DWEAMING

During our weekly extended family Zoom call last week, two of my sister’s grown-up adult daughters started making fun of the soft jazz music their father had always loved. You know the type of music. For years every big city had at least one radio station playing that stuff with monotoned whispering DJs that between each calm milquetoast song, usually over the sound effect of rolling ocean waves with the occasional seagull, would cloyingly purr the station’s moniker LITE or LOVE. It was common to hear those stations continuously playing at tame volumes in the background of doctor’s office waiting rooms, tropical themed hotel bar/restaurants, and the bedrooms of waterbed owning bachelor’s with overly groomed hair.

As sometimes happens, the two sisters wound each other up and briefly took over the group conversation with their lighthearted grousing and reminiscing. But to be fair, versus the music itself, one of the girls was mostly just creeped out over the disconcerting mental images she’d created, after recently finding out her dad had a personalized ‘lite jazz’ playlist that he listened to in the bathroom while taking his daily shower. And while the other daughter fell just short of wishing a pox or plague on her dad’s beloved favorites like Phil Collins, Joe Sample, James Taylor, and Chuck Mangione, she did spend a good amount of time railing and cursing about his torturously abusive genteel soft rock/smooth jazz “elevator music” assault on her eardrums that was constantly thrust upon her throughout her childhood.

Anyone that knows me is well aware I have very strong feelings about music, yet I remained uncharacteristically quiet throughout most of that discussion. I knew the sisters would have deaf ears to my opinion that there were actually some fantastic soft rock gems to be found hidden between the docile drivel of Kenny G and Gino Vannelli. I figured the point was their memories, not the music. Besides, rejecting and abusing the music of your parents’ generation is a time-honored tradition practiced by children all over the world for centuries. I assume Zook the Caveman’s kids mocked the dated stick and rock banging of their lionskin loincloth wearing elders. As did the hip and modern polyphonic rhythm-loving 12th century children did with their square, old-school Gregorian chant loving parents.

Jointly making fun of the 1940s and pre-rock 50s music my mom loved, or the classical Beethoven records my dad occasionally blasted rattling the windows of the entire house, served as a bonding agent for my siblings and me. We might have constantly teased each other and most certainly did not see eye-to-eye on everything, but we could all stand united on how much we disliked our parents’ favorite music.

If I had children, I know they would absolutely hate a lot of the stuff I listen to. I mean, I have VERY varied tastes, which again, is why I was quiet on the family call when others made fun of entire genres of music like jazz, country, K-Pop, and heavy metal.  I like a little of everything, so it’s hard for me to trash an entire category of music. I also know it’s hard for me to throw mocking rocks at other folk’s taste, because musically, I live in a very thin-paned glass house.

One of my favorite types of music is the stuff that is so horrendously bad and cheesy, that it is amazing. That is probably the hardest type of music to explain because it’s a wiggly narrow line between just bad, and so bad its fantastic. Think Wiliam Shatner’s egomaniacal self-indulgent Mr. Tambourine Man, Ethel Merman’s head-shaking genre bending disco album, the caterwauling of Houston street musician Bongo Joe – George Coleman, or the absolute assault on anything close to carrying a tune or being on key that The Shaggs presented to the unsuspecting universe on their astoundingly amateurish self-produced masterpiece album Philosophy Of The World. Each of those is a life-changing remarkable trip into the bowels of music that everyone should experience at least once.

The fact that I have always felt that way might be one of the many reasons I didn’t have tons of friends growing up. I listened to mountains of that so-bad-its-good stuff and forced it upon a lot of other people. It was all part of my clueless dork persona that radiated off my glasses and braces wearing unkempt body and made me about as alluring to girls in elementary and junior high, as a case of chlamydia. 

When I got to high school (and pretty much in all the years since) I was certainly still the same goofy dofus that loved Dr. Demento-esque bizarre music. I just started to learn how to package and present myself better. Like I did not start a pick-up line with “have you ever heard the song The Lurch by Ted Cassidy from the Adams’s Family?”  That became more of a second or third date thing when the question seemed more quirky than creepy. CLICK TO SEE THE LURCH!!!!!

Kind of related to both the soft jazz and the so-bad-it’s-good genres, is the wussy pop rock bubble-gummy over-produced hits of the pre-disco 1970s. Kitsch stuff like Clint Holme’s Playground In My Mind, Terry Jacks’ Seasons In The Sun, and Rupert Holmes Pina Coleta Song that played constantly on AM radio and teen-aimed TV shows. This was the stuff geeks listened to while all the cooler kids huddled in basements, garages, and street corners listening to FM album rock staples like Led Zepplin or Pink Floyd. And later, even occasionally even creeped into the playlist of those soft music radio stations.

