music you dreamt

There must be something about the surreality of Syd Barrett's music output that inspires dreams. I once dreamt that I was watching a music video of one of his songs -- apparently he'd come back from lala-land and become an established artist. Anyway, the video started with a long view of a desert. It zoomed in and in (imagine the beginning of "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome) until this speck grew bigger and became a little suburban house with a white picket fence, out in the middle of the desert. Syd was standing on the porch with a long black cape (typical) and a black fedora hat. Then the song started. There were a few rock instruments, but it was mostly odd, swooping strings ala "I Am The Walrus." The strings swelled louder and suddenly his voice appeared, barking these strange lyrics in his low, deadpan voice. The strings and the voice battled for supremacy for a while, until all of a sudden there was this chorus of children's voices -- a _nice_ chorus, not like those yapping monsters in "Another Brick In The Wall." And suddenly these acrobatic black children in colorful, baroque costumes spilled out of the front door, spinning flipping and dancing out into the front "yard" (acutally a desert) as they sang this beautiful harmony part.

I heard Syd music in my dreams a couple of times after that; there was no video accompaniment, it was just me putting Syd CD's in my player and listening. There was this one song that had these swooping slide guitar lines, like "Astronomy Domine," except it was more structured, Syd was singing about werewolves, and it had about five or ten false endings.

But my most vivid Syd dream was this: I was dumpster diving, and I found this dirty, scratched up old record that looked like was barely playable, if at all. And suddenly I _knew_ that this was the full third album that Syd was never able to make. Then I woke up. I may have had tears in my eyes, or not, but I did have a deep sense of sadness that lasted for hours.

I had _one_ dream with Pink Floyd music. The song I heard was "Echoes," except it was a version with orchestra accompaniment, and at the end of the verse section, instead of turning into a psych jam, it modulated into this sweeping cosmic major key section, with the strings getting louder and louder and more majestic. Then I woke up -- but the music didn't stop. Instead, these vibrant patches of color started floating across the bed, in time to the music. It was very beautiful. And no, I was -not- on drugs. Soon after I _really_ woke up.

These aren't really topical though; I don't actually remember this music that well, it's just shadows of memory. I _do_ have a great story idea that came from a dream. If I can find it -- I didn't trust myself to write it down before forgetting it, so I recorded it on a minicassete. Which I promptly misplaced.

Sometimes when I'm dreaming, someone will say something "profound," and I'll think to myself "Ooh, have to remember that for when I wake up." I never do. Though one time, just as I was in the process of waking up, I heard these words of wisdom uttered by the voice of a snotty, upperclass british boy. I scrambled frantically for a pen and paper, wrote it down, and got on with my day. I came back and read it later:

"Things I hate: Boomers, Book Talk, and Police Floaters."

I was dissapointed. That reminds me of the story of some famous author who had a similar experience. Only his words of wisdom were:

"Hogamus, higamus, men are polygamous. Higamus, hogamus, women are monogamous."

Pretty clever, actually.

Then he had these piano books. They had music in them but also commentary. They were written from this angry young classical musician reactionary kind of position, and had anti-rock comments scattered throughout. Several little entries read like 'The degradation of dogmatic folk rock after '68 showed that it already contained the seeds of its own decline.' Very disparaging.

Dogmatic folk rock - you read it here first.

• I rarely remember music in most of my dreams at all
• The rare times I do hear music, it's an amazing, original piece that knows no equivalent in the real world

Saving my money for that Sony digital dream recorder.. (please, no "Until The End Of The World" references)

You mean other than my experience above? It happened to Stravinsky -- I think a violin motif in L'Histoire du Soldat came from a dream he had involving a gypsy musician. Of the music I've dreamed, only "Danny DeVito" and a handful of other snippets, usually fragmentary, have made it to tape/paper.

"Comfortably Numb" and "Opal" ? Damn, that would be interesting.

It was pretty good, and weirdly moving. As Dave Gilmour would sing each line, Barrett or Waters (don't remember which) would sing a corresponding line from Opel, so that the first word of "On a distant shore" began partway through "There is no pain", "miles from land" came right after "you are receding", and so on. So it was really CN with Opel interpolated. Oddly enough, that sort of thing is something that PF did live now and again -- most notably, by playing snippets of "Dark Globe" during the intro to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".

I've had at least a half-dozen Pink Floyd dreams, often revolving around my sadness at having exhausted their recorded output (these were in the days before I discovered bootlegs). In one of them, I discovered a heretofore-unknown album with the (absurd) title Bonus Surprise. I was quite sad to wake up and find out that it wasn't real. I think it might've had a song that hinted at something involving chains of hot-air balloons stretching through the sky, but I could be wrong.

