Book Of Dreams

Steve Miller Band's 10th album and a major pop music success on the heals of "Fly Like an Eagle". The singles released from this album were: "Jet Airliner", "Jungle Love" and "Swingtown". It is definitely in my favorite top 10 albums of 1977. I like listening to this album all the way through from start to finish. The Intro to this album is "Threshold", which is a synthesizer instrumental that leads right into "Jet Airliner". This combination works perfectly. With "Jet Airliner" I always preferred the album version over the edited single version, the intro is almost a whole minute long. "Winter Time" is a cool relaxing song which is meant to chill things a bit after taking off in the jet airliner. Then "Swingtown" fades in and gets those feet a dancing. "Swingtown" is still my favorite on the album and tend to revist it quite a bit. "True Fine Love" is that longing to find that pure simple relationship that was only present for a brief moment in time of the yester years when romance was the thing. This ends up making you "Wish Upon a Star" and this is not the song from the Disney feature Pinnochio. It is kind of like a lullaby and ends Side 1 of the vinyl version.Side 2 starts with "Jungle Love". This stands out as an interesting song. The line "I brought a crate of papaya" always kept people guessing the meaning. This is the art of good song writing by putting creative imagery and metaphors in the song to keep the listener engaged. After Jungle Love we come to a synthesizer instrumental called, "Electro Lux Imbroglio". This music was always fascinating to me and put me in another world. The instrumental number connects to "Sacrifice" which is another great song with awesome percussion and guitar work. "The Stake" is a great rockin' song and was a favorite track played on many FM album rock radio stations. My brother and I used to crank this one on the stereo when our parents were gone. After "The Stake" comes "My Own Space", which is a song about the bliss of solitude. The album closes with another instrumental number called "Babes in The Wood". When the album is done, it makes you want to listen to more, so definitely check out other albums in the Steve Miller catalogue like "Children of The Future", "Sailor", "Brave New World", "Your Saving Grace", "Number 5", "Rock Love", "Recall The Beginning - A Journey From Eden", "The Joker" and "Fly Like an Eagle". Much of this music is like a treasure chest waiting for a new generation to discover. Try to find original copies on vinyl, they sound fantastic.

I remember when this album came out. I was working in a furniture store and when not assembling was delivering all sorts of chairs and tables and so on. I still remember a drive we made in the delivery van that took us on the road for a couple hours. We listened to this album in its entirety. It was great road music and cemented my memory of that summer.As I comb through my LP collection and burn CDs that then get dumped into my iPod, I sometimes find that I am missing music that for one reason or another, I never had, or perhaps had on (gasp) 8-track or cassette tape. It would have to be a pretty hard-to-find album for me to justify plugging in the tape machine and burning to CD, not to mention "settling" for a lower-quality result.My personal standard for buying CDs is to avoid buying any that I have in good condition on LP. If the LP is damaged or the recording is new, I will go for the CD. The other exception to the "rule" is for offerings that contain substantial or in some other way "must have" content not present on the LP.This album easily qualified for purchase on CD since I had no copy of it to begin with. I bought it along with "Fly Like an Eagle" and "The Joker", seeking to complete my collection of essential Steve Miller Band recordings.Clearly there are other works that reach deeper into the past and touch the present but for me these albums, and this one in particular hold the essence of what Steve Miller is about.All the radio hits are here (Jet Airliner, Swingtown, True Fine Love, Jungle Love). Some of them perhaps overplayed but still good to hear. Then there are the less often heard gems like "Winter Time", Wish Upon a Star" and "Sacrifice") that speak to a different side of Steve Miller. It was as much for these tunes that I wanted this album as any of the more well known tracks.

The disc was in better shape than stated and arrived very quickly. I could not be happier. I am a real customer and I recommend this seller.

Love this album. One of my favorites

Fly Like An Eagle and Book Of Dreams.....gotta have 'em both, not one without the other. Lots of radio hits and cool album tracks and full length unedited Jet Airliner. Steve's two best pop rock 1970s albums. Seek out some pre-Joker material and The Joker album itself for a little more psychedelic and bluesy Steve Miller.

Best album ever.

From long ago and far away. Dallas, Texan Steve Miller threw together a patchwork of songs and music that continues to please decades after the album was released in the 1970s.

This is an extraordinary album, and it's a lot of fun to listen to. It's the Steve Miller Band at its prime, and all of the songs here are strong. If you own this one and "Fly like an Eagle," in my opinion, you really do have all you need of the SMB. The other albums are decent, but not nearly as consistent.

