BLOG TO COMM

BLOG TO COMM DREAM INTERPRETATION!

Do you ever have weird dreams? I sure do, especially while I'm under the influence of not only some powerful medicine (Ny-Quil comes to mind), but rock & roll (or any other relevant gulcheral obsession) can also bring on some mighty midsummer's night's screams. I mean, whadja expect given my gotta hear it and hear it NOW sense of purpose??? F'rexample, I still remember a dream I had way back in the spring of 1977, where I happened to be at a flea market or used record shop or something like that and I found a cassette tape of a Hampton Grease Band album I never knew about in some cheapo bin. I had the obscure object of desire in my increasingly-clammy claws (the cover, btw, was taken from that group photo that appears in the gatefold sleeve of MUSIC TO EAT so mebbee it was a bootleg) only to wake up with a humongous feeling of "AAAARRRGHH!!!" overcoming my sensitive highschool being as I slowly realized that it was nothing but a mere dream and this recording I wanted to hear so bad didn't even exist! In the eighties I had a dream where I had gotten hold of a cassette tape with Rocket From The Tombs doing "Sonic Reducer" (complete with the opening vacuum-cleaner drone chant) and let me tell you that the legit release that has been going around for the past few years definitely pales next to the wall of screaming distortion and feedback that I encountered coming from my still-standing (two feet away from me as I type this) boom box! Believe me, I've had many weird/strange/cool dreams o'er my lifetime, some as faint as a distant UHF signal while others so vivid I coulda sworn they actually happened, but whatever the case whether they be dreamers or screamers, what can you do about your nighttime brain activity anyway???

Other'n analyze the entire disgusting mess, that is! Yeah I've seen all the dream books out there (though never did come across Peter Reich's) and know that what I'm about to deal in is a mere parlor game time passer, but as I was told in highschool psycho class you can learn a lot from your dreams, so learn on I will. The following are some dreams I've had in the very and not-so-recent past, and in order to shed some light on my own psychological makeup (so's you'll feel sorry for me) I will tell you what these dreams mean, and how they fit into my overall tip-top mental health. For the sake of taste, I am going to forego telling you about some long-running repeato dream themes (having to urinate/defecate and then finding out that the toilet being used is in the middle of some open-air public area and people are staring at me [maybe not], my grades being so bad that I get sent back to either high school, grade school or kindergarten and have to go through all twelve grades all over again, or that thrilling one where I'm in public and I'm either in my pajamas, underwear, or nude [again, with nobody noticing me!]!) because I haven't had any of those dreams recently (other'n the nude one, where to add insult to injury I'm back in grade school so I guess I had a two for one shot there). Given my luck I probably will have one of these recurring whackmares tonight due to subliminal suggestion, but that's the price I must pay in order to write this VITAL, IMPORTANT post dealing with a subject very relevant to my life today, mainly SANITY!

PART ONE: TEE-VEE DREAMS!-I've had a lotta these over the years. In the distant past (seventies/eighties) I've had a dream that I was in this film noir-esque situation, wearily entering into a small motel room decorated in a 1940s motif, switching on the television where some fifties program, say THE RED SKELTON SHOW was ending watching the station ID (a channel 2) all done in the old. pre-computer fifties/sixties look/style, kinda feeling like Humphrey Bogart after a hard day on a case the whole while. I've also had dreams about a variety of independent stations in the local area airing those old shows I used to want to watch with a PASSION that had been broadcasting for years AND I DIDN'T KNOW THEY WERE ON! leading to a lotta frustration and anger over missing years of MY LITTLE MARGIE reruns. (There's a road I continually drive past where one of these stations was supposed to be, and guess which dream I think of when I go past that place!) However, there are some rather recent (and not-so)dreams I want to run through the old pseudopsychological grist mill today, and I'll betcha my bottom dollar my tee-vee dreams have yours beat all hollow!

First tee-vee dream...this is one I had a while back but it's still cool enough. I'm watching SGT. BILKO, only I'm not watching it as much as standing in the scene observing things as they happen (as in many of my tee-vee dreams). Anyway, Bilko and gang are in the barracks putting plaster all over Doberman's head in order to make a bust of him, Doberman going "Geeee Sahge" like he always does and Bilko responding "Now now Doberman..." while slopping this grey glop all over his noggin, forgetting to leave tubes to stick up the Private's nostrils in order for him to breathe not to mention a divider in order to remove the hardened mold. Then from in back of me I hear a whining voice which I thought to be Jane Dulo's only I wake up finding out that some horny neighborhood cat's outside my hot and humid August night bedroom window serenading me at three in the morning.

