Canon Fodder: Mink DeVille “Let Me Dream If I Want To”
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
This post marks the first in a series that will randomly chronicle the songs, albums, artists and musical moments that have combined to form what I can now refer to as my taste. For lack of a better title, I’ll refer to it as Canon Fodder. Lame, I know, but that’s why I don’t work in advertising.
“Let Me Dream If I Want To” (mp3) is brash and simple, relying on a delay riff that periodically erupts into a power jaunt, then cools off again, mimicking Willy DeVille’s assured Lou Reed imitation–”watch the door, deep surprise, it’s a vision!” Between the notes and words of this sub-3 minutes pre-punk cruiser is a rockabilly swagger, surrounded–choked–by a passion to get away. From anything, everything. The title is one of the greatest in rock: “Let Me Dream If I Want To”. Not “Let Me Dream”, not “All I Have To Do Is Dream”. No. If he wants to dream. He’s too calm and unaffected to let you know that he wants to do anything right now. Maybe he just wants to stroll. For now, he’s saying nothing but doing it passionately–driving nowhere but determined not to blink on the way.
This track is available on Rhino’s Blank Generation: The New York Scene 1975-78. It’s out of print, but reasonably available from Amazon. (photo source)
Filed under: canon fodder Mink Deville
Still the best show I ever saw for the money was Mink DeVille, Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello at the Circle Theater in Indianapolis in late ‘77 or early ‘78. Ticket price: $1.95.
An amazing night…
wow.
never cease to amaze me, sir Eric… Rockpile, Ramones, Mink Deville some of the stuff that I grew up with. This is the stuff these new indie bands are trying to imitate these days and all the indie kids say it so new, so relevant, so indie. Shit, they are just copying Willie Deville, Nick Lowe, and the Ramone ‘brothers’…
check Del Fuegos – Boston band formed in early 80’s, they cloned the Mink sound but did a decent job of it for awhile…
I suggest the new indie sound should be these young indie kids go back and explore the roots of it all. I think they would be amazed at what they find. Then maybe they will realize that the Strokes Is This It… Is really That Was It..
D