Steve Miller, geboren 1943 in Milwaukee/USA, stammte aus einem musikalischen Elternhaus und machte schon als fünfjähriger Steppke die Bekanntschaft des legendären Gitarristen und Gitarrenentwicklers Les Paul. 1967 gründete er schließlich eine eigene Gruppe.Obwohl die Steve Miller Band bereits 1968 ihr Debütalbum CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE veröffentlicht und 1973 mit dem coolen "The Joker" einen Welthit abgeliefert hatte (wer erinnert sich nicht an die Gesangszeile 'Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah / some call me the gangster of love'?), schaffte die Kombo hierzulande erst im Sommer 1977 mit ihrem zehnten Album BOOK OF DREAMS den längst verdienten Durchbruch. Dabei war diese Scheibe eigentlich nur die musikalische Fortsetzung ihres Millionensellers FLY LIKE AN EAGLE von 1976, das sich in den USA satte 69 Wochen in den Charts hielt und mit "Take the Money and Run", "Rock'n Me" (Platz 1) sowie dem legendären Titelsong gleich drei Riesenhits abwarf.In Deutschland erreichte FLY LIKE AN EAGLE, obwohl nach meiner Erinnerung fast jeder die LP kannte und sie ganz toll fand, seltsamerweise nicht einmal die unteren Bereiche der Albumcharts, während die Single "Rock'n Me" immerhin bis auf Platz 28 kletterte.Und dann kam BOOK OF DREAMS. Exakt ein Jahr später veröffentlicht, war dieses Album ganz genau so konzipiert wie sein Vorgänger. Informierte Kreise behaupteten gar, dass die Songs von FLY LIKE AN EAGLE und BOOK OF DREAMS gemeinsam aufgenommen worden seien und auf zwei Alben verteilt wurden.Steve Miller kam vom Blues, hatte auch durchaus ein Faible für Folk und Country, machte aber de facto unglaublich eingängige Rockmusik mit deutlichen Popeinflüssen und versetzte diese zudem mit einem Überzug aus von Synthesizern erzeugten Klängen (die Zeitschrift 'Musik Express' meinte damals, Steve Miller sei wohl der Rockmusiker, der aus dem Synthesizer die wärmsten, menschlichsten Töne heraushole). Zusammen ergab dies alles jedenfalls eine einzigartige, äußerst reizvolle Mixtur.Genial simple Hitsongs ("Jet Airliner", "Swingtown", "Jungle Love"), geheimnisvoll klingende elektronische Spielereien ("Threshold", "Electro Lux Imbroglio"), zu Herzen gehende Balladen ("Wintertime", "Wish Upon a Star") sowie weitere Qualitätsware wie "True Fine Love", der Bluesrock "The Stake", das wunderbar folkige "My Own Space", das gelegentlich fast ein wenig ins Jazzige gehende "Sacrifice" mit dem Gastgitarristen Les Dudek sowie das geradezu irisch klingende Instrumental "Babes in the Wood" zum guten Schluss sorgten trotz unterschiedlichster Facetten für ein absolut harmonisches Gesamtbild. Dazu kam die angenehm helle, stets optimistisch klingende Gesangsstimme von Steve Miller.In einem Interview mit dem Rockjournalisten Hermann Haring sagte Landmensch Steve: 'I enjoy riding along on my tractor, smoke some dope, have some fun'. Genau so entspannt und lebensbejahend klang seine Musik.Mit BOOK OF DREAMS hielt die Steve Miller Band nun endlich auch Einzug in die deutschen Albumcharts und stieg dort bis auf Platz 13. Das war zwar für ein Album dieser herausragenden Qualität viel zu wenig, doch immerhin zog es den Vorgänger FLY LIKE AN EAGLE leicht verspätet mit an die Sonne des Erfolges (Platz 20).Das war allerdings noch gar nichts gegenüber dem Megaerfolg, der dann 1982 über die Steve Miller Band hereinbrechen sollte: Die Single "Abracadabra" erreichte Platz 2 und das gleichnamige (ansonsten allerdings eher dürftige) Album sogar Platz 1 der deutschen Verkaufscharts. Aber das ist eine andere Geschichte.Sehr viele Rockfans meiner Generation kennen und besitzen BOOK OF DREAMS. Daher ist es umso merkwürdiger, dass hier bisher keine einzige Rezension zu dieser fabelhaften Scheibe vorhanden war. Aber wenigstens das hat nun ein Ende. ;-)

Not a good sounding vinyl reissue. The depth varies but there is never close to enough, all the sound comes out of the top half of the main speakers making for a puny sound stage. The upper end detail is good but I had to turn down the treble a notch because of the lack of bottom end. The tone is much too bright. Now the CD I have has the opposite problem with the upper end detail being weak, having said that the CD sounds better having more depth at least making the album sound average. The vinyl quality itself is not very good either, there are a few too many ticks and even some scrapes which are really annoying.

I am a big Steve miller band fan. Don’t have this cd at all. It is a real good cd.Highly recommend it to anybody.

Received the CD in perfect condition and as expected.

A classic. Book of Dream and Fly Like An Eagle are perfect companion albums too.