Wide Awake in Dreamland

Track Listings

1. All Fired Up

2. One Love (Song of the Lion)

3. Let's Stay Together

4. Don't Walk Away

5. Too Long a Soldier

6. Cool Zero

7. Cerebral Man

8. Lift 'Em on Up

9. Suffer the Little Children

10. Wide Awake in Dreamland

Tracks:

Fire & Ice
Looking For A Stranger
Medley: I Want Out/We Live For Love/Hell Is For Children
Hit Me With Your Best Shot
Promises In The Dark
Heartbreaker
Love Is A Battlefield
Lipstick Lies
All Fired Up
One Love
Let's Stay Together
Don't Walk Away
Too Long A Soldier
Cool Zero
Cerebal Man
Lift 'Em On Up
Suffer The Little Children
Wide Awake In Dreamland

Album Description

UK twofer feat. 'Live From Earth' & 'Wide Awake In Dreamland', Pat's 1983 & 1988 albums. BGO Records. 2004.

Album Details

Digitally Remastered Edition of Two Original Albums on a Single CD from the Operatically Trained Rock Siren from 1983 and 1988 Respectively. "Live from Earth" Showcases the Raw Power of this Gifted Singer's Voice in a Concert Setting with Some of the Best Songs that Made her Famous Like "Fire and Ice", "we Live for Love", "Hit Me with Your Best Shot", "Heartbreaker" and "Love is a Battlefield". "Wide Awake in Dreamland" Breaks Away from the Intensity of Early Recordings and is More in Tune with her "Tropico" and "Seven the Hard Way" Albums, Where Benatar Stretches her Vocal Diversity on Material of Varying Styles in this Consistently Melodic Set.

Customer Reviews:

BGO.... Better Get Organized...........2005-11-10

This release is a strange one. Where the other BGO 2 fers for Pat have been on single discs, this is a double set (at least mine was...) and Live From Earth suffers from botched track indexes. Case in point: When you put the disc in your player, it only lists 8 tracks. The liner notes show the 10 tracks on the album. What's happened is that tracks 3, 4, and 5 are all crammed together on one track. What gives here guys? Especially when I can still go out and buy the original version with no mixups and it sounds just about the same.
Wide Awake in Dreamland seems to be O.K. and doesn't suffer from any edit version inclusion nightmares and whatnot.
A definite headscratcher if ya ask me...

Time to beef up quality control there guys...

fhc

Average customer rating:

All Fired Up
Putting the exclamation mark on Pat Benatar's career as a female rock vocalist
Au Contraire!
Pat thanks for slapping the INSOMINA out of me!
Pat puts it out

Wide Awake in Dreamland
Pat Benatar
Manufacturer: Capitol
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Pop | Styles | Music

Pop Rock | Pop | Styles | Music

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Album-Oriented Rock (AOR) | Classic Rock | Styles | Music

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Similar Items:

Innamorata
Tropico/Seven the Hard Way
Seven the Hard Way
True Love
Live From Earth

ASIN: B000008DDG
Release Date: 1990-10-25

Tracks:

All Fired Up
One Love (Song of the Lion)
Let's Stay Together
Don't Walk Away
Too Long a Soldier
Cool Zero
Cerebral Man
Lift 'Em on Up
Suffer the Little Children
Wide Awake in Dreamland

Customer Reviews:

