Donnie & Joe Emerson Dreams Full of Dreams (1979)
Unincorporated communities are areas that are not governed by a local municipal corporation. While there are only very few unincorporated communities in most parts of the world, there are quite a lot of them in the US and in Canada, Fruitland, Washington, being one of them. The place is a good 5-hour-drive inland from Seattle along the border between the US and Canada, and despite its vastness, it has only a couple of hundred inhabitants: around 6 people per square mile. Considering this ratio, one could easily jump to the conclusion that nothing much will flourish in such no man's land except perhaps for the fruits referred to in the community’s name (which, by the way, was chosen by the postal authorities based on three proposals of the community’s first postmaster back in 1887). But Fruitland does have something to offer culturally: Inspired by the songs Donnie and Joe Emerson heard on the radio while giving their dad a hand on his farm, the teenage brothers started writing their own music in the late 1970s. With the unwavering support of their parents, Donnie and Joe produced a myriad of wonderfully starry-eyed songs, eight of them being pressed on an album: Dreamin’ Wild. Most of the copies of this record, which the Emersons published themselves, haven’t left the farm, as English newspaper The Guardian reported. Most, but not all. One copy somehow ended up in a second-hand shop, where it was picked up by an eager record collector—three decades after the album had been produced. Subsequently, the songs made the rounds in the underground music scenes. Through cover versions by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti and the likes, re-issues by record label Light in the Attic, and a bio-pic in 2022 it finally found its audience. One of the songs that still seems to be a bit underestimated is the epic ballad “Dreams full of Dreams”.
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