A Dream I Had About Jimmy Page

April 3, 2022

I had a dream that I went to a Jimmy Page concert with Tony Keefer and Andy Schwertman. It was in a small theater, but I didn't recognize the venue. Things kept changing throughout the dream as we waited for Jimmy Page to take the stage. At first there were no chairs, then there were rows of theater seats. Then my 2nd row seat turned into a swing on a really tall swing set. I swung really high and immediately felt nauseous just like I always do on a swing. At one point I noticed a rather large staircase descending from an upper balcony that came down right in the middle of the seats on the floor. When I looked back towards the stage it had been completely bricked over with cinder blocks. There was an open area to the left of the stage where it seemed like maybe the performance could take place there. Then the next thing I knew the cinder blocks had been knocked out, creating a view all the way to a backstage door where I saw musicians entering and ascending a staircase that led to the stage. There was well over a dozen musicians and I couldn't tell which one of them was Jimmy Page. Finally the house lights went out and musicians and dancers and people in elaborate colorful costumes started to file into the seating area. They lined up along the wall at stage right. They started to play "The Wanton Song" from Physical Graffiti. Some of the dancers were going nuts, flopping and gyrating like they were insane. A number of them had hair that stuck way out like 3 or 4 feet up in the air. It was very tribal and disorganized. I never actually saw Jimmy Page. Throughout the entire dream I was fiddling with a portable cassette recorder in my breast pocket, trying to record the show and checking levels and settings and rewinding the tape over and over. It wasn't my little red Zoom Mic. It was a shiny stainless steel Walkman.

The band played an extended instrumental, and really weird arrangement of "The Wanton Song" that went on for 20 to 25 minutes. And that was the whole show. In the dream, I approached the man at the merch booth to complain. "Is it my imagination or was that whole show just one song for 20 minutes? And where the fuck is Jimmy Page?" I was pissed. No one else seemed to even notice how short the show was. They were just snapping up overpriced t-shirts, business as usual.