Second tee-vee dream...it's LEAVE IT TO BEAVER, only it's taking place in my old gradeschool hallway which looks different than in real life. But only slightly. There's a costume party going on or at least people are dressed up, and Beaver (circa. 1962-1963) is walking down the hall looking like Robin Hood. Then suddenly Eddie Haskell, dressed as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (similar to Chaney only w/o the curly wig or cataract eye though with facial makeup and an obviously phony hump that makes him look like a camel when he stands straight up) leaps out from a classroom door, grabs Beaver and viciously starts biting him on the neck! Beaver looks like he's in agony as Haskell bites and growls away! Then, after about ten seconds of this, Eddie releases Beaver and starts laughing, telling everyone how "funny" his little prank was as Wally (I forget who/what he was dressed as) says in his typical Wally way "Yeah, sure Eddie" as the dream more or less dissolves into something I can't remember so it must not have been important.

Third tee-vee dream...Another oldie...I'm over at my now-deceased uncle's house (he was alive at the time) watching tee-vee and the show that happens to be on is an episode of GET SMART only star Don Adams is wearing a moustache and has fashionably-long early-seventies hair hanging over the ears in it. I think to myself that this must be from the last season or something like that which I probably missed out on for whatever stupid reason. I also found it strange that Adams would stoop so low as to actually have his toupee fly off his head for a cheap joke in this episode! After the show, there're some weird announcements having to do with (I believe) a storm warning, then THE TWILIGHT ZONE comes on, only the opening is rather different...strange images (including a slightly shaggy dog with a wolfhound body and a human skull for a head) appear and the voice-over is not that of Rod Serling, but Ernie Kovacs doing Percy Dovetonsils! I start feeling weird, then look at my uncle who gives me this sinister grin and starts showing fangs! Then I wake up.

PART TWO: TEE-VEE/ROCK & ROLL DREAM...a mixie! This one happened only two nights ago so it's fresh in my mind. I'm actually watching a tee-vee in this one, an old film from SHINDIG of the Turtles performing one of their best, "Let Me Be." Only this film is in color, and Mark Volman (wearing a white suit jacket similar to the one he had in the Crossfires) is playing drums and singing background instead of just twirling his tambourine! Howard Kaylan sings, but he's starting to look like he did in the Mothers here plus he's playing guitar (!) while singing his lungs out as the seven-piece (!!!) group (including a guy on a vox organ---the entire group consists of, besides drums and organ, FOUR guitarusts and one bassist and they're all dressed in hip gear and striped shirts and vests and a floppy cap or two!) join in on the chorus and swing and sway to the music like it was going out of style! And the sound...loud and high-energy, close to something a band the caliber of the Sons of Adam, Love or one of the better West Coast wonders might have cooked up. The ending of the song was wild, as Kaylan runs from the performing area onto this open field (still singing and playing guitar) as the rest of the group follows and the camera shot rises to directly above the fray where you can see the group (and others) joking around playing tag (and the song doesn't even fade out but ends solid---whew!).

PART THREE: I DON'T KNOW HOW TO CATEGORIZE THIS ONE...it's supposed to be a thirties (late thirties I guess judging from the greying tint gloss look, even though I'm once again watching the film as if I were on the set) film starring a young Arlo Guthrie as some sorta comedic boxer. He looks about fifteen, is really skinny as well as tall and has longish hair which I think is strange for the late-thirties, but since Moe and Larry could get away with long hair then I guess Arlo could too. Also starring in the film is a young Cary Grant as something like Guthrie's older brother or manager, and in one scene both Guthrie and Grant throw a tantrum burying their heads in chairs and kicking their feet while some thirties-type actress explains to us something of moral significance going on but I can't remember what, if anything. Then the place turns into some area reminiscent not only of my uncle's aforementioned house/yard but the farm where my sister lives where some strange gathering is going on (the cats who live on the farm are there, as does a pachyderm which lifts one of the cats with its trunk). The strangest part of this dream is where I happen to look into a mirror and who do I see but young Arlo Guthrie smirking back at me!

