Trees

My room was on the fourth floor of the old hotel that the University of Chicago had transformed into a dorm, looking out towards the front of the building and the great grey waters of Lake Michigan just across Lake Shore Drive. From where I sat, I could see the school bus pull up to the front of the building. Because the Shoreland – my dorm – was about a mile from the main campus, U of C would run frequent buses to and from campus throughout the day. Early on I figured out that, if I bolted out the door, ran down the hallway, galloped down the stairs in my patented four-at-a-time double skip, and ran across the lobby, I could make it to the bus stop before the bus had pulled out, especially if there was a line. I used to like doing this, partly because I hated waiting in line for anything and partly because it made me feel like Starsky or Hutch.

One day, I had gathered my books together on the desk and was listening to some music, waiting for the morning bus to shuttle me to my classes. The bus rounded the far corner of the building but, instead of jumping up and running out the door, I sat still. I watched it slow and stop next to the knot of students waiting to go to their classes, and I watched passively as they trickled into the bus. The reason I couldn’t join them? The song on the stereo was just too good to interrupt. It wasn’t like I was listening to the radio or anything, it was a song from an album I owned that I had heard dozens of times before, but I just couldn’t break myself out of the trance it had put me in, so I continued listening and watching my responsible classmates going off to their responsible classes. By the time the song had ended and the stereo had shut off its tractor beam, the bus was pulling out. I sighed and shrugged and put my books away. It was the first time I had blown my classes off, but it wouldn’t be the last. It was the first real crack in my University of Chicago façade, the first inkling that I was not going to be the model student everybody (myself included) expected me to be. The song that was responsible for my academic downfall, for leading me down the twisted path that ended up here, in an edit bay in North Hollywood? This one, Delta Sleep by Trees.

Yeah, I know, who? Trees?

That this album, Sleep Convention, never made any kind of a splash whatsoever is boggling. The disc is stuffed with great songs and inventive production. A solo project for Dane Conover, Sleep Convention is a sunnier version of the kind of synth pop that was blowing up everywhere at that time (1982). There’s a definite appealing new wave angularity to a lot of the tracks (especially the quirky jerky Come Back), but Conover manages to coax a warmer, SoCal vibe out of his icy synths, and the album is suffused with warmth and a disarming charm.

This song, in particular, just kills me. An ode to the healing (and escapist) powers of sleep (a good paring with Jonny Polonsky’s It’s Good to Sleep), it’s so spacious and airy and appealing, so poppy and wistful, that I can’t believe it was relegated to the complete obscurity which has been its fate. There is no justice. I wish there was someway that I could get those obscure musicians that I adore some more exposure, I can’t believe that my tastes are so esoteric that lots of people wouldn’t like what I like, but still the best of the best goes unheard. It also makes me wonder what other great stuff is lurking out there underneath my radar, what other obscurities I’d love that I’m just never going to run across. I wish there was something I could do about that, but that seems to be my lot, and the lot of those I love. So, I’ll raise a glass to Dane Conover and swing from his glorious Trees whenever I can. It’s the least I can do for the man who ruined my academic career.