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The Guess Who, Bob Dylan, and my weird recurring dream

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The Guess Who and my weird dream

The Guess Who, Bob Dylan, George Stroumboulopoulos, Timmins, Ontario, and a shoe.

So hear me out. I’ve had this dream for the past two nights. Usually I just think of how funny a dream is and let it go. This one is getting to be a bit ridiculous. Why does my brain keep conjuring this dream?

It might be because I have George on my Facebook and he posted about Bob Dylan two days ago. That actually makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Not sure where to go with this now. Was gonna try to figure out all of the complicated intricacies of why I would think about this but now it’s pretty obvious. George posted about Bob Dylan and it turned into my brain thinking about this.

Probably why I’ve had the dream…

But what I’m thinking about doesn’t exist! It’s not like I’m remembering something. My brain completely made up this dream. I should probably tell you what the dream is. Stop delaying. I’m building this up way too much.

Okay, so the dream is this.

George Stroumboulopoulos has a YouTube segment where he tells you great stories in rock and roll history (he doesn’t in real life) similar to Rock and Roll True Stories. In this YouTube video, Strombo tells a story about how The Guess Who have toured Canada with all sorts of artists and at every town in Canada they have a great story with a music legend. It then cuts to Burton Cummings looking like a less deadly Pedro Pascal naming a bunch of groups they have toured with and some of the cities. The ones I recall:

“The Poppers in Peterborough”
“Chrystal Candor in Lakeland Springs” (???)
“Dokken in Fort McMurray”

And then it shows a big headline to what the story will be: “Bob Dylan and the Timmins Shoe”

George goes back to narrating like 10 seconds about Bob Dylan being a music legend and he adds, “And his son ain’t bad either!” referring to Jakob Dylan of The Wallflowers. He mentions that The Guess Who and Bob Dylan toured in Canada in 1968 (I don’t believe they ever worked together. I guess “Undun” is based on a Bob Dylan lyric from a song Randy Bachman didn’t even like? Cool stuff) and on a stop in Timmins, things got, “Out of control, like all rock stories do” Strombo says in a dead pan ominous tone.

It then cuts to Bachman with wide eyes shouting, “Bob Dylan was trying to drink us under the table!” before going back to Cummings. “Bob liked to have a drink or two let me tell ya.”

                                          LESS DEADLY BUT STILL DEADLY PEDRO PASCAL

I know something happens next but I right now can’t remember it well two hours prior, despite having strong memory of this dream. But I do remember that then it cuts to Cummings going, “And now Bob has the shoe and he’s drinking from the shoe! He had to do it!” before George narrating says that Bob, “Lost the bet” and now he had, “A taste of Timmins in the worst of ways.”

The final shot is the Guess Who on stage with Bob Dylan (they are zoomed out but I think it’s supposed to be Bob because he’s got a black vest over a white dress shirt like in the video for Subterranean Homesick Blues) where George says they played to a sold out crowd in Timmins and Dylan learned the hard way, “You can’t go drink for drink against a Canadian armed with only a shoe.”

And that’s the dream.

I have had this dream FOR TWO STRAIGHT NIGHTS.

I’m going to go crazy trying to figure out if the shoe story is something I read or watched from something else and my brain decided to associate it with Bob Dylan and The Guess Who. I haven’t listened to The Guess Who recently and I don’t remember anything about them either that I’ve recently watched. Timmins? No idea why that’s on my mind either. Explaining my mind is impossible.

I just tried to look up The Poppers (and it was definitely POPPERS in the dream) and that band doesn’t exist but THE PAUPERS who I had no idea about do exist and they are a Toronto band from the 1960s who get this WERE MANAGED BY BOB DYLAN’S MANAGER IN 1967 and are considered with The Guess Who as one of the first Canadian bands to capitalize on the Beatles popularity in the country? What the what? I mean they didn’t tour with The Guess Who but this is still weird as hell. I know my music history but I honestly did not know The Paupers. And anyway I know it said Poppers. So it’s just coincidence I guess.

I guess.

There is no Chrystal Candor and there is no Lakeland Springs.

Dokken is an 80s hair metal band from Los Angeles. Why are they touring with the Guess Who in Fort McMurray? Why am I thinking about Dokken!?

In some ways I’m hoping writing about this just gets it out of my head. But there you go. Next time you ask me what’s on my mind or what’s up? It’s this. This dream I had of George Stroumboulopoulos telling a rock and roll story about the night Bob Dylan had a drinking contest with the Guess Who in Timmins and ended up drinking from a shoe.

Is…is this a vaccine side effect?

AWAW Aaron Wrotkowski 2024