Customer Reviews

Dream Weaver

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I can clearly remember one moonlit night in January 1976, When the FM DJ announced this album, before he played the entire first side ( this was about 8 years befor the continuous running cd for those of you born after Carter was president). He stated that it was almost an exclusively synthesized album from the legendary Gary Wright. Then I heard the opening few seconds of the swooshing orchestral sounds of Dreamweaver, and I was hooked. This album meant so much to me in '76. In February '76, One of my best friends died from accidental shooting while playing with his dad's pistol. He asked me a few days before he died if I thought this song was cool, cause he loved it. I whole heartedly agreed with him. Then I got the news in the empty school hallway over the loudspeaker, walking my way to my first class and running late with a pass. I was very depressed for months after that, insomniac over it. Dreamweaver, ridiculously, spoke to me. I was asking, praying, that the Dreamweaver would help me make it through the night. I really just wanted to fly away to the bright side of the moon. I just wanted to leave this world behind. It was very painful to me in life at that time. For two months, I revelled in that song. And as I was pulling out of my depression, Love is Alive lifted me out of pain into ultimate joy. God only knows how much these two song mean to me to this day. One soothing to me in a time of death. The other pulling me out of death into rebirth, and moving on with my life. Thank You Gary. Oh, and did I mention, the rest of the album is great too, a watermark. Although smaltzy by today's standards, I believe a cover version with reworking of the arrangement could update these two great and awesome pop singles. Maybe I'm sentimental. Maybe I could be a genius like Gary too.

Dream Weaver, what else can be said about this oft-parodied slice on 1970s rock and roll? First of all it has genuine, authentic killer riffs and melodies. This album is without guitars (mostly), Gary does it all with his keys and synths."Love is Alive", "Dream Weaver" all smack of the 70s, but this is okay, the grooves all hit their mark squarely. "Blind Feeling" my personal favorite still gets heavy rotation in my yearly catalog of music. A bit melodramatic for today's fans but who cares, it all works. It's over the top, yet very understated. Most people who don't know this record, but know "Dream Weaver", may consider Wright's music to be Pink Floydish or too artsy/progressive, but that's a big misunderstanding. On Dream Weaver Wright mines funky grooves and blusey gospel riffs and beats. Many songs are in a more rythm and blues groove than in the "Dream Weaver" spacey mode. To me it's a quintessential 1970s effort that cannot be pigeon-holed into one simple genre. The 70s was a decade one could get away with something like this. It was given a state of the art recording at its release and still sounds very good today, albeit dated, but I like the dated sound. Good for any occasion, any party, anywhere.

This album of synth-driven rock presented quite an innovative mix of textures when it was released in 1975. Love Is Alive and Let It Out have beautiful melodies and female backing vocals framing Wright's rock vocals, giving the latter a soulful feel. Feel For Me is a similar mix of pop and R&B. Can't Find The Judge has a funky rhythm and strangled vocal whilst Made To Love You is a gentle pop ballad. The pace picks up for Power Of Love with its strong rock riff and soaring vocals. Dream Weaver itself is a masterpiece of synthesizer tinkles and whooshes with evocative imagery and poetic lyrics. Although this album makes extensive use of the synthesizer, the arrangements are still in a rock/pop format and the overall sound is nothing like Kraftwerk or the later synth-pioneers like Eurythmics, OMD or Gary Numan. But it remains a minor classic with its memorable and melodic songs.

I bought this cd to finally own the first track, "Love is Alive," and had no idea what I was getting myself into with the rest of the album. I didn't like the song "Dream Weaver" that much, and the other songs I had never heard before. Now four years later and after listening to this album several hundred times, I rank this as one of the best albums from the seventies. I even like "Dream Weaver" now! The music is excellent: straight ahead rock; swirling, slower, moog-driven love...all belted out by Gary's great, soul-singer voice. If you like R'n'R, you'll love this album.

I have a number of Gary Wright solo recordings (vinyl and CD) as well as a copy of the
Spooky Two from his first go-round with Spooky Tooth. So, I admire his body of work.

The Dream Weaver is by far his most successful album thanks in great part to the tremendous
popularity of his chart-topping hit, "Dream Weaver" and to some extent, "Love Is Alive." This
entire 1976 album consists primarily of Gary Wright playing synthesizers along with real
drums on every track but for one with Ronnie Montrose on guitar.