PART FOUR: HIGH TENSION, JUVENILE DELINQUENCY DREAM...I'm a kid. About twelve, and I'm with a buncha kids that I went to school with (no names, since they might be reading this), and we're hanging out around Stambaugh Avenue here in Sharon. Suddenly, a buncha black kids (with seventies afros and black power sneers) corral us and take us hostage, forcing us into a garage located where Tony's Pizza Kitchen should be. (It should be known that a black kid who I went to school with is part of the entourage I'm with so I dunno if this attack is 100% racially motivated...in fact, he's vocally arguing with the perpetrators.) Me and the guys are threatened with our lives for reasons I can't remember and, after some harrassment on their part, the younger kids in our group (none of whom I recognize though another one is black) are set free even though they're STILL going to kill the rest of us. (I guess they figured that the freed kids would be too chicken to call the cops!) I find a hollow steel tube in the garage and try to hide it until I can use it to bop some heads and make an escape, only I'm caught. However, I do struggle with one of the captors and then we're all free. No attempt to bring the evildoers to justice is made, but I eagerly head on home.

BLOG TO COMM INTERPRETS THESE DREAMS!!!-First off, the dream about Bilko signifies my love for not only the fifties, but subjugating women, minorities and gays. However, the act of Bilko smearing plaster upon Doberman's face signifies how I (as Doberman, a low on the ladder rung of life soldier?) am being constantly humiliated by those higher up (mainly Sgt. Bilko who perhaps represents others, like more, established, famed bloggers perhaps?), smearing something that's NOT plaster on my face while telling me that my suffering is for "my own good." The presence of Jane Dulo/the cat is I believe something of an occult nature I cannot interpret at this time.

Regarding the LEAVE IT TO BEAVER dream, once again I'm the victim as Beaver, who I guess I am "identifying" with (the Robin Hood outfit signifying a noble heart perhaps) is persecuted for his virtue while Eddie plays the Bilko/higher-up role with his "joke" signifying typical rank-pulling abuses that many in authority are wont to execute for their own nefarious purposes. The fact that Eddie is dressed as a famous film "monster" adds to the tenacity of the attack, while Wally's nonchalant response to seeing the living daylights being scared out of his kid brother once again represents "Big Brother" watching you, but not really caring what happens one way or the other.

As for the Don Adams/TWILIGHT ZONE dream, it's merely nostalgia. When I was younger I used to watch a lotta television with my relatives including my uncle, who lived in an area where he could pick up a few of the low-budget UHF stations that I used to love the dickens outta (mainly channels 17 and 23 before they went religious) and copped a whole buncha hours of class tee-vee viewing while at his abode. The Don Adams reference perhaps relates to the era when I was spending time at my uncle's, the mid-seventies (when moustaches and longish hair were widely seen amongst even the staider of souls amongst us) while the "storm warning" is a reference to my uncle's extremely strong fear of storms, he seemingly being an over-cautious person when it came to such warnings usually heading for the cellar long before the rest of us would. (Though when a tornado DID hit our area back in '85 he thought I was pulling a bad joke on him after I heard about it on the news!) I'm still trying to figure out the TWILIGHT ZONE bit...perhaps Percy Dovetonsils (a flaming sissy) being the total opposite of Serling's cool fifties/sixties aloofness was an example of my brain was pulling perhaps a little ol' satire on yours truly?

And for the Turtles...hey, I like rock & roll and I like the Turtles (esp. during their folk rock period) and hearing "Let Me Be" (a song whose sentiments I definitely adhere to!) while the group romps about in classic mid/late-sixties anarchic style shows a freedom that I certainly would like to enjoy but can only watch vicariously through the antics of the Turtles, Monkees and other groups whose attire and attitude signified a thawing in rigid cultural conditions, if only for a short time.

The Arlo Guthrie/Cary Grant dream, now I'm tempted to think there's something "gay" going on here given what we know about Grant now (and can say out loud unlike when he was still around, as Chevy Chase can attest to) and Guthrie (who ain't gay, but then again I wonder how "popular" he would've been in a communal prison shower during the days of ALICE'S RESTAURANT) but I don't think so. The part where I look into a mirror and think I see Arlo grinning back at me is pure hetero...y'know how all the gals in school liked the "cute" boys and wanted to cuddle up with them? Manly boys were big too while ugly buglies like me just stayed home and popped the pimples, but cute boys with long hair really made it big with the girlies, and perhaps I was fantasizing that I was just that kinda kid (after all, I hear Arlo did a lotta bed hoppin' in that film of his!). The part about the activities going on at my uncle's place was perhaps more nostalgia, egged on by the aforementioned Ny-Quil I had taken for my cold. Either that, or I miss those family parties we used to have at the drop of a hat. Readers, for wild, crazy and non-nightmareish fun dreams, you can't beat Ny-Quil, plus you'll get a good night's sleep as well!

