Like Sinatra in his younger days.
26 June 2008 - 24 סיון 5768 by Huw
One of my favourite tunes of all time is The Dream Academy’s 1985 hit, Life in a Northern Town. I like the song, mind you. But there is something about the actual tune, the chord progression…
First, take the orignal:
Misty, haunting… when it came out, I was living in NYC, 3 years out of High School. I missed my tiny little town in the Catskills. It was - clearly - all about growing up in such a place as I had lived. Later I learned they were British (watch the video again!) and that added an extra layer of meaning: the northern ends of the UK, like upstate NY, are financially depressed and jobless. The man leaving home in the song is doing so in a sad way, against his will: but he has to. The song spoke to me in that home-sick melancholia that one can experience early in one’s college career. Growing up is painful, change is inevitable and nostalgia hurts.
Then, in the late 1990s the song was reincarnated in that odd 90s way: Dario G mixed it into a dance track called Sunchyme:
This mix took only the up-beat, hyper parts and mixed them with an sampled Jamaican steel drum. I’d never seen the video before looking for it on YouTube tonight. It plays on the African sound built into the replayed sample. It’s quite a fun dance tune and, I think, it was used in an antihistamine commercial sometime in 1998. I first heard it sitting in a tiny room in a multiplex in SF with David Conner. It was played during the advertising slide show while the lights were still on. (This was in the days before the Metreon opened.) In the way with all such DJ mixes, the song was remixed and metamixed by other DJs. It’s fun this way, but you begin to think the up-beat and perky portion of the song is never going to end. It was a classic sound-track for meth-heads and a perfect comment on the 90s.
Today I heard and instantly purchased a new version of the song, a live version of the coverby country music duo Sugarland, along with Little Big Town and Jake Owen, on the Sugarland Change for Change Tour. “Change for Change” sounds like a bit of Pop-Star social activism, but ok. The song take on a whole new meaning sung by country music voices: it becomes a lament.
From the opening line about drinking lemon-aid when “morning lasted all day”, sung in a drawled croon, the story is clearly about someone, trapped in a Northern Town and missing his Southern Homeland. It has moved me to tears several times today. What’s interesting is all the other artists singing with Sugarland. The lament is “I left home to do exactly what I love but I miss Dixie.” I’m telling you, exile by choice is painful.
The video is one of those “we had a great tour” montages, but the song is the full, live version here (there’s a commercial before the music starts) incase it gets yanked from YouTube. You can buy it on iTunes if ya want!
The Dream Academy are one of my all-time favorites. Believe it or not, they had a lot of great material beyond this one song. (Actually I think this is one of their weaker songs!)
But I’m glad to hear about your history with it and I’m eager to check out the new version. I saw a minute of it on TV and was curious as to why these country artists were singing the Dream Academy… Thanks for the info!