Record Dreams

Had a doozy last night. Was in a cavernous space which was supposedly my friend Bob Dickie's old store in Philadelphia. My old digger pal Dan was there. Bob had just gotten in a huge load of records and he was going to let us look thru them first. Dan and I were ruthless competitors! (we rarely were in real life. sometimes he or i would grab something first in a store and we would mention it to each other later and one of us would say: "oh, you got that, yeah, i was thinking about getting that..." but there was plenty of room for the both of us.) so, dan and i frantically searched thru piles and piles of records and i was finding the coolest most bizarre stuff and it was exhilarating and scary. long story short: Dan paid for his records and i either lost mine or Dan stole mine or they turned into old books or something. Gets kinda fuzzy. I woke up really bummed out. Those records were so cool.

Usually it's flipping through covers and sometimes one sticks out as being really cool. Then sometimes in real life I get the feeling that I found one of the dream records, even if it's something I hadn't heard of. (Probably was something I *had* seen before but it only registered in my subconscious.) Hasn't happened in a while though.

i always dream of records that don't exist. i often wake really excited followed by dawning disappointment.

my record-store dreams are very haunting, because typically the stores in the dreams are odd amalgams of record stores i _know_ i've been to but can't place. and i can spend agonizing minutes wondering if a record store — or, just as often, a neighborhood or block where a store is located — in a dream actually existed in some form, or if it's entirely a figment of my unconscious.

actually there's one store — really just an agglomeration of images, or signposts, which i suppose is how we truly remember even the real places — that keeps coming back in my dreams. it's not very exciting or anything. in my dreams it's always a little shop on a small street, probably in north or northwest chicago. it sits right under or just next to a set of 'el' tracks. there's a talkative guy with facial hair running the place. when you first walk in there's a rack of newly-arrived new and used CDs in front of you. then there are several rooms of LPs, with lots of genres distinguished. that's about all of the specifics that i can describe. other details change from dream to dream. in some dreams the place has been shut down. or i learn of its having shut down. in most dreams its the record store around the counter from some other ones, the one i either forget out or just make a run to after i've exhausted all the others nearby.

actually there are one or two other fictive(?) record stores that haunt my dreams regularly, now that i think about it. several of them have some resemblances to the short-lived other music in cambridge, massachusetts that i used to visit every friday afternoon for a year. (it was on the way to a therapy session i had on most fridays.)

i know this all sounds weird and compulsive but it's really just an example of the way dreams seem to work in general. the pathos or agony that comes from not being able to place the stores in my dreams has something to do with recognizing that the past is unrecoverable, more so as the years pass on and what once were active parts of your life become distant and faint, not to mention confused, memories.

i guess it's also disturbing because it treads the line between reality and fantasy, and since the inability to distinguish between the two is a hallmark of psychosis, my inability to decide if a dream-store is "real" or not makes me anxious.

proust to thread.

you guys ever get to listen to your dream records? sometimes I'm lucky enough to make it to a player. those slumberland Sabbath albums were fucking amazing.

i especially like the one that has the cover of "betcha by golly wow" with the smoking solo by iommi.

haha I once dreamed that I saw Huggy Bear covering Crass' "Shaved Women", it was so great.

i've dreamt about a particular store, a dusty but well-lit thrift store of some type with a few steps going up to a slightly higher second level which is filled with all kinds of junk and at the back of this level, a total treasure trove of older records. i swear i've been there, but i can't remember when or where. i think it's just a dream, actually. weird.

i wonder what the regulars over on Ask Dr. Freud would think of this thread!

I do have dreams about records. About 50% of the times they're work. I'll be stressing out about something involving records. But that kind of dream is, I think, uninteresting. Everyone has panicky dreams of their workplace shortcomings, right??

I don't recall any specific dream records at the moment, but there have certainly been some. Sometimes I dream of pulling amazing things out of bins. I think the archetypal record store of my subconcious is lit with hanging incandescent lamps (not bare bulbs mind) with red floors and is a few steps down from street level. Narrow. Not huge but the bins are always excellently curated & immaculately organized.

i think this dream record store is based MOSTLY on In Your Ear, formerly of Providence, RI and Exile on Main Street of Katonah, NY.

Sometimes I dream of a city that I've never been too, a place that seems to be something like Chicago or the Twin Cities only filled with canals sort of like Venice. Its been a recurring thing, I used to to walk around this place in my dreams, used to talk with friends I've never met and walk down streets I've never seen.

Whenever I dream about finding records, I think its mostly been in that city.

Of course the other night I dreamed that I was synaesthetic and could play the piano like Keith Jarrett, so I'm guessing that this all very basic wish fulfillment. Still its sometimes nice to have a hometown that only exists in these dreams.

About 50% of the times they're work. I'll be stressing out about something involving records.

oh yeah I used to ALWAYS have one about DJing college radio and I didn't get the next record on in time and there was dead air

dreamt i found the 3rd guy record last night. was there even a 3rd guy record? i was looking for "i wanna get with you"

dreamt i found stacks and stacks of this t-bone walker LP, which i already have a copy of:
http://991.com/newGallery/T-Bone-Walker-The-Truth-451592.jpg

also had a typical "late for work" anxiety dream :(

the other night I dreamed that I was trying to cue up Lupine Dominus by Thee Oh Sees (weird that I remember this so specifically) but the record was shaped like a dome and I couldn't get the needle to reach up to the right spot

Lately I've been going to the same store almost every night in my dreams (a huge weird composite of several real life record stores). I used to have trouble remembering what to look for. A lot of times i find weird imaginary YMO records. The other night I found the first Urban Tribe CD!
Trouble is, the store occasionally becomes the store I used to work at; suddenly I am *working* in my dream and not shopping.

I love record dreams.

I love record dreams.

― Trip Maker, Friday, February 8, 2013 6:36 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i just started remembering my dreams again. record shopping and searching for sushi bars.

no i mean searching for izakayas

had a dream i was in the midwest in a large, open industrial agriculture space? full of records? like there would be one repurposed horse stall that had 78s, another that had country records etc. it was a cool dream. i found a corner with boxes of obscure sixties & seventies psych and prog stuff. weird major label records that don't exist in the real world. i also think i bought some polish 78s, in the end.

somehow we only found this record haven because we were trying to escape from a car that was following us, for some reason. (lol rockford files in my dreams.)

I dreamt I discovered two amazing Scorpions albums that were recorded between taken by force and lovedrive.. there was either no lead guitarist or it was somebody who wasn’t uli or jabs, I can’t remember.