May all Your Favorite Bands Stay Together

I want to assume that the song that served as the soundtrack of my dreams has been carefully produced by the unconscious. Last night’s dream was accompanied by the Dawes, “May all Your Favorite Bands Stay Together.” They sing: 

I hope that life without a chaperone is what you thought it’d be
I hope your brother’s El Camino runs forever
I hope the world sees the same person that you always were to me
And may all your favorite bands stay together

Until the breakup of the Beatles I don’t recall that this heartbreaking possibility was ever a concern of mine. Of course, there were occasionally personnel changes within a band, as when John Denver replaced Chad Mitchell or the replacements for Keith Moon of the Who or Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones both of whom died of drug abuse. The folk artists whom I adored—Tom Paxton, Eric Anderson, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, well, etc. usually played solo or with a hired upright bass player. They stayed together. And Peter, Paul and Mary stayed together for life.
     But one’s favorite bands represented more than the music they played: they were a time and place, friends and even lovers, early hopes for some variety of communal living—visions, I suppose, of a rock n’ roll heaven. Favorite bands spoke to the devotee in sympathetic and cryptic languages, gave distance from the insular home and helped preserve our early energies and means of escapes. Our favorite bands encapsulated our lives, and when they broke up we felt abandoned. If our lives were becoming messy, at least the music would remain consistent and hold us—even bind us, together, but when they broke up they left a huge gap in our consciousness.
     Our adult lives are life without a chaperone, but I don’t know if it is all I thought it’d be. I thought it would contain my favorite bands, for one.
     So I suppose the sound of the Dawes recording in my dreams last evening indicates both a regret and a hope. My favorite bands didn’t always stay together, and none of my cars (except my present Prius!!) ran forever. I certainly don’t think the world sees me as I would be seen—who would?? But we can cling to the idea that we had a favorite band and we can hold to the hope that they will reunite, young as they and we once were.