I also once had a dream, when I was 12 or so, that Donovan came to play a concert at my middle school and was practically laughed off the stage.

the final blast/finale of the ten minute song apparently left listeners enough clues for them to dream up their own encore, dead or asleep ; that feeling of building up to something ominous

In my nightmare I knew that "the pat" referred to some chronic, addictive condition having to do with teenagers becoming infected by pop music and becoming enslaved by it. Once you were in on this terrible secret you became puppetlike, incapabable of doing little but consuming major-label pop music and obeying society's marching orders in other respects. All pop musicians in my nightmare were thoroughly riddled with the pat. The terrible part about hearing the song was that you only could understand the terror of the pat once you had contracted it but you knew the sound would sound irresistible to the uninfected. The musicians sang about it with false cheer which only the legion of infected could recognize.

The randomness of this nightmare still chills me to recount. I am sorry if I have upset anyone.

i had a dream that maura and josh and i went to see elvis costello the other week. josh booed him.

i also had a dream where i stabbed a sometimes ilm poster last night.

The other night I'm pretty sure I had a nightmare about the Eagles, and woke up in a cold sweat.

in this show (i can't remember the name of) from the late '60s, the evil music producer was always involved in essentially the same plot -- get "goldie-locks", a "cute teenage rock star" with "cute youngest brady girl hair", aged 16 i guess, but somehow such a "cute innocent little girl" -- she's wearing teenage go-go rock''n'roll clothes and innocent-marilyn face with cleavage -- she's "ditzy" but "talented"

the evil one would inevitably kidnap her, and then, on every show at some stage, he'd tie her down to his giant recording device, which was a big lp record player with a circular white surface, on which goldie-locks would be tied hands and feet, radially, across the record player, hands tied to the center pole

then evil would crank the device up to 45rpm, bring down the needle and record and it would hit the groove on her toes and supposedly following the record groove begin to proceed up her body as the giant white surface turned

the high pitched "singing" noises she'd supposedly make as the needle passed across her would be recorded by this device, as the evil one was convinced the rock n roll fans everywhere would buy whatever "song" he produced with goldie-locks his way, because he was convinced she had that sound

he only heard the sound as she screamed to be released or as it started to reach her toes, because her regular cool hip "white knight" record producer would always save her at this point and take her back to his private studio where she'd made some slightly more conventially sounding songs that "sold millions"

that the kids watching that show are now adults scares me, and the image of the girl tied to the record player was bad dream material for me at 8

regardless of whether you think batman was too camp with jokes for adults and adventures for children or that it was a good show, i think this show, with it's repeated "train track almost arriving" plot device featuring innocent (1)8 year old goldie-locks in 18 year old white dress makes me think, here we go again, how systematic and typically institutional certain attitudes are ingrained, in another apparently already very jaded industry, that "beams out peace and love"

anybody remember the show ? i'm sure they've buried it now, and i don't want to see it again, don't want to know what it's called. as a male child watching it it scared me, gave me the occasional nightmare, but that's me -- if i didn't have a close loving empathetic relationship with my two younger sisters that still involved the usual evil little kiddie games, i really don't want to begin to imagine what this tv program might have done to me

george's tv show sounds scarier than a factory full of oompa loompas.

HMV.com: Can you recall one standout moment during the process of recording this record that was completely fulfilling from a creative standpoint?

Marcus: Yeah for me it would be the track Gyroscope. I dreamed the sound of it, and although I've recreated dreamt songs before, I managed to do that one so quickly that the end result was 99% like my dream. It spooks me to listen to it now.

I still have the odd dream sound/tune these days, but unless it's on a Saturday or Sunday when I've got no other issues to deal with it's got no chance of seeing an output jack.

None of which actually exist in recorded versions.

It was so fucking awesome.

Another time I dreamt I had to stand in for Bob Dylan at a Bob Dylan concert because he hit his head on a giant gold globe and forgot all his lyrics. The show went better than I expected.

I did dream some lines for a song once, wrote some verses around it and it became the chorus of one of the few originals my band performs.

OK, so in a dream last night a Scott Walker song was playing, in the vein of his 60s work not his modern stuff, in fact it was bit like "We Came Through" from "Scott 3". The song had a bawdy sort of Jacques Brel-like lyric about a guy telling his friends about how he'd had sex last night, I woke up and remembered a line from it and sort of fumbled about in the dark for a pen and paper to write it down, this morning I read it and the line was:

"Tonight I cut my temple teeth"

that's great!

