Musical freakshow dream

In the dream, I am visiting friends on Vancouver Island (not any that actually exist). They have young children, who play no particular role in the early part of the dream, which I don't really remember anyhow. When I leave for the ferry - being given a ride, non-driver that I (actually) am - they become important, however; the kids ride along, and they explain that they are going to stop at a Chapters (I think) and perform a concert with their new band. I'm expecting childish pop, but once they set up, it turns out that the "band" consists of a female dwarf in her 40's, a grotesquely obese man who appears to be in his late 50's, and the male child (who is maybe nine years old), and they're making a grotesque noisy racket with a vaguely tribal beat, a truly fucked-up music that rivals noise legends Smegma for weirdness. They perform three "songs" before being heckled down by people in the back, and then a discussion/ decompression ensues, including a possible "fourth member" of the band, a "normal-looking" guy in his 30's who apparently works as a bacteriologist. I leap to the band's defence, excitedly arguing on behalf of their obvious desire to break boundaries as to what a band looks like; the bacteriologist is somewhat disappointed that I don't focus as much on their music, so I blurt a defense of that, too, getting all het up in my enthusiasm for their reconceptualizing of what music can be. The people in back continue to heckle and express their disdain for what they'd just seen; they don't buy my arguments in the slightest. I ask them by a show of hands how many of them are Lady Gaga fans - as if such conventional tastes might explain their rejection of the band we've just seen - but only one girl timidly puts her hand up, so it explains nothing.

The band and I reconvene to some large room elsewhere with many people in it - their friends; its their headquarters, perhaps - and I start trying to explain who I am to them, that I've interviewed... who have I interviewed that they'll know? Jello Biafra? They don't really know who he is. Lemmy! I'll tell them I interviewed Lemmy! ...and they recognize that and are impressed; I convince them that I can be useful to them, and start hatching plans to write about them, to tell the world. Do they have a CD yet?

The elements that contribute to this dream are all drawn from my recent life. I've been enthusiastically catching up with the Dwarves, for one, who play the Fortune Sound Club on May 20th; I have only ever felt the need to own Blood, Guts and Pussy previously - the tour I saw them on back in the 1990's - and am delighted to discover that their other albums are also very strong and creative. They, of course, use a dwarf (Bobby Faust) on many of their album covers. Also of bearing on the bands' appearance, I'd been reading about Diane Arbus and her "freak" photos before going to bed last night. As for the journalistic elements, I've been re-activating myself as a music writer, now that classes are finished. I'd introduced myself to members of the band Damn the Eyes at a gig in Hammond the other night (since I'd written about them in the Straight awhile back). As with the band in my dream, I asked a couple of bands that played that night if they had CDs (the Jen Huangs did). There were also kids present at that gig, hence the kids in the dream; plus I've been thinking about someone I'd been seeing in Victoria, who wants to have kids. The bacteriologist may have something to do with the scientists in the films of David Cronenberg, which I have recently been revisiting. Besides having elements drawn almost entirely from identifiable sources, what's remarkable about the dream is how completely and accurately it depicts ME; while often in dreams, I am merely a cipher for the main character, with the details of my life being obscured, here, there was no question that the guy who I was in the dream was completely and utterly myself. It was odd to be so much myself in a dream, in fact. Is it odd that it was odd?