Crate finds are hidden gems, little pieces of music and the stories behind them that are worth telling people about. The kind of stuff that from the first note kicks you in the gut, the stuff that sounds like you’ve always known it, like it’s always been there but you’ve only just managed to find what “it” actually means. The music that instantly hits you for six and leaves you wondering how you ever lived without it. Our first find is the perfect ode to teenagehood.
Brothers Joe and Donnie Emerson released their self-produced album Dreamin Wild straight out of the barn it was recorded in. Equipped with a $100,000 dollar studio, paid for by a loan against their family farm in rural Fruitland, Washington – population of which was 751 – the boys committed their dreams to tape. The LP would gain no critical acclaim, no public reception, not even a listenership beyond their close family. It was seventies DIY music, lost as soon as it was created.
Lost, until 2008, when record collector Jack Fleischer was browsing an antique shop and the cover caught his eye. The Emerson brothers are dressed head to toe in white jumpsuits, collars scraping their ears, in possibly the most seventies image I’ve ever seen. It honestly seems like it was taken at some kind of shopping “mall” family portrait area you see in American films. Nevertheless, the innocent moment between teenage and adult life, their joie de vivre, optimism and youth is perfectly captured.
Since its discovery, Dreamin Wild’s cult following has grown year on year with Ariel Pink’s cover of ‘Baby’ helping to propel the brothers to wider audiences 40 years after the music’s conception. From first listen the album unfolds and we soon learn Joe and Donnie’s end result is beautifully ugly. Everything is laiden with mistakes, out of time bass playing, shy vocals, bad mastering and sloppy drums. But every moment of it is incredible. Both “Baby” and “love is” continue to give me goosebump, they are hauntingly beautiful, pure moments of music that chime with something innate in everyone’s experience.
“Sometimes [the music] doesn’t have to be complete” Donnie says speaking to the New York Times. “It has to wander, it has to make you want more. And when you’re a kid, at 17 or 18, you’re not complete, you’re not there. And even when we’re 75, 80 years old, we’re still kids and we don’t want to be complete…. it’s just a vibe, that it is what it is.”
The album is a complete collage, mixing electronic snippets, space-age sounds, hip hop and everything in between to create something quite honestly remarkable. The band’s presence sits so clearly on a knife edge that your ears spend most moments expecting everything to collapse in on itself. But sawing above it all is Donnie’s voice, an innocent, clear vocal that’s unrelenting sentiment forces you to connect with it. Like some kind of lost or rare, an intimate outtake of the greats, it surprises you in a personal way. Their emotion is visceral and you can’t help but empathise with it. Through sad times and “Good Times” it just keeps on keeping on whatever which way it chooses, from start to finish heart wrenching and hip swivelling, from ups to downs, smiles to tears. This record encapsulates what it is to be purely human.
It’s just a couple of teenagers creating something they were passionate about. To us though, it’s the final throes of our teenage years, when you’re too young to drink and too old to live without worries, the moment we all realised things weren’t easy anymore. Perhaps it’s a reminder of the cliche to keep Dreamin’ Wild, a reminder that you never know what can happen but it’s worth finding out anyway.
Words by Nick Ikin
Click here to buy your copy of The Rodeo Magazine…
Words by Nick Ikin
Click here to buy your copy of The Rodeo Magazine…