Well it makes as much sense as most of his lyrics

I guess it means he/you recently converted to Judaism?

It's definitely about sex, the whole song was

Had a dream I was seeing MBV last night, everything sounded pretty 'on' except the vocals, which were Creed/Clear Channel nu-grunge style. I worked my way down from the balcony level and started walking closer and closer to the stage, at which point my alarm sounded.

at which point you realised the cleaner had started vacuuming with Nickleback on, amirite?

I think it turned out to be one of my roommates singing along in the shower to... Tom Vek for some reason?

Oh, this is interesting.

And yes, when I was fully immersed in songwriting, I did dream of melodies, rhythms and full blown songs and arrangements. I didn't remember all of them and some would come back more than once.

Sometimes I wouldn't dream them, but I would wake up with a melody/song idea/rhythm/arrangement. It was great because I would just sit down and record it.

This was a while ago.

After I sold all my equipment and got out of music it no longer happens. I think it happened before because I used to basically eat, sleep, breathe music.

I always used to hear music in my head and I still do. Melodies, song ideas, rhythms, arrangements.

The only difference is that now I try to suppress it because it can distract me from being a boring 9-5 'career man'. But I don't think I could ever stop hearing music in my head.

Maybe one day I'll get back to doing music.

Posted this one a few years back in a Beach Boys thread:

Wasn't sure which of the many Beach Boys threads to put this on, but I figured this wasn't a bad choice. I went to bed last night feeling really sick and feverish and ended up having the wildest fever dreams for most of the night. The only one I vividly remember was when I bumped into this dude at a record store that was telling me about two "lesser known" Beach Boys albums, apparently part of some alternate timeline.

The first was a 1978 album called Runnin' Low which was more in the country/folksy vein, with several of the songs heavily indebted to the "outlaw country" of the era. The second was even weirder, apparently in this universe Dennis didn't drown that fateful night but ended up needing a long time to recuperate and got super into fucked-up synth sounds in the meantime. Somehow he roped the guys into cutting an album that he drove, and the result was 1984's Night Races. The vivid part was the cover art which was sort of like the Trans artwork but more Tron with highly stylized and neon versions of 50s cars. So weird.

I would listen the shit out of Night Races. I don't like Dennis's 70s voice a great deal but it would so suit a Trans-style album.

Sometimes I fall asleep listening to music on the train and become convinced I'm playing the music myself, or possibly just listening back to music I played. What's strange is that it feels like I'm 'conducting' the sounds and that they're doing exactly what I want them to (as opposed to the music doing what it wants to do); but even stranger is that I start noticing mistakes, like, serious problems where the guitars are out of tune or the drums don't hit on time.

Posted this one a few years back in a Beach Boys thread:

yeah, I remember that 'cuz I had a Beach Boys dream around the same time and posted to the same thread, let me see if i can find the thread...

Found it:

Had a dream which had a Beach Boys album in it last night. I woke up and wrote some of it down, then went back to sleep. It was an eighties album. It had ten tracks on it. The first track was one of their old songs, the second was called something like "Really Back" (referring I take it to the fact that Brian Wilson was back in the band) - it was 0:00 long. What else? Oh they do version of The Who's "Tommy Can You Hear Me?" on there, this is 0:30 long (for some reason the lengths of the songs have stuck in my brain). Fourth track on Side One is an epic, an eight minute track called "The Grand". But there's another 8 minute track which closes the album, this one's called "Coconut Buffin'". Highlight of the album has to be Side two, track one, a collaboration with 70s funk legend Johnny 'Guitar' Watson (and 'his Crew'), a song called "Rain and Shine or 1 of a Git".

― Vicious Cop Kills Gentle Fool (Dada), Tuesday, 24 January 2006 11:02 (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I had a weird daydream/snooze moment where I imagined I was watching a song performed by people standing in a queue with a recording device set up at the front:

Rec <-1 <-2 <-3 <-4 <-5 etc...

It started with the person at the front singing a few lines before going back and joining the end of the line. As the song progresses, the other people in the line start to join in and harmonise so that the recorder picks up different people's tunes as they approach the front.

Maybe this was partly inspired by some Cara Tolmie stuff I was reading about.

