by Chris McGinty
On December 31, 2023, I had a pretty involved dream involving Metallica. If you’re at all into trying to interpret dreams, go read that; but also, it’s interesting to me that these are the two dreams that have been worth writing about (the second one I’ll get into after my rambling preamble). You see, years ago there was a metal station called Z-Rock. Looking it up now, it still exists in some forms, but we don’t have the station here in the Fort Worth/Dallas area. They had a feature called Mandatory Metallica where they played one Metallica song every hour. I first heard of this around the time of “…And Justice for All.” Later, 97.1 El águila del sol adopted a similar idea where each night they had a half hour long request hour of all Metallica songs. The only relevance to this is that years later, Nathan and I had what I called Durandatory Duran where we played at least one Duran Duran song every time I visited. This didn’t really last very long, and we probably often missed listening to a song in spite of it being Durandatory. Even now, when I put together a Spotify playlist of various artists, I usually put one Duran Duran song for every fifteen on the playlist which is about one song an hour.
You may feel like I wasted a lot of time on that introduction, and I probably did, but the dream I had this afternoon just wasn’t as involved as the Metallica dream. In fact, I’m going to tell you the whole dream this time and then explain after.
I was at a movie theater with another Duranie. We were there to see a new film that Duran Duran was involved with. I was talking to a woman who I game with. In real life, she and her husband have an adopted daughter and I took a picture of them with my phone. Then I noticed that my gamer friend had a book that was an RPG that she’d been playing with her ladies’ group. I started reading a section of the rules having to do with striking in combat.
It was at this point that the movie started. I could hear the theme to the movie starting. Now, in real life, Duran Duran recently released a Halloween themed album called “Danse Macabre.” It was based on a special Halloween show they played where they did some of their songs with loose Halloween themes and a few covers of the same. The album is the result of that.
Duran Duran – Danse Macabre
In the dream, they started playing “Secret Oktober,” when suddenly there was a really loud sound like a gun firing. The lights in the theater went out and being able to hear outside, we realized that there was a storm outside.
When I woke from this dream, I had two thoughts. The first was that it would actually make for an interesting opening to a story. The second was that because “Secret Oktober” was playing right before I woke, I couldn’t remember what the opening song sounded like. This sucked because it was a song that doesn’t exist in real life. It wasn’t “Danse Macabre.” I really wish I could remember how it went. This happens sometimes with dreams where I’ll dream of a song that doesn’t exist and log what it sounded like when I wake up.
Duran Duran – Secret Oktober
Like with the Metallica dream, I do have an idea of what this dream was doing in my head. It’s not as involved though. Two BGG Con 2022 happened right around the time that Duran Duran did release a concert film to theaters as a limited showing event. I left early the first night of the con to go watch the concert film in the theater.
I already explained about the recent album, so it would make sense that they might do a Halloween themed film. One can hope they will. I would totally go see it. It was supposed to have a narrative element to the film, and I think that’s because I was recently talking about how odd the “Arena” feature was when it got narrative near the end.
“Secret Oktober” actually has a line in it, “Like the sound of gun shots taken by the wind and lost in distant thunder.” The dream represented that line. Also, for you Duranies out there, that line contains the words “Sound of Thunder,” even if they are not together.
Duran Duran – Sound of Thunder
One final bit that I’d like to talk about here. I saw Duran Duran in Dallas in 1999. This was the tour with no Taylors, and the last tour with Warren Cucurullo. I told the story back in the e-zine days, but I haven’t reposted that article anywhere. I went with the woman who would later be my second wife and then second ex-wife. I had played her “Secret Oktober” before we left and said that if I had a wish list item it would be for them to play it. This was the first time I’d seen them, so I didn’t know what to expect. In the row we sat, from left to right, was my second ex to be, me, a female who was clearly a Duranie like me, and her female friend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeXmBb8tf5I
Duran Duran – Secret Oktober Live at House of Blues Chicago 1999
It won’t embed, so you’ll have to click the link. It’s the best audio of this version of the song.
If you listen to this version of the song, you’ll note that it’s instrumental intro is almost as long as the original song. For this reason, I was sitting there trying to figure out what it was, thinking it must be from the upcoming “Pop Trash” album, which they had played a few songs from that night. Then when it kicked in, the melody tipped me off. At the same moment, I turned to my ex to be and the Duranie sitting next to me turned to her friend, and we each told our concert partner, “It’s ‘Secret Oktober!'” It was a true Duranie moment. By the way, in this version he also uses the phrase “to the shore” in the spoken word bit at the end. That’s possibly my biggest wish list item for a live performance at this point.
Duran Duran – To the Shore
Does that experience play into its appearance in my dream? Maybe. It may also be that I found my “Future Past” t-shirt a week or so ago, because I’d misplaced it in storage stuff. I think it was just my brain being clever about the gun shot line though, but seriously (yes Simon in this case it does have to be serious) I really wish they would do another theatrical release even if it’s just a live show like the last time.
Chris McGinty is a Duranie and a dreamer… this is not the first dream to involve Duran Duran, and probably won’t be the last. One of the others that I can think of right now is a dream where I found an 8-track cassette of “Big Thing.” In real life, the only Duran Duran album to have a release on 8-track was “Rio,” so I, of course, woke up wishing I could pull the “Big Thing” 8-track cassette from my dream and add it to my collection… and a blogger. Can’t forget that.