But there is a place for those cheese-tastic pop tunes. Maybe it’s simply nostalgia but I find there is a certain irresistible tacky factor to that ‘wus-rock’ music that I find strangely comforting. Nothing like that could (or likely should) get made today. It is unique to that era and transports the mind to illusionary simpler times.

I do not think I have ever admitted this totally embarrassing fact to any other human being before, but I think the worst, most hideously wretched, embarrassingly bad song from that era, is also the same one that plays in my head the most. You see, my brain loves the sickeningly syrupy awful tune, I Like Dreaming by Kenny Nolan. I mean, I don’t actually ever actively try to listen to it, but it has been a steady fixture rolling around inside my head for decades.

For those lucky enough to have never heard it, I Like Dreaming is a horribly overproduced symphony of wussy strings and harps with a wimpy singer who slightly lisps when he repeatedly says “I like dweaming”, as he tells the sorted details of an intense romance with a woman that he completely created from afar inside his head. I cannot fathom a world where this became a hit, yet it was. CLICK TO SEE I LIKE DREAMING

Sadly, throughout my life, I Like Dreaming has popped into my head zillions of times. Why, you might ask?  Well, the answer is as embarrassing as the song itself.  It’s because I too, like dreaming. And when I catch myself daydreaming just a little too much (which still occurs at my age more frequently than I should admit), that song almost always pops into my head.  I don’t know if it’s my brain’s way of jerking me back to reality by punishing me with it, but it happens time after time over and over again.  

Back when I was a very little kid, I frequently daydreamed about what my life would be like when I grew up. You would think that would have spurred me to actively do something to steer my future, but I was content just to sit back and daydream about it. Then in elementary school, when I discovered I had a fondness for the opposite sex, my daydreams started to focus almost exclusively on that subject matter. Again, you would think that might make me do something to make myself less of an undesirable freakshow. But no, I just daydreamed.

So because I did nothing about it, I remained a mega dorky little kid with no game or ability to tell a girl I liked her. Before my early growth spurt, I was picked on by other kids all the time. Oh, I was still taunted afterwards, but it was easier to ignore when I was a tall gawky nerd versus a fat-faced short loser twerp. The fact was, I could deal with all that. But the fear of being soul-crushingly laughed at by a girl I really liked paralyzed me. I obviously unconsciously decided it was better to keep the dream alive by never letting my feelings be known, than to get crushed attempting a move. Cue that horrible song… ‘I like dweaming’.

Even in high school, I kind of just fell into most of my dates. It was not until later that I developed the self-confidence and swagger to comfortably ask a girl out, no matter what their answer might be. But even after possessing that skill, I still spent way too much time daydreaming about the potential possibilities. Cause you know, ‘I like dweaming’.

There were several girls in elementary school that I daydreamed about. And while most of the boys ogled and clamored around classically pretty-faced statuesque (for grade school) Ellisa, I mostly daydreamed about Stacey. She was a little shorter and wider than Ellisa, but she had long curly hair, a crazy cute smile, an infectious laugh, and developed breasts very early (so no, my tastes have not changed in the many decades since then).

Since I kept all my feelings in my head, I really had no clue if Stacey would have gone out with me, or liked me at all, or if I still would have liked her after I got to know her better. But I think I knew those answers, which was why I kept my mouth shut. Yet in my daydreams, there was always a happy ending to our little love story. I moved to Florida in the middle of Junior High where I eventually figured out who and what I was. I did not like that wussy fraidy-cat ‘dweaming’ kid I had been, so I tried my best to distance myself from him and the few freinds I knew in that world. But you can’t really hide from yourself. It was not till later that I realized how little I had actually changed. But luckily I found a way to make it all work.

I always wondered what happened to Stacey. As grownups, would I still find her attractive? Several times as an adult I tried looking for her online, just out of curiosity. Even when I was single, if I found her, I don’t think I would have reached out.  Not because I would have still preferred just ‘dweaming’ about her, but because of the whole weird liking you from afar even though I knew jack-crap about you thing.  I mean, that’s almost as creepy as picturing your dad in the shower listening to his custom ‘soft jazz’ playlist.

DORK