Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
If Jack Kerouac were alive today, surely he would have been extolling the virtues of a man from Lancashire, possibly even turning him into a tragic anti-hero with an Americanised pseudonym and an abundance of women or men after him and plying him with whisky and repeatedly asking him to sing one of his songs that typify the road. Heath Common is that man, a character like no other, so unique that Kerouac or Ginsberg could not have captured the real essence of the road, in this case the Great Mancunian Way, he travels.
The Dream of Miss Dee, is exactly that, a dream of an album which condenses the feeling of contentment of reading Beat Poetry and transforms it for the U.K. shores, makes it feel of the tarmac, the smell of curry, the strangeness found in unique English towns and the back alleys of grand cities. Not the thought of 77th Street, 42nd Street, Lower Manhattan or Greenwich Village but Whalley Range, Bradford Park Avenue, the politics of England in the days in which a change forever seems to be hanging in the air but for which is ever out of reach and the beauty of the Greek corner restaurant. It is the song of finding yourself thinking of watching Peter Barnes, Gary Owen, Paul Lake, Steve Redmond and Colin Bell whilst shivering in the Manchester rain hurtling down like small destructible bullets as you sit on the terraces of Maine Road. It is life lived to the extreme but with an English reserve.
An Odyssey of songs that transplants the listener into the world of Heath Common, of a man able to weave a story so intricate that tracks such as Angel of New York summons up a burning passion to make your way across the ocean and shake the cold stone hand of Lady Liberty, the brilliance of Manchester Summertime in which you can taste the musical heat coming out of the Hacienda and the Manchester Apollo and Zorba The Beat might just be one of the best songs you will come across in your life.
Each track is a love song to a world that is inhabited by a unique man, his way of looking at a world that has changed since playing with the legendary Johnny Shines, the stepson of Robert Johnson but in which memory holds a key, a valuable one that makes America and the streets in which Heath Common walks along, seem like a utopian blend. They say never trust a hippy, the bright eyed look at the world is out of kilter with the rest of the bleakness viewed by society, who’s to say they are right or wrong. However you should always trust a unique person, one who doesn’t follow the same path, for at least they create something memorable from their matchless vision.
The Dream of Miss Dee is an album of absolute brilliance, a pleasure to hold, listen to and dream alongside.
Ian D. Hall