No. 690 – Dream Weaver

Performer: Gary Wright

Songwriter: Gary Wright

Original Release: The Dream Weaver

Year: 1975

Definitive Version: None

The last family vacation that we took before Mom and Dad broke up was Florida in February 1976. This would be the fourth straight winter we’d gone down to New Smyrna Beach, but the last two times, we drove, because Mom hated to fly to the point where she no longer would. The year before we’d taken the Bus, but this time—and I can’t remember why—we took my grandfather’s station wagon.

It was a big green Buick—a real land yacht—and Dad had employed it a lot more in the past year to haul members of my Boy Scout troop here and there. Usually, it would be set up with only the second bench seat unfolded. The third back seat was folded flat, so there was a huge cargo area that was ideal for playing smash-em-up cars.

You’re not familiar with smash-em-up cars? Well, the cargo area was essentially untreated metal that was fairly slick, and if you took a turn too fast, you’d go sliding across the floor until you crashed into the side windows—or the luckless soul or souls caught in between. The purpose of smash-em-up cars was to crush the other person until the car veered in another direction, which would send everyone spinning off the other way.

But there was no smash-em-up cars on the family vacation, mostly because Mom and Dad put down a few blankets in the back for sleeping. As I recall, we stopped only one night on the trip, so Dad drove late into the night, and Scott and Jin (and I) would need a sleep spot.

At the time, I had really gotten into top 40 radio, so that was on in the car all the time. I remember how as we drove one night through, Tennessee, I think, we were listening to WLS, and I couldn’t believe that we could get a Chicago radio station all the way down there.

Anyway, it seemed that radio in general had a ratio of 1:3: For every one good song that you liked, it would play three crap ones. Put another way, for every time you’d hear Love Machine by The Miracles, which was Scott’s favorite song at the time, you’d hear Love Hurts by Nazareth, Lonely Night by Captain & Tennille and—God help us—anything by Barry Manilow.

Another of those songs was this song. I hated it. It was on ALL … THE … TIME, and it drove me nuts. I now can’t put my finger on why, but the synth reminded me of the background music of later Charlie Brown TV specials, although I think it was more the constancy of hearing it than anything in particular about the song itself, because of course, here we are 36 years later and it’s in my top 700.

How did that happen? Well, my musical tastes changed, and I suppose I probably heard this song after a long time of not hearing it, in a different context, and thought, oh, yeah—THAT song. That’s not a bad song after all.

But the song’s rehabilitation might even have started on that drive down to Florida when my angst over it was at its zenith. I have a clear memory of lying in the back of the station wagon at night with this song on. From my vantage point looking out a side window, I could see the night stars light up the sky far from city glare, and in retrospect, that’s a perfect backdrop.