The Name of the Blog

A weird thing happens when I go to Utah. They have lots of "retro" radio stations that play "80s-90s-now-alternative" music, so there is always a time-warp quality to driving into Salt Lake or Utah Valley. Because invariably there is some old song, packed with late-teen memories, playing as I drive through this place where I spent my late teens and early twenties. And then, of course, it's freakier because I am driving a mini-van carrying my family, not a tiny Japanese car full of books and Big Gulp cups (and all the stuff THAT implies). One of the songs that came on around midnight as we drove into Salt Lake was "Life In A Northern Town" by the Dream Academy, the song from whence my blog title comes. Now, I own a bunch of Dream Academy and Kate St. John cds, but there is something strange and kind of melancholy about hearing the music when I'm caught off guard. I just can't stree how much I love that song (and the whole album) and the rush of memories that come when I hear it. Here are the lyrics:

A Salvation Army band played
And the children drank lemonade
And the morning lasted all day,
All day
And through an open window came
Like Sinatra in a younger day,
Pushing the town away
Ah hey ma ma ma
Life in a northern town.
They sat on the stoney ground
And he took a cigarette out
And everyone else came down
To listen.
He said "In winter 1963
It felt like the world would freeze
With John F. Kennedy
And the Beatles."
Ah hey ma ma ma
Life in a northern town.
All the work shut down...
The evening had turned to rain
Watch the water roll down the drain,
As we followed him down
To the station
And though he never would wave goodbye,
You could see it written in his eyes
As the train rolled out of sight
Bye-bye---
Ah hey ma ma ma
Life in a northern town.




The first time I heard that song was August 1985 and I was listening to Rock Over London on the radio while I was getting ready for church one Sunday morning. The song was so beautiful! When the DJ said the name of the band, I wrote it on a Baker's shoebox sitting next to me on the floor--isn't that funny? Thus began the obsession. I bought the self-titled debut album and was not disappointed--it was beautiful and it made me want to learn to play the cello and the oboe and wear my hair straight like Kate's.

So when I moved way up north here, the title just seemed appropriate. I suppose there are a lot of bands I can say sort of capture "me"--that I can use to describe my interests or background, and I have to say the the Dream Academy is definitely one of them, at least from "the early years."