Wednesday November 4, 2020 “Life in a Northern Town” Dream Academy
So if life is a highway we are on the road to a northern town, wait we’re driving on the wrong side of the road!
Dream Academy members Nick Laird-Clowes and Gilbert Gabriel wrote this song, which is dedicated to the singer Nick Drake, who at age 26 died of an antidepressant overdose which may or may not have been suicide. The Dream Academy single was co-produced by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, a close friend of Laird-Clowes.
What might we take away from this piece that could provide another clue to what life is? Perhaps it is that “in the winter of 1963, it felt like the world would freeze with John F. Kennedy and the Beatles (yeah, yeah, yeah).”
But just as we are getting close to some revelation the storyteller heads off in the rain to the station and ‘you could see it in his eyes but he never even waves goodbye’. I think if we knew what you could see in his eyes we might have some better direction in our search for the meaning of life.
A top ten hit for the Dream Academy, “Life in a Northern Town'' would be the most prominent of their releases while the band members would move on to work with Van Morrison, Pink Floyd and Marianne Faithful among others.
Stay safe and well...and on to the next possible clue.