RFBX: ‘It’s Genius, I Swear’ Special – Dan Michaelson of Absentee/The Coastguards on Dion’s ‘Born To Be With You’
By: Dan Michaelson
I got a call from a friend of mine... “You have to hear this record…” I hate it when this happens. Someone tells a joke, they’re a friend… they think it’s funny, I should find it funny too because I like you. I’m not laughing. Everyone feels silly now. It’s my fault. So I listen to the record, Its Dion’s Born To Be With You, a record that Dion himself disregarded as not even funny.
From the opening 3 minutes of instrumental reverb drenched GospelTranceVegasShowboatingTM, I'm sold. I can hear nearly everything I’ve ever enjoyed in this record... Van Morrison, The Velvet Underground, Jarvis Cocker, Spiritualized, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Dusty Springfield and The Supremes just to name a few. There are some horrible sounds too, a dodgy saxophone solo that shouldn’t work… shouldn’t be allowed really, and so many instruments playing at the same time that it feels too heavy to be a record. Maybe it’s a tome? Yes, that makes more sense than calling it an album. It’s big, it’s heavy, it sounds like they made a mistake ordering all this pizza but now it’s here it would be a waste not to eat it. Extra toppings? Ok, more mushrooms!
First released in 1975, the same year that sired Queens’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, Brian Eno’s use of “oblique strategies” on Another Green World, and a fair chunk of Stevie Wonder’s “golden period”. A time when the UK just loved to D-I-S-C-O, not yet knowing that punk was getting itself ready to steal the wheels off their roller boots, not to mention the same year Paul McCartney got himself arrested for growing weed.
It’s possible to see how this one slipped through the major league net.
Artists in this article: Dan Michaelson & The Coastguards, Dion