Rant #3,168: Bend Me. Shape Me

Whether we remember our dreams or not, we all are dreamers.

We all have dreams each night, but we probably don’t remember much of them.

I don’t, either, but I know that I dream a lot, and lately, with all that has been going on in my life, I have been having an increasing amount of dreams that I do remember.

Most of them are bad dreams, or nightmares, but this one from last night I can’t particularly figure out.

Was it a good dream or a bad dream?

I am leaning toward the former, but I can’t put any context at all to the dream, so honestly, I really don’t know if what I dreamt was good or bad, or even somewhere in between.

Here is the dream as I remember it, and I probably don’t remember it all, so this is a kind of a highlight reel of my dream:

I don’t know what age I was or what stage of my life I was in, but somehow, I became a member of the 1960s pop rock band from Chicago called the American Breed, which was one of the first interracial rock bands of the era.

Just as background, the band charted five singles on the Billboard Hot 100 during 1967 and 1968, the biggest being “Bend Me, Shape Me,” written by Scott English and Larry Weiss, which hit #5 in 1968.

They continued on into the very early 1970s, and then the band broke up, with a couple of the members forming the band Rufus, later adding Chaka Khan to the band, so there is a definite link from “Bend Me, Shape Me” to “Tell Me Something Good,” whether anyone wants to acknowledge it or not.

Anyway, I somehow joined the American Breed, but I did not play an instrument, so I was on background vocals.

I was now a member of this band, and I was walking outside of somewhere, and two people asked me for an autograph, which I gave them—

And that is all I remember about the dream.

I have no idea what the dream means, if anything … I am as perplexed as you are about this.

I have a lot of American Breed records, both LPs and 45s, but I was not consciously thinking about them yesterday, or recently, and honestly, I haven’t heard any of their music that I can recall any time recently on the radio or among the music I listen to that I have digitized.

Here are the lyrics of “Band Me, Shake Me” … maybe they will provide a clue:

“You are all the woman I need,
and baby you know it
You can make this beggar a king,
a clown, or a poet

I'll give you all that I own.
You got me standing in line
Out in the cold,
pay me some mind.

Bend me, shape me
Anyway you want me,
Long as you love me, it's all right
Bend me, shape me
Anyway you want me,
You got the power to turn on the light.

Everybody tells me I'm wrong
to want you so badly,
But there's a force driving me on,
I follow it gladly.

So let them laugh I don't care,
'Cause I got nothing to hide,
All that I want is you by my side

Bend me, shape me
Anyway you want me,
Long as you love me, it's all right
Bend me, shape me
Anyway you want me,
You got the power to turn on the light.”

I can’t find anything in those lyrics to point me in a direction of what the dream meant.

Maybe the title “Band Me, Shape Me,” as it is, defines what that dream meant.

I mean, during the past several months, I have been “bent” and “shaped” every which way due to everything going on in my life and in my family’s life, so maybe that is a clue to what the dream meant.

But to me, that only skims the surface of why I had that dream.

Why did I specifically join the American Breed, and what about that autograph?

Any thoughts?