I always liked the album, respected the hits and grew to accept the big synth sound. That's
basically the history that urged me to purchase the 24K Gold Disc remastered version of The
Dream Maker on Audio Fidelity. I own a number of these Audio Fidelity Gold CDs and
generally have very positive feelings regarding their remastering and releases, but honestly did not expect too much could be done to improve upon the unique-sounding Gary Wright classic. Happy to report, I was pleasantly misguided. This Gold CD version of The Dream Weaver is a wonderful-sounding disc and has never sounded better.

It's clear now through comparison the earlier CD releases were tighter and colder and frankly
even the vinyl is inferior. With the remastering credited to Kevin Gray, Wright's vocals are clearer and more powerful and those previously tightly-wound synths are more open while the drums are distinctively brighter.

The complete remastered recording is nice and warm, fuller and richer and has delivered an
entirely new listening experience to a favorite and familiar album. It's like meeting an old high school friend who looks better now than before. It passes my living room listening test and my headphone listening test and that's enough for me, after more than a quarter of a century, to once again place The Dream Weaver into heavy rotation.

We all have opinions, and when it comes to music, I think we bring a lot of emotion into our opinions because music touches a chord in us. I think Starla gives way too much credit to Mr. Wright by saying that Rock is divided into pre & post Gary Wright. Gary' music is in its own genre and has its own niche. The disco scene was fueled by a completely different musical style. I think Gary borrowed from disco with the synthesized riffs that show up on his albums, but he is not responsible for disco. The Dreamweaver song and album were a snapshot of a type of music that briefly appeared and then was gone. All of that said, I think the music on the entire album is very good. It is fun to listen to and brings back memories of where I was and what I was doing when the album was released; that is my opinion. I tend to comment on the things I like. The things I don't like, I don't buy. I figure that I'm not qualified to comment on that stuff because I don't listen to it enough to be critical.

The title song still airs, and three or four of the others I can l sing from memory. Blind Feeling....Love is Alive.....Feel for me... all have Gary's 'signiature' voice and music on them . Try listening to Blind Feeling on headphones sometime....especially the beginning. It's about like The Steve Miller Bands "Jungle Love. It was said that 'Dreamweaver' dealt with astralprojection and Gary's theme seems to be to put you in 'another space and time'. Much of the uniqueness of the album is this underlying theme.

From the days gone by... this can bring them back. Not a poor track on the CD.

This is to respond to StarlaParis who gave her opinion as one star. I couldn't disagree with you more. I loved this album and count it as one of my all time favorites. I think she was extremely off base. Maybe she should listen to it again!

"DREAM WEAVER" was the first album I ever bought back in the spring of 1976.

I was all of 12 years old, and rumour had it that the town hottie (a precocious 14-year-old, hourglass-shaped knockout looking every bit like a Penthouse pet-of-the-month) apparently had a crush on me, which I refused to believe.

Fast-forward to the pre-March break school dance. As a swirling mirror ball reflected a kaleidoscope of fragmented light across a darkened gymnasium, the synthesizer intro of Dream Weaver swooshed from the speakers. There she was, bold and brassy, coming straight at me across a crowded room. Would I care to dance with her? She didn't give a damn that I had half a dozen buddies with me, all staring wide-eyed at this perfect specimen of the female form. This chick had moxy.

She pulled me tightly against her DD chest and whispered in my ear that she liked me... a lot. We're talking sensory overload: my face was nuzzled in her hair, with the scent of gee-your-hair-smells-terrific shampoo, bubblegum lipstick, and drugstore perfume totally intoxicating my impressionable young mind... while the chorus of Dream Weaver seared into my brain for all of eternity as I experienced my first French kiss. Schwing!

Perhaps a biased opinion in light of the above, but Dream Weaver gets my vote for greatest rock ballad of all time. The album is nothing short of amazing, and was light years ahead of its time when released in 1975. Other than the title track, Love Is Alive and Power Of Love are absolutely mesmerizing. A highly recommended album that deserves to be remastered along with Gary's follow-up, The Light Of Smiles and 1981's The Right Place.