Review: The Dream's 'Get Dreamy' Reissue

You don’t have to break your brain to suss out the influences of Norway’s first psychedelic band. The Dream rewrote “Hey Joe” as “Hey Jimi” in tribute to the guitar deity they worshiped. Hendrix’s presence looms over their one and only album, Get Dreamy, though there are also subtlety-devoid references to Cream, Booker T., Procol Harum (“You”), and Dobie Gray (“Driftin” is a lysergic lounge rewrite of “The In Crowd”). However, The Dream are more than the sum of the heroes they worship. Terje Rypdal is a gob-smacking guitarist, who’d have a respected career on his own after The Dream’s brief life. And not Hendrix nor Cream nor The Who had the audacity to include anything as uncompromising as the eight-minute-plus noise orgy “Ain’t No Use” on wax as early as 1967 (though they were all doing this kind of stuff on stage). In contrast, “Green Things (From Outer Space)” draws its intensity from heart-racing percussion, while lovely things such as “Emptiness Gone”, “Driftin’”, and “I’m Counting on You” give you a chance to catch your breath between onslaughts. RPM Records is now rereleasing Get Dreamy on CD with fine sound, in-depth liner notes (keyboardist Christian Reim’s plans for the band’s unproduced second album are hilarious), and an extra track: the lengthy, jazzy “Dead Man’s Tale”, The Dream’s final recording, though one that made its debut on Rypdal’s debut solo disc, Bleak House.