me why and don’t ask me
how, but I’ve had another one of those dreams. It's not a dream like I was describing last week where I go back to college and then blow off my classes. This was
a different kind of dream. And because of it, I had an epiphany.
It’s not--by any means--an important epiphany, but it’s something
someone with a strange mind would find interesting.
Which, basically, means that I (and,
perhaps, I alone) find it interesting.
Here’s what I’m talking about. I
had this dream where I was trying to re-master Fleetwood Mac’s
“Tusk” album. No, I don’t know why; I just was. And two
things were causing me difficulty in the dream--I was trying to
re-master it on a vinyl album (not digitally, or even on tape) and
kept screwing it up. And the song on which I kept screwing up was
“Go Your Own Way”, which wasn’t even ON “Tusk” but was on
“Rumours”, instead.
Then I woke up.
Now, I know it was probably just a
standard performance-anxiety dream, a dream like my ongoing college
class saga and the kind of dream that we all have (except, perhaps,
for the whole re-mastering Fleetwood Mac part). It was probably even
the kind of dream that I would’ve forgotten, except for the fact
that I wanted to listen to music the next morning while working out
and decided, because “Go Your Own Way’ was stuck in my head, to
listen to “Rumours”.
And THAT’S when I had my epiphany.
If you want to be really technical,
that dream led me to two epiphanies. The first was that, even after
42 years, “Rumours” is a GREAT album. It still holds up, both in
its sound and in its lyrical content. It sounds like it could’ve
been recorded just a few days ago and you would not have been able to
tell. I guess there was a reason why, for a year back in the 70s
(before “Saturday Night Fever”), it was the best selling album of
all time.
Here’s the second epiphany, the one
that really made my brain pop. Like I said, “Rumours” is 42
years old. People still listen to it, it still gets played on the
radio, and the group (minus Lindsey Buckingham) still tours around
the world, playing songs from it. That’s 42 years after it came
out.
Now let’s go back to 1977, the year
“Rumours” it was released. People in 1977 weren’t listening to
music that was then 42 years old. Radio stations weren’t playing
songs that had been recorded 42 years before that, and artists that
had been around for 42 years weren’t touring in front of huge
crowds. That’s because 42 years before 1977 would’ve made it
1935, when people like Rudy Vallee and Al Jolson were still wowing
'em with show tunes they had honed over years of touring in vaudeville.
I can’t imagine anyone who was in
their teens, or 20s, or their 30s in the 1970s listening to music
that was then 42 years old. Yet even today, from people who are in
their teens or 20s or 30s, I get requests to play songs from
Fleetwood Mac, specifically songs from “Rumours”. I don’t know
if it’s a testament to the album in particular, or just the fact
that rock music has been around and popular for so long in general,
but 42 years after it came out, “Rumours” still seems relevant.
Whereas in 1977, 42 years after its
peak, vaudeville & show tune was NOT.
Like I said, this is probably a subject
that no one finds interesting (with, like I said, the possible
exception of me), but it’s something that popped into my head while
working out yesterday morning. And it’s all because of a strange
dream I had.
Our subconscious is a wonderful thing,
isn’t it?
****
Keep your fingers crossed that a couple
of fields stay snow-free at least through Sunday. Now that
everything's (temporarily) clear Loraine & I are hoping to get
another soccer session in before the snow returns. Wish us luck.
And while you're at it, have a great (& fun-filled) weekend
yourself!
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