- Dion McGregor
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Dion McGregor (1922–1994) was a New York City-born songwriter, whose main claim to fame is that he was a voluble dreamer, or somniloquist.
As a songwriter, McGregor's biggest success came when his song "Where Is The Wonder" (cowritten with roommate Michael Barr) was recorded by Barbra Streisand on her hit album My Name Is Barbra (1965). He was unable to find much success afterwards, however, and by the 1980s had given up on songwriting. Critic Joslyn Layne writes that "Despite his lack of success as a song lyricist, McGregor's narration of his vivid dreamlife provided a more unique artistic contribution than any usually recorded."[1]
McGregor talked in his sleep. Not in quiet, barely comprehensible mumbles: while he slept, McGregor would essentially narrate his dreams at conversational volume. As a narrator of his (often terrifying) dreams, Dion adopted various personas but frequently established a fey, argumentative, insolent approach to the subject at hand – be it a hot air balloon trip to the moon with a group of multi-ethnic children, a frantic journey around New York, or a tattooing job on a woman's tongue.
An LP of his dream diatribes – The Dream World Of Dion McGregor (He Talks In His Sleep) – was even released to minor acclaim by Decca Records in 1964. A book of the same name, containing the transcripts of a wider selection of McGregor's dreams, and with illustrations by Edward Gorey, was also published in 1964.
McGregor died in 1994, but researcher Phil Milstein gathered recordings of McGregor's dream-speech considered too risque to be released in the 1960s and assembled them for the 1999 album, Dion McGregor Dreams Again, released on Tzadik Records. A third album, The Further Somniloquies of Dion McGregor: More Outrageous Recordings of the World's Most Renowned Sleeptalker was assembled by Toronto poet Steve Venright and released in August 2004 on the Torpor Vigil Industries label. A previously unreleased recording, "Naughty Pussy", was released in April 2011 as part of Awkwardcore Compilation #1 on the Awkwardcore Records label.[2]
Book
- The Dream World Of Dion McGregor (1964, Bernard Geis Associates; distributed by Random House)
References
External links
- A Dion McGregor tribute page on MySpace Not official or necessarily reputable, but offers additional biographical details and several audio clips of McGregor's dreams.
Categories:- 1922 births
- 1994 deaths
- Songwriters from New York
- Musicians from New York City
- American spoken word artists
- Tzadik Records artists
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