Dreams

We had our monthly lunch club today at The White Eagle at Rhoscolyn on Anglesey. We were a few short in number of our customary tableful, but a pleasant time was nevertheless had by all. I made my usual mistake of taking a starter before my main, which didn't leave my shrinking appetite enough room to finish up, but there you go. However, on our way into the restaurant I had noticed the outside chalkboard wasn't advertising specials or offers, but had on it a very familiar verse that at first I couldn't place, as in written form it was totally out of context for me. It only dawned on me a while later during the meal, that it was a spoken piece from a record by The Moody Blues: 'The Dream' from the album 'On The Threshold of a Dream'. Pictured, Jane's original copy of the vinyl from 1969.

The Moodies, as they were known by most fans, were a Birmingham band formed in 1964, and their earliest sartorial image would have suggested a lounge act rather than a rock band, but within five years, they had cemented themselves an unlikely place in the pantheon of the rock 'cool', musical outliers from the harder psychedelic or rock music one might normally associate with the era at this distance in time and through the eyes of those historicist commentators who like so much to pigeonhole stuff into convenient 'genres'. The fact is that we as a tribe back in those days, took to pretty much anything we liked, and as unlikely bedfellows as were the likes of Jimi Hendrix, The Small Faces, Family or The Moody Blues; we placed their records on our turntables with equal relish...