Woke up in the middle of a song this morning. In my dream, a guy asked me what was "my favourite Dylan song sung by Elvis Costello" (an odd question for one who is no great fan of either artist), but before I could answer he said, "Mine's is 'Holy Nuts'". Then 'Holy Nuts' started playing. The chorus was very similar to 'Mr. Big Stuff' by Jean Knight and didn't sound much like either Dylan or Elvis Costello. Oh and it was a love song, 'Holy Nuts' was a person.

I dreamt a song last night; it was a song I already knew (inside-out at that), but it had all sorts of extra weird bits in it I'd never noticed before. Dreams, eh?

Back in high-school I dreamt up a song (or more accurately, a chorus), and in the dream I played the song and everybody loved it and it was the catchyest song ever. When I woke, I couldn't remember it. I spent the next few days telling my friends that I had dreamt up the catchyest song ever, but that I had forgotten it. It was a cool story. Then, a week or so later, while I was folding laundry, all of a sudden it came back. And, to be honest, it wasn't the catchyest song ever after all... But me and my class-mates turned it into a song, and we won the school song-contest with it. So it ended well.

Awesome. Post it?

around august i was kinda sick and i had this dream that i was on this slow march through the desert, and people were dying and covered in blood and stuff, it was sort of funereal. and there was this sort of bongo-led dirge that accompanied it, with wailing and a female vocalist singing. i never really remember dreams but it made me get up and have a think. i can't remember the melody now, the whole thing was really intense. it had a lot of death rattles and stuff in it.

in the end i went back to sleep and the next day i got up and went to work.

Awesome. Post it?

― they all are afflicted with a sickness of existence (Scik Mouthy), 8. oktober 2013 13:00 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would love to, but I haven't got a recording of it. It was a yearly live-contest, many years ago.

<3 you, Holy Nuts

There was a period some years ago when most nights I'd dream a different amazing death metal/dub reggae fusion track.

Dreamt about a Four Seasons album last night, released in 1979, it was called "1970". It came in a cardboard box with a hole cut in the front so that you could read the title on the album sleeve - it was a vinyl album of course, I'm not sure I've ever dreamt about a CD in my life, which is potentially interesting. The actual album was like a leather bound book, and I remember a song, which 'should have been a hit but wasn't' called "Nashwan Experimental #1" (spending too much time on ILX obviously). I can't remember too much about it, it was in the vein of their mid-70s material but more electronic and keyboard based and I remember listening to the first verse and thinking, "This is good but when does Frankie Valli come in?" Then Frankie Valli came in and it didn't sound much like him (his voice was too high(!)) but I knew it was him.

(xposts) (I completely forgotten about "Holy Nuts"!)

Sadly only a title, no tune this time. Interesting story behind it though. Eighty years ago (sic) Bob Dylan had gone on holiday to a cottage on a small Scottish island and while there had recorded an acetate of an unrecorded song. Many years later the acetate was discovered by a woman staying at the cottage, but, as yet, she hadn't been able to find a buyer for it. The title of the song was "V.U. Pokes".

The other night, an early-80's ska-influenced single by Arnold Schwarzenegger (I understood in the dream that it was a one-off), with backing vocals by Wendy and Lisa.

Last night, I dreamed I'd wandered into some sort of meeting or church service and was uneasily trying to sing along, not quite recognizing the song. When I woke up the melody in my head was the Troggs' "Love is All Around."

Again, no music with this one. I was in the music section of the big public library in my home town. Lots of things happened but,what I remember best is I was looking at the classical section and pulled out a CD, the first part of which was a composition by Luciano Berio called, "To Let the Strength Out", the second part was by Jacques Brel and was called "Girolinde". There was a video still of a woman playing a harp on the back cover and, for some reason, this disappointed me, so I put it back.

Dreamt I heard a Boards of Canada song that had heavy Mario brothers 2 (NES) vibes.

I was having dinner with my dad, who's been dead for years, and my brother (I think), and I think it was outdoors. I was trying to chose some music for the occasion, so I was looking at two vinyl boxsets of Sun Ra (I wish I could remember the track titles!) and remember playing one track in particular. It had a low burbling moog in the background, pretty much in one key, brushed drums, no bass, tenor sax soloing and a strange sounding trumpet playing a repeating melody, with one vocal singing the title, "Charlie Was a Saint".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDXBPZoV2jw

I can remember three occasions.

1) A music hall song, with full, brass-led arrangement. The first verse: "Have you got any equations, was my only cry. / I think so, dear - yes, they're over there. / I'll be with you by and by."

2) An early 90s Erasure single: "I Gave You Freedom".

3) Abba's reunion single, with video: "Now My Race Is Run".

Great lyrics and song titles.