Review Summary: A landmark record both for Manos' career and for Greek music, this stands as a superb collection of songs.
The year is 1962. Theater ‘Metropolitan’ puts on a legendary musical named
Street Of Dreams written by Manos Hatzidakis. The plot is as follows; Manos(the narrator in the beginning) guides us through the Street of Dreams which is, in his own words, ‘a street no different from every other street in Athens’. He states that on this street children’s dreams are born and dreams die every day. But by night, when they can’t sleep and dream, they sing…
The concept of the album is quite loose but still tighter than the one in
Gioconda’s Smile. What is more, the compositions are now embellished with singing, often from various singers and entertainers which give the album a certain diversity as far as performances go. The album also alternates between music hall, ballads and instrumental passages with a masterful fluency. The opening
Dreams Of The Neighborhood Youngsters for example, begins as a quiet acoustic guitar-driven ballad with a choir in the background and then transforms into a magnificent instrumental passage with the bouzouki in the forefront, playing the main melody of the song and then going for splendid variations of the same theme, only to return in its original pace and mood as an outro.
And while we are at the instrumentals,
Sprite is certainly one of the best on the record because it has a haunting blend of flute, plaintive acoustic passages and well-timed orchestral ‘strikes’.
Hatzi-Hatzi is also a more cheerful one with excellent flourishes of various ‘weird’ instruments, set to a traditional Greek music rhythm. The track segues into one more upbeat passage named
Oriental Star with a -that’s right- oriental melodic theme.
Dream For Teddy-boys is the ‘rockiest’ song on the record with minimalistic electric guitar drive and a great rhythm section that swings like hell. The saxophone on this is rousing, as well.
There’s plenty of humor in the record, too. Check
The Black Ford or
The Tata Sisters for instance. The former is, sung by Marw Kontou, about a girl losing her virginity in a Black Ford at the age of thirteen (perverted but it is both subtle
and funny, mind you) while the latter is a story about ‘only two, only two’ sisters (they’re not I tell you; Manos cleverly increases the number of the sisters with each verse). They’re both catchy and hilarious, so if they seem as filler at first listen, they’ll definitely grow on you.
But the album delivers on the dramatic side as well. The opening track is referenced above; it is a great sorrowful introduction to the record, but it is
not the only drama-heavy song on the record.
Mother Dear is even more mournful for instance. Lakis Pappas’ gives a riveting, depressing performance only accompanied by a quiet, subtle strumming. Some could say it is similar in tone to
Portrait Of My Mother but it isn’t so. The latter is full of nostalgia and memories; this one is more a lament than anything else. The song is still a
major highlight of the album. And at the end we are treated with a song like
The Train Has Left and the record gets all emotionally heavy again. The refined bouzouki passages in the background along with the flute result in a beautiful arrangement and to top it off, Zoi Futousi gives a heartbroken performance that suits this superb love song perfectly.
There is also a tribute to all the actors out there (
The Actor), sung by Dimitris Horn, who also narrates
The Party that is a melancholic take on a party taking place on the street of dreams.
The Bird continues the oriental mood of the album with a fantastic performance by Marw Kontou.
The main advantage of this record is its diversity. You can find a lot of things here, both genre-oriented and mood-oriented. You have music-hall, ballads, elements of traditional Greek music, rock blending with jazz and instrumentals. And the atmosphere is diverse as well. You get humor, mourning, melancholy, broken-hearts and everything. It is not as consistent as
Gioconda’s Smile mainly because that one is not even 30 minutes and
Street Of Dreams is over 50 minutes, but the actual quality of the songs is top-notch. This explains the sold-out performances of the musical, rivaling the success of Theodarakis’
Beautiful City at the time. Today, this style of theater doesn’t exist; the musicals of that style and time lied more in the music than the theatric value of it and this album is ample proof of that statement.
