Every music collector knows the feeling: You’re checking out the bins at the used record store, hearing the fluff-fluff of the LPs or the clatter of CDs as your fingers pull one, then another, then another toward you. And then you stop.
You think, “What was that?” And you flip back two or three LPs or CDs and look at something you don’t recognize, something that pulls on you anyway.
When that happens to me, I start to dig. I check the list of performers, looking for familiar names. (This was especially true during my days of vinyl madness, when I looked for almost anything recorded at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, during the late 1960s and early 1970s.) If I find familiar names, fine. If not, then I begin to wonder what it was I noticed.
I remember one of those moments clearly. It was November 2001, and I was in a discount bookstore in a Minneapolis suburb. The CD was a self-titled 1996 release by a group called the Living Daylights. And nothing about it was familiar.
I paged through the booklet and found that a photo of the group at the centerspread had been autographed by all the group members. And some of the names seemed familiar, but I wasn’t sure. I looked at the cover again and stood there by the used CD racks, thinking, “This CD wants me to buy it, and I don’t know why.”
The price was a couple of bucks, so I bought it. And when I got home and heard the first strains of the first track, “All These Things We Dream,” I was hooked, and the hook set in as the rest of the CD played on. And I’ve loved the CD since, especially that first track.
So what’s the frame of reference. What does the music sound like? One morning, I asked the Texas Gal to listen to snippets of a few tracks, and she said, “It sounds like America.”
“The band or the country?” I asked.
“Well, the band, yes, but even more, it sounds like life in America.” And Americana – a wide-ranging category of music, for sure – might be as good a description of the music of the Living Daylights as you can get.
I did a little more digging when I brought the CD home, and I found two references online: One was at the evidently deleted website of Paul Peterson, a well-known Twin Cities bass player with numerous credits and an early connection to Prince. The other was at the website of a firm called Professional Drum Tracks. Both of those references are now gone.
I now recognize another name in the booklet: Lee Blaske, who is a friend of mine on Facebook, did the string arrangements (though when I asked him a few years ago about the group and the CD, he said he didn’t remember anything). And a few minutes of searching online today found only one reference to the Living Daylights and what seems to be the group’s only album: A copy of the CD is available at Ebay.
So twenty-some years after I bought the CD, after several bouts of searching over that time, I still know very little about the group that recorded it. And that’s fine. I’ve got the music, especially that first track, “All These Things We Dream.” The track is in the iPod, of course, and in the stash of music I keep on my phone. And when it pops up on random, I still marvel for a second at the fact that something so good can be almost entirely forgotten.
Here are the lyrics to “All These Things We Dream.”
Calm yourself. Take a big breath. Any second now
Will come the harvest of a lifetime learning how.
Welcome to the ocean, welcome to the sea of meant-to-be.
Ferris wheels, French brocade, every heart is on parade.
All these things we dream. Don’t you know, all these things we dream.
Steady now. Don’t be afraid. You made this place
You’re standing here and waiting there, face-to-face.
Welcome to your dream world, welcome to the sea of meant-to-be
Ferris wheels, French brocade, every heart is on parade.
All these things we dream. Don’t you know, all these things we dream.
Fairy tales, Christmastime, hearts that speak in words that rhyme
All these things we dream. All these things, all these things we dream.
Part of my soul that never ends
Tells me we’re meeting again, my friend
Welcome to the ocean.
Ferris wheels, French brocade, every heart is on parade.
All these things we dream. Don’t you know, all these things we dream.
Fairy tales, Christmastime, hearts that speak in words that rhyme
All these things we dream. All these things we dream.
Imagine if the dreams of men echoed through the world again:
All these things we’d dream. All these things we’d dream.
Welcome to the big blue sky, grab a ticket, take a ride on
Ferris wheels and carousels of all these things,
All these things we dream
All these things, all these things
All these things we dream
Welcome to the ocean . . .
And here’s the track:
– whiteray
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