No. 938 – Flying in a Blue Dream

Performer: Joe Satriani

Songwriter: Joe Satriani

Original Release: Flying in a Blue Dream

Year: 1989

Definitive Version: Time Machine, 1993

Within a week of moving from Mount Prospect to Grand Blanc in 1989, I was back in Chicago. Dad had scheduled before my move a trip to see me and Jin, and to take in the Ohio State-Northwestern game. I felt obligated to attend.

And besides, I wanted to see Jin and be back in Chicago. The whole Flint Journal scenario happened so quickly (as I will recount at another point), and it caught me by surprise. I needed the big pay boost I would get, but I was bummed that I was leaving Chicago right when things were starting to get interesting. I had really been looking forward to hanging out and exploring the city with Jin. Alas, it wasn’t to be.

Anyway, we took in the game, which was a typical OSU rout, and then—and I don’t remember why—we ended up down on Rush Street. (Jin lived near there, and I was now a tourist, so it made perfect sense, I guess.) The thing I remember most about the weekend was walking in a crisp, November evening as the sun began to set to the brand-new and now long-gone Tower Records store on Rush.

Tower, of course, was a legendary record store from NYC, and I never had been in one. In all candor, it didn’t seem like anything all that special, although perhaps its charms were lost on me at the time. But I had been in enough small records stores in Columbus that bigger didn’t necessarily equate with better—or cheaper.

Still, I didn’t leave without making a purchase—Flying in a Blue Dream. I was still fresh off Surfing with the Alien, so having some new Satriani music was a-OK. I bought the tape—this being before I got a handle on my debt and my first CD player—and listened to it pretty regularly for the next month. But when I hear the title track, I always think about coming back to Chicago and already missing it after one week away. And I take note of how money makes you do things out of necessity that left to your own devices you wouldn’t do otherwise—like leave Chicago for Flint.