"Where's The Ocean?"

Sometimes I wonder if it’s due to some youthful times of better living through chemistry, but there are musicians that simply slip from my radar.

I’m not speaking of random acts in whom I had, at most, marginal interest, but rather those who were, for sometimes brief periods, favorites. Then, out of nowhere, they return to your orbit.

Recently, I needed a song with the word “hope” in the title and there was Toni Childs with House Of Hope. Then, days ago, another one of her songs, Don’t Walk Away made an appearance here.

That song was on her debut, Union, which closed with a song called Where’s The Ocean? Union wasn’t a major commercial success and I don’t remember ever hearing the songs on radio or seeing any videos, but it did receive glowing reviews.

Union also received attention as Childs was grouped in with several other female artists attracting attention during the summer of 1988 (including Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, Sinead O’Connor and Shawn Colvin).

Union did get a lot of play in a record store where I was working at the time. Actually, the love shown for the album was from one clerk, Peggy Sue.

Although Childs was unlike most of the music I was listening to at the time, Union soon became a favorite of mine during that summer. It was a potent mixture of rock, folk, and world music and Childs possessed a powerful, distinctive voice, husky and soulful.

David Ricketts’ involvement with the album also prompted me to give the record a concerted effort as I’d worn out my copy of David + David’s Welcome To The Boomtown a year earlier.

I kept track of Childs through her next two albums, 1991’s House Of Hope and 1994’s The Woman’s Boat and, then, there was nothing more.

Half a dozen years later, I became intrigued with sorting out if Childs was still making music. As I was doing some writing for a magazine called Rockrgrl, I thought it might be a good piece to pitch. But the little bit of research I did do led nowhere.

I read that she had stepped out of the limelight due to getting sick, but there was little to confirm or shed more light on the subject.

She had also had some involvement with a charity called Dream A Dolphin. I believe that the organization offered terminally ill children the chance to swim and interact with dolphins (I could be wrong).

Prompted by the reappearance of Childs in my world of late, I did a bit more research and it does appear that she did fall ill after The Woman’s Boat, but she is now living in Hawaii, is no longer sick (having healed herself through meditation), and released a new album last fall.

I once interviewed David Baerwald who, with David Ricketts, was the other David in David + David. At one point, Baerwald recounted how there had been a female singer with whom Ricketts had worked. For months, she wandered around the house where the Davids lived, working on a song, repeating the same line.

“Where’s the ocean?”

Baerwald apparently could no longer live with the drip drip drip of that one line and he finally directed her to go three blocks down and take a left.

I don’t think he actually named the singer as Childs, but as I was familiar with her music, I immediately connected the dots to her debut album.

Nevertheless, I’ve been listening to some of her music of late – for the first time in years – and there’s something still quite compelling about that voice.

Toni Childs – Stop Your Fussin’

Toni Childs – Zimbabwe

Toni Childs – Many Rivers To Cross

Toni Childs – I’ve Got To Go Now

Toni Childs – Welcome To The World

Ah Hey Oh Ma Ma Ma…

I’ve mentioned how lately I have discovered that I possess a previously unknown interest in the music of Bob Seger. And in the last few days, I’ve rediscovered a band which I had loved and forgotten (despite owning all three of their albums).

That band would be The Dream Academy; few bands are more aptly named. Paisley as could be, pictures of the classically-schooled trio on the album sleeve for Remembrance Days make me think of the early ‘70s television series The Mod Squad (barely walking in tadpole pajamas, I vaguely remember being somewhat transfixed by Peggy Lipton).

And if the name The Dream Academy is unfamiliar…if you were listening to radio in the autumn of 1985, you likely know their song Life In A Northern Town (see here for a very cool performance by them on Saturday Night Live).

That song was pretty much all that most listeners ever heard from The Dream Academy which is unfortunate. I’ve always considered them to be a sadly overlooked act of the ‘80s and felt that, under different circumstances, they could have been much bigger (what those circumstances might be, I don’t know).

The group split after releasing their third album, A Different Kind Of Weather, in 1991 and for years their catalog was unavailable aside from pricey Japanese imports (of course, all Japanese imports tend to be pricey). I believe there is a compilation that has been issued domestically.

Curious about what lead singer Nick Laird-Clowes had been up to during the past decade and a half, I did a bit of research. He has been doing music, but another detail caused me to take notice. Supposedly, he had fallen into serious drug addiction and, to become sober, he had sequestered himself in a monastery in the Himalayas.

Whether it is true or not, I have no idea. I do know that given their music and their style, if one band would have a member that would seek respite from drug addiction with Tibetan monks, it would certainly have been The Dream Academy.

It was just their vibe.

The Dream Academy – Life In A Northern Town
I remember hearing this song on 97X amidst Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, and The Suburbs. It was so striking, I immediately took notice. By the time they chanted the first ah-hey-oh, ma-ma-ma….I was hooked. The song heavily references the late Nick Drake and, twenty years later, I never tire of it.

The Dream Academy – The Edge Of Forever
Aside from Life In A Northern Town, The Dream Academy has a measure of immortality for this song as it plays during the kiss between Ferris and Sloan at the end of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The do upbeat rather well.

The Dream Academy – This World
This World is a song as dark as it is pretty (it is very pretty). Lost innocence is a recurring theme in much of The Dream Academy’s lyrics and the music captures it well.

The Dream Academy – Here
As the members were classically trained musicians, there are a lot of flutes and things accenting much of their music. Here is simple and lush, building to a crescendo.

The Dream Academy – Love
There are some folks who might consider covering John Lennon to be sacrilege, but his music has made for some inspired covers over the years (Marianne Faithfull’s take on Working Class Hero springs to mind). The Dream Academy do a well more than admirable version of Love, making it a joyous, trip-hop tinged, chant-filled romp.