Gary Wright: “The Dream Weaver” (1975)
When you are out and about and you see a little shop (or just a small section in a shop) that has some records and CDs for sale, do you stop and poke through them? I do. I always do. It drives everyone I know crazy! Can you relate?
If something is cheap enough, and the condition doesn’t look too bad, I will definitely grab it if it looks interesting. I am particularly partial to AM-radio music from the 70s that I vaguely recall from my childhood. I was spending the weekend in Taipei with friends, and our itinerary essentially consisted of visiting as many record shops as we could!
We found a small shop in an alley that had tons of sealed vinyl from the 70s and 80s. Most of it was remainder items (ie: had a hole punched through the cover) and most of the albums were officially licensed Taiwanese pressings priced at about $3 (US) each. I decided to go nuts and I ended up scoring more than a dozen really interesting albums!
Among them, I scored a brand new, sealed copy of Gary Wright’s “The Dream Weaver”. This was an album that I knew nothing of, except for the exceptional title track, which was a worldwide hit when it was released in 1975. On the strength of this song alone, I decided to drop $3 and see if the album was any good.
I hadn’t really heard of Gary Wright before, though I have since discovered that he had been a member of Spooky Tooth while living in the UK. He also played on George Harrison’s seminal 1970 album, “All Things Must Pass”, forming a friendship that saw him contribute to nearly every other George Harrison album since. He also performed with such rock and roll luminaries as Ronnie Spector, B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Harry Nilsson. Since 2004 he has been a frequent member of Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band. Not a bad resume for someone I’d never really heard of before.
Well, to keep this short and sweet, I brought the album home, washed it, dropped the needle, and was subsequently blown away! This is a great album that sounds like an unholy alliance between prog rock, new wave, power pop, and glam. You really can’t go wrong. There isn’t a weak track on the A-side and, with “Dream Weaver” opening up the second side, the B-side kicks it off with a bang, though the remaining three tracks on the B-side tend to drag a bit.
When this album was originally released, Gary Wright touted it as the first album to employ only keyboards, and though this was a bit of an exaggeration, there certainly are a lot of keyboards in play here, used to perfection. There are also some exquisite guitars, powerful drums, and confident vocals. Make no mistake, this is a rock album at heart, though the two singles released from it tend more towards power pop.
Discovering this album was an absolute treat and I’m really glad that I have it in my collection. If you’re like me and enjoy feel-good pop rock, you owe it to yourself to check it out.
See? Short and sweet. Do yourself a favour and check out Gary Wright’s “Dream Weaver”. There are few better ways to kill an hour.
#MusicBoxTW