All Fired Up.......2007-04-11

Pat took a few years off after Seven The Hard Way and seeing as I was practically a homeless runaway around the summer of 1988, I had no idea she finally had a new album coming out, but one day on WIFC they played the awesome "All Fired Up" by Pat and I knew the world was all good again. The song is probably one of her best of all time, starting with a rousing guitar intro before the drums pump in for a fast paced rock and roll tribute to positivity, "living with my eyes closed/going day to day/ I never had a reason/ I never cared anyway" before the chorus kicks in "Now I believe there comes a time/ when everything just falls in line/ we live and learn from our mistakes/ the deepest cuts are healed by faith" and for some strange reason the song never even nears cheesiness. Smartly enough the first single is also the opener for the Wide Awake In Dreamland album. The whole album plays to two ideals, the happiness you can find and need to find and the drama that leads you to the depths of darkness, of course they're strung together in those subjects by what was once each side of the record. After "All Fired Up", the band slows down for a semi tribute to Bob Marley called "One Love (Song Of The Lion)" a nice little groove drives the song with lyrics about searching for peace, before the rocking "Let's Stay Together" that bangs from beginning to end with Pat delivering with ferocity, then another slow and sweet ditty "Don't Walk Away" which was released as the second single and though it didn't chart in the US, it was #42 in the UK, a very great feat for Miss Pat since her most famous songs didn't even score that high across the pond. The Nick Gilder co-written ballad has Pat reaching the stars with her high octaves and the break down with overdubs of her soprano and her growl is awesome, "Too Long A Soldier" is the following track and my favorite on the album, a 6 minute Spanish styled rock ballad about soldiers and war and its effect which ends with Pat singing a line from "The Star Spangled Banner", it's truly brilliant. The uglier side of the world is reflected on the next batch of songs as the rocking breaks in for "Cool Zero" an urban tale of mischeif and hijinxs, "Cerebral Man" is an unusual song in the Pat canon, a fairly sophisticated little song about lost love that is probably considered filler but really needs to be heard, then the poor Johnny who could or would never amount to anything in "Lift 'Em On Up", followed by the child abuse tale of Melissa in "Suffer The Little Children" which Pat wrote after a real life case involving a kidnapped little girl named Melissa, and the final and my second favorite track, the title track which begins with whishing guitar rolls and breaks into a new wavey rock song supposedly about drug addiction, but with the great vocal performance, obscure yet entertaining lyrics and great instrumentation, it could be about nothing and it would still be a classic Benatar song.

Putting the exclamation mark on Pat Benatar's career as a female rock vocalist.......2005-12-15

I know that "Wide Awake in Dreamland" is the best of the albums from the third part of Pat Benatar's career, but if I cannot make an argument for it being her best album ever I can still say that it is my favorite. Or, to be more specific, that what would have been the "A" side if this was a record is my favorite, because once I play the first five tracks I am just as likely to go back to the beginning or play the fifth track again than to proceed to the final five tracks. But then the fifth track on this album is one of her very best songs.

This 1988 album fulfills the first requirement for a great Pat Benatar album by having a hard rocker for the opening track. On previous albums that has meant songs like "Heartbreaker," "Promises in the Dark," and "Shadows of the Night." On this one it means "All Fired Up," another song designed to open up a Pat Benatar concert. The only notable difference from the others is that the song has some stripped down sections that emphasize Benatar's vocals before she once again gets an opportunity to show that her voice is going to power through the music, no matter how high you crank up the volume. This reflects the fact that "Wide Awake in Dreamland" is not really a hard rock album. "One Love (Song of the Lion)" keeps the instrumentation down, plays up the rhythm, and gives Benatar an opportunity to do some nice harmonies with the double-tracked vocals. Throughout the album playing up the rhythms in different ways (e.g., "Let's Stay Together," "Don't Walk Away") is a consistent choice by producer, lead guitarist and husband Neil Geraldo, who absolutely knows how to showcase his wife's voice, even if he is not one of the writers or the songs (Geraldo has a hand in writing eight of the ten tracks).

The standout track is the haunting "Too Long a Soldier," which again takes the minimalist approach with the instrumentation. Granted, this is an anti-war song, but it is one that indicts war in general ("I've see n so much worth dying for, So little worth killing over") that the song cannot be qualified as a song against a specific war, which is where such songs usually become more potent and more controversial. Besides, it is an anti-war song that clearly honors the soldiers who have to fight. What stands out is the sublime ending where Benatar works in bits of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "The Star Spangled Banner" into the final chorus and the long musical fade out. This was never a hit single, but it is far and away one of Benatar's very best songs.

