Today is the day, twenty years ago (Sept. 29, 1993), that is printed on the master CD the pressing plant sent as a proof for The Tooners' Rocktasia CD. It was TWENTY YEARS AGO that the first Rocktasia disc was pressed. A lot has happened in the last twenty years and Rocktasia has become a classic of its genre.
Advertised as "a concept album about life in the age of free love" it reflected our (The Tooners) early lives in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles in the early 1970s. The first two tracks were recorded as a potential single (45 RPM, 7 inch vinyl records with one song on each side) and reflected highschool age relationships: I'm Growing Away From You was a song about a young person feeling his independence from his parents, peer pressure and even from his girl friend as he enters the next stage of his life. Backstabber was the flip side of that coin with the feelings of betrayal that come from being left behind and outgrown.
Eve Of New Year was about looking for love in all the wrong places and the pain of knowing that you're too young to commit to true love even if you did find it.
They Died Young was about the very real fear of the military draft at the tail end of the Viet Nam War.
I've Seen Love In My Dream was about a young person's awakening sense of spirituality and the faith that the best is yet to come and segues into a beautiful instrument version of Heat Of The Night which seems to continue the dream to the end of what would have been Side 2 if pressed as a record rather than a CD.
Side two on the vinyl version would have started with Paid To Die which was about working as a body guard for a rock band as a metaphor for entering the working world not really knowing what you're doing, what to expect or what is expected of you.
Let Others Dream was inspired by the bedroom scene in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and is about the first rush of finding true love followed by the late Gary Gladstone's classic, Paradise, about true love really taking hold. This two song suite is the emotional peak of the album.
Together All This Time is the Grand Finale and shows that the true love of the previous songs actually lasted the test of time and Heat Of The Night is a sad epilogue remembering those who didn't live to see the end.
Rocktasia is one of those CDs where listening from beginning to end is important to get the full story arc and the full effect. After twenty years, after all the ideas of how it should have been and what it could have been have been forgotten and all that's left is what actually is, Rocktasia is able to stand on its own as one of the best unknown neo-classic rock albums of the Nineties.
The Tooners' Rocktasia is available on iTunes and the CD is available from CD Baby (CLICK
HERE).
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