Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Occasional Forgotten Video: Go West, "We Close Our Eyes"

It's funny how in life, certain songs make you a little sad, but smile a little because they were used to signal closing time at favored tippling establishments. In my case, The Glenn Miller Orchestra's "In the Mood (Mom's in Charleston, Illinois)" somebody's version of "Mr. Sandman," (The Ten Cat in Chicago) and Go West's "We Close Our Eyes," (the Park West Playlot in Chicago)

In Lincoln Park in the mid to late eighties, there was a tavern in Lincoln Park called The Park West Playlot. It was a four o'clock bar, which meant it was open until five a.m. on Saturday night/Sunday mornings. They gave "street prices" to people in the business (i.e. very cheap drinks, with the knowledge that we tipped very well, being in the business ourselves), were friendly and not too yuppie, given the area. Every few Saturdays, I'd somehow end up there with Karl, a kid I worked with. We'd talk about the things guys in their early twenties talked about; women, dreams, the future.

At closing time The Playlot would play the the vid for Go West's "We Close Our Eyes." The song and the video have come to represent, to me, a time when I was young and dreams were infinite.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

At a local tavern that we used to go to when we were younger, they played "High Hopes" and everyone would sing. Or maybe I just thought they were all singing after two beers.

Cup said...

How funny; I just downloaded this last week. No better time machine than a song ...

Jess Wundrun said...

I feel just the same way I felt after college when people started making jokes about how girls would "experiment" with each other during the college years.

I totally missed it. Man, where was I?

Oh, yeah. Oshkosh.

Doc said...

Johnny, the dreams are still infinite, they just change. They go from meeting this really hot girl to paying off the morgage.

Atfer all, "we are tigers in the night!"

Doc