The rest of the album suffers somewhat in comparison and I think "Too Long a Soldier" should have been the album's final track. One of the reasons I often stop listening to the album at this point is that when "Cool Zero" starts up, the hard driving rock is too jarring a transition for me. But "Cerebral Man" and " "Lift Em on Up" again play up the rhythm section for Benatar to sing against. You really will notice the rhythm sections on most of these songs. "Suffer the Little Children" returns Benatar to familiar group and if you have heard her "Best Shots" album you will remember how she does a bit of the song acoustically before launching into "Hell is For Children" in a memorable live track. The title track ends the album on more of rock note, which just underscores how the best songs here reflect more pop sensibilities than anything else once you get past the opening song.

"All Fired Up" (#19) was the only single released from the album. "Wide Awake in Dreamland" only made it to #28 on the Billboard chart, which made it Benatar's least successful album up to that point in her career. "Precious Time" had made it all the way to the top of the charts. But by the late 1980s Benatar has fallen out of favor with the mainstream rock audience. No wonder it would be three years before she put out another album, "True Love," which was a radical departure involving the lady singing the blues and early R&B. So this album clearly marks the end of one period in Benatar's career.

Au Contraire!.......2005-12-09

I am one of the few who ranks Pat's albums in the order they came out. I purchased her debut album on the day it hit the streets in '79, just by chance being in my old record store haunt when the manager pulled it out of the box and inspired by her sultry cover, tossed on the store stereo. Wow! I plunked down the cash before we got to the second side. After "If You Think You Know..." and the title track, I had In The Heat of the Night in my backpack on my way home to my own ear-blasting stereo. Ain't nuthin' like real vinyl. Each successive album became another gem in my collection. After Seven The Hard Way, I realized I liked them all in the order I bought them! Still do! Heat is numero uno and Tropico was number five. Seven The Hard Way easily fell into sixth place, don't get me wrong, it's a terrific album but it's carried (for me) by Walking in the Underground and Le Bel Age, the rest of the "hits" were become commercial fare for Pat and as with Heart, I was getting complacent in the music. So Maybe, Pat was too?
However, then after a three year wait, I picked up this little gem. I would love this album if only Too Long A Soldier and Don't Walk Away were the only good songs on it and I hated the rest! Those two just knock me out! With Pat, the hard rock stuff reached it's zenith on Precious Time, you cannot beat her first three albums for the edge! But just as Evil Genius forshadowed things to come, I think Wide Awake In Dreamland is the culmination of Pat's explorations. These songs are artistic, they are intellectual (as usual), and they are gripping. Her voice is her voice, don't matter what record you are listening to, The Benetar is the Queen of Female Vocals. But when it comes to serious song writing and musical execution, I have to say that this album ranks up in the top three someplace!
I think the gentleman from New South Wales who reviewed this earlier hit the nail on the head with the best song selection, I can only trump that with They Are All Fantastic and These Are Just The Appetizers! So that makes Suffer The Little Children the after-dinner wine and the title track a wonderful dessert!

Excellent Benatar! Now if only it were re-released!

Pat thanks for slapping the INSOMINA out of me!.......2005-10-07

Ok folks, here we are. In a wasteland of musical indestion, this cd WIDE AWAKE IN DREAMLAND is a gem. It isn't just good, IT IS GREAT. I listened to it for few choice cuts first, but after much listening it grows on you. If your looking for something refreshing, rocking, this gem has alot of substance.
ROCK-ON now ya here :)

Pat puts it out.......2004-11-24

I bought the CD years ago in London and played it mainly for all fired up - which along with love is a battlefield from the hits album seemed like Pats' best rocker bound efforts ( obviously there are better tracks which didn't get the air play ) WE got burgled and wiped out - my CD's been sold for 50 pence each at the local rogues' pub - this album is indeed very rare - and the tracks in general are very good indeed . Don't go to the HMV for this they won't be able to get it .... I advise you snap it up if you see it !!

Love and cuddles in Rock

JOHN

Music Review:

Music Review

Music Review

1. All Fired Up
2. One Love (Song of the Lion)
3. Let's Stay Together
4. Don't Walk Away
5. Too Long a Soldier
6. Cool Zero
7. Cerebral Man
8. Lift 'Em on Up
9. Suffer the Little Children
10. Wide Awake in Dreamland