I KNOW that some of my enemies out there are going to jump to conclusions about my final dream and say it's living proof of some sorta postmodern racism on my part, but I wouldn't buy into any of that tripe. Remember, there were some kids in the group I was in who were black and were being intimidated as well, so maybe that washes away all of that immature dream interpretation away in one fell swoop (after all, this is a mature dream interpretation article!). What this dream signifies is my penchant for heroics...true, at first I am intimidated and cower in fear when the badskis threaten to murder us, but then again I'm the one who sneaks the metal rod down my sleeve in anticipation of crushing a few heads wide open. The fact that the dream ends peacefully may be because of my show of force which makes the evildoers do a little shuddering themselves. Good thing I wasn't watching STRAW DOGS or this could've been one of the bloodiest dreams I've ever had!

So, what's the final outcome of all this highschool psychology class ruminating about dreams and what they mean and how we can learn from them...what else but that I watch too much tee-vee! I listen to too much music, and I don't have a "life" (as in what every goshdarnit parent wants for his kid...lotsa music lessons and homework and extra activities and wholesomeness, and oh, have fun while you're at it or we'll clobber you!). So, as you can see, my mental health is top notch and I'm probably gonna stay saner a lot longer than YOU so get offa your high horse for once, willya?

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Whew, wasn't that a load! Anyway, in order to keep some of you readers from totally terminating your relationship with my blog lemme just run down some of the new items I'm listening to so's you too can feel BIG by actually reading my opinions on a whole slew of items I'll betcha wish ya had in your robotic clams, right? So, lez go...FAIRPORT CONVENTION CD (Polydor) is an old fave even though I've been known to pull this album out for a spin only once every three/four years. I still like this debut the best, which sounds like a better British take on early Jefferson Airplane than one could imagine, and I'll take Judy Dyble and band (including the teenaged Richard Thompson) over Grace Sick and company anyday! THE NECKS-MUSIC FROM THE FEATURE FILM THE BOYS CD (ReR)-Although I should be boycotting Australian product for obvious reasons, I figure out the entire country can't be like just one person over there. The Necks ain't quite jazz yet they ain't rock, but they do something akin to both with a hefty helping of alternative rock smarm thrown in. Still pretty good ambient kaka for when you're pouring through your back issues of THE WIRE. PHILIP GLASS-NORTH STAR CD (Virgin) is another old fave, at least before Philip Glass went big time and began hanging out with Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama and became too gnu agey for my tastes. Thus, Glass' first, easily-found major label offering might have been his last good one, still showing his repeato-riff music to sound like an old Toyota commercial at one minute and Suicide the next. Smart yet trashy enough, the halfway point between Glass's hanging out at Max's days and bigtime chi-chi. As for the JAMES CHANCE AND THE CONTORTIONS-PARIS 1980 CD (Ze), you may remember this one when it came out as LIVE AUX BAINS DOUCHES way back when. I do and didn't get it for whatever reason (mainly monetary concerns!) but I have it now and think it pales next to the ROIR live tape (later CD). It still has not only a bitta creepiness, but ex-Mahogany Brain bassist/guitarist Patrick Geoffris is on hand which is nice at least for people categorizing these things. And finally, THE SLITS-THE PEEL SESSIONS CD (Strange Fruit UK) is a great sampling of Slits (including their oft-ignored straight-ahead punk days) which you could only find through these radio tapes at the time, and though I should be boycotting the BBC for their unwavering adherence to a New World Order/tyranny of the snootiest newsrooms extant I gotta admit that this CD is a pretty exciting excapsulation of a lotta the energy one could find coming outta the punk idiom which seemed to say just about everything good in any way possible, and people just plain out ignored the entire mess! Heck, even the drawn out experimental tracks held my attention even though I think it to be the silliest stuff in this collection! Anyway, all of these CDs can be purchased via Wayside Music, except for the Contortions which I got through Forced Exposure.