Vaguely Biblical, All Arena-Ready

Album: Dreams So Real, Rough Night in Jericho, 1988

Acquired: I owned this when I arrived at Virginia Tech for my freshman year. Seeing the tape's publishing date, I figure I must have picked up Rough Night during the summer of '88. Whoever can figure out where wins the sense of self-satisfaction that comes only from educately guessing completely irrelevant historical facts.

Best Track: "California"

Lasting Memory: I've always associated this album with the welcome break-up of one of my sisters' long-term relationships. I suspect that sharing the identity of that sister and the few details I know would be inappropriate and unappreciated. I know for a fact that completely withholding all the relevant information would lead to much speculation and many rude comments directled at me. So I'll split the difference and just say that Albuquerque in the rearview mirror was one of the prettiest sights we all ever saw. Even though none of the rest of us actually saw it in person.

The song "California" is 100% of the reason I associate Rough Night with that family event. Here is the chorus, because I can't find even so much as a 30-second sample clip for "California" anywhere online (unless this works):

California falls in the sea
That's when she said she'll be coming back to me
California falls in the sea
That's when she said she'll come back to me

There are more than a few other breakup songs on Rough Night, but each, including "California," with its lines about openning up the book of love and quoting the rocking principles and asking to be told what to believe have serious biblical overtones. As a result, that's what I'll be running with in this post.

I'll stop well short of arguing that Dreams So Real was a stealth Christian rock band on the order of The Call, but it would be both difficult and probably missing some larger point to ignore that something religious is going on in "Bearing Witness," for instance.

And the boys from Atlanta/Athens, Ga., get totally eschatological on the title track, salvantion-seeking on "Love Fall Down," and utopian on "City of Love." Then there's what should be just a plain, straight-up unrequited lust song "Melanie," which begins:

(Who is she?)
I don't know
And it drives me insane
All I see is a face and a name

(Where are you?)
In a place where I don't know myself
I can't think now of anything else

(It's Sunday)
Yes, I know 'cause I hear the bells ring
Spirits fly out the door on a wing

(Just one day)
Just one day on a calendar page
I am poor but I'm willing to pay

Melanie, I don't know
Why you do these things to me
I can't explain
Melanie, I don't know

So what I think we had in Dreams So Real was a very much less successful version of U2. Both bands put a Christian subbasement into a house made entirely out of arena rock. I would have loved to see Dreams So Real in a smal club. Play that video for "Bearing Witness" again and imagine how it would sound in the 600-person rooms Dreams So Real played.

That'd have been the old-time rligion, for sure.

Up Next: Dreams So Real, Gloryline, 1990