I awoke this morning, my head filled with a dream of my late brother Mark and I walking along a fog-shrouded Revere Beach reminiscing about one of our favorite all-time albums, The Guess Who’s Rockin’. It all seemed so real, except for the fact that he was wearing shorts (something I can never recall Mark ever wearing) and that I had a bushy moustache, something I never had either.

The weirdest thing was that, at least to my memory, Mark and I had never traveled to Revere Beach – but that’s how dreams go. What I do remember is that it was at Hampton Beach that, back in, oh, say, 1974 or 1975, rummaging through a bin filled with bootlegs and cut-outs, we stumbled upon that album. Already fans of the band’s hits (in my mind, you can’t beat So Long Bannatyne), we loved it from the first moment we put it on and immediately tried to find ways of integrating a few of its cuts into our band’s repertoire.

While unheralded at the time, fans have caught up with it and now recognize it as a gem. You can hear the full album here.

My favorites? The opening cut, the hard rocking “Heartbroken Rocker” (turn it up loud!), their remake of Johnny Horton’s “Running Bear”, which is a hoot, and “Your Nashville Sneakers”, which definitely made it onto our Top Priority song list – especially whenever we were called to play shotgun weddings, something we specialized in. And, of course, their remake of Clyde McPhatter’s “Sea Of Love” played behind a cut called “Hi Rockers!”.

What always bugged me about that track was that it was such a great cover version obscured by a nonsensical conversation between two obviously-high (get it?) guys. Thanks to YouTube both you and I can now here it a little more than a decade later.

I don’t know what dreams mean, but it was wonderful at least for a few precious moments to feel my brother still alive and rockin’ like the band and album we so much enjoyed.