Quick Before it Melts

Thursday 06 August 2009

We got time

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Bob Wiseman‘s In Her Dream, the Blue Rodeo keyboardist’s solo album.  1989 was a pretty remarkable year of music for me personally, but none of the great albums that came out that year moved me the way Wiseman did.  I was familiar enough with Blue Rodeo at the time; their second album, Diamond Mine had a cool, jazz-psychedelic sound to it that was very atmospheric and I really liked it a lot.  That’s probably why it came as such a shock to find out that the squelchy, lo-fi static stained acid-folk rock coming out of my best friend’s Uncle Dave’s car stereo was Bob Wiseman.  Over the course of a long weekend in the city (Toronto), we listened to In Her Dream so much that I started to hear it in my dreams.

That Fall, when Blue Rodeo came to one of our local high schools for a show, my friends and I shouted Bob’s name all night long, and were rewarded by a special solo performance of “Airplane On The Highway”.  We played the part of adoring groupies after the gig when we got to meet Jim Cuddy and Bob in the parking lot, where he signed by copy of In Her Dream with a simple, “Carpe Diem, Bob Wiseman”.

Wiseman certainly seizes the day.  His singular musical vision is his and his alone.  What I admire most about his albums is that there are no rules, no formulas that are followed.  He plays from the heart and gives it his all.  The songs were charged with all sorts of political fires (most of which didn’t register with the younger, impressionable version of me) to the point that Atlantic Records destroyed the first pressing af the album, insisting that one of the songs be removed.  The full title of the album is In Her Dream: Bob Wiseman Sings Wrench Tuttle, leaving every one asking who the mysterious Wrench Tuttle was (turns out it was Wiseman all along).  It arrived full of tape hiss and lo-fi crackling in a time when CDs were pristine and clear sounding.  It was like no other album I had owned up to that point.

I was excited to hear that last week at the Drake Hotel in Toronto, a celebration was held in honour of the album and its limited edition vinyl re-release by playing the songs of Wrench Tuttle.  Bob Wiseman, Mary Margeret O’Hara, Final Fantasy, Great Lake Swimmers, and a host of others played In Her Dream in what I could only guess was one of the greatest shows I’ve ever missed.  The LP is being made available by Blocks Recording Club (whose URL doesn’t seem to be active anymore unfortunately) for those interested in getting their hands on a physical copy.  Those looking for a digital version (including “Rock And Tree”, the song that had to be dropped from the original release), you can scoop it up at the Free Music Archive now.

MP3: Bob Wiseman “Airplane On The Highway”
MP3: Bob Wiseman “Ship At Sea”
Myspace: Bob Wiseman

by J. Di Gioia | 2 Comments »

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