Welcome back to another Deep Dive. Today we are
taking a close look at a late 1960s Australian
band called New Dream. Though they originally
started out under the name The Dream. Right,
exactly. Now, if you were sitting there wondering
why we're devoting an entire Deep Dive to a,
you know, relatively obscure pop group from over
half a century ago. That's a fair question. It
is. But it's because their specific trajectory
offers a surprisingly perfect shortcut to understanding
the brutal structural mechanics of the music
industry. Yeah, absolutely. We have a wonderfully
detailed Wikipedia article serving as our source
material today. It covers their formation, their
discography, and their chart performance. But
our mission here is to read between those lines.
And look at the bigger picture. Exactly. We're
using this single case study to extract some
hard truths about how artists pivot to chase
trends, the highly engineered economy of commercial
pop, and exactly what happens when a musical
genre simply ages out. It really is a flawless
microcosm of the pop music machine. If you picture
the backdrop for this deep dive, I want you to
imagine a vintage, late 1960s Melbourne discotheque.
Oh, I can picture it. Right. You have fading,
psychedelic concert posters peeling off the brick
walls, dim, smoky lighting, and a cramped stage
where local musicians are just sweating through
their sets. Yeah. This is that exact historical
moment when the raw, organic energy of a local
live club scene collides head -on with the highly
calculated, heavily produced, and incredibly
lucrative world of commercial pop music. Which
is such a massive shift. It is. It is the perfect
setting for understanding the tension between
artistic authenticity and mainstream viability.
That tension is exactly what makes this story
so compelling to me. is not just a timeline of
record releases, it's a look at the ambition
and the compromises of young musicians navigating
a rapidly corporatizing industry. Yeah. Okay,
let's unpack this. Let's trace this back to the
origin point in late 1967 in Melbourne, Australia.
The band doesn't just spontaneously form. They
are actually the result of a merger between two
rival local pop bands. Which is always a recipe
for drama. Oh, absolutely. You have a group called
The Changing Times joining forces with members
of a group called The Final Four. From The Changing
Times, we get Alex Cadell, who also went by Alex
Opitz on bass and lead vocals, and Jenny Johnston
on the organ. Right. And the source material
provides a detail here that immediately complicates
the dynamic. Cadell and Johnson were notably
sometime domestic partners. Just huge. Yeah.
And they take that dynamic and bring in the guys
from the Final Four. Mark Archer on drums, Jack
McGrath and Peter Nicole on guitars, and Terry
Sturzker on bass. They merge it all together
and call themselves The Dream. Merging two rival
local bands is hard enough on its own, but doing
it with your romantic partner is basically setting
up a psychological pressure cooker. I can only
imagine. It is almost like a local Melbourne
discotheque version of Fleetwood Mac. You have
a classic supergroup scenario on a micro level.
You are taking the established egos and big personalities
from two competing bands and trying to mash them
into one cohesive unit. That alone guarantees
friction. But then you layer in the fact that
Cadell and Johnston are domestic partners trying
to navigate this newly merged professional environment.
And they're out there playing every night. Exactly.
They are cutting their teeth on the local club
circuit. The sheer intensity of trying to stand
out in a crowded local scene, integrating different
playing styles and doing it all while managing
a romantic relationship within the band. It is
a massive crucible for any group of musicians.
It has to be the ultimate test of both the relationship
and. the music. But whatever they were doing
in those sweaty Melbourne clubs, it was clearly
working. It definitely was. Because early on,
they had a very distinct, cohesive sound that
was heavily influenced by R &B and soul. By 1968,
they signed with Festival Records and put out
a single. It is a cover of Al Wilson's Who Could
Be Loving You. A classic. And on the B -side,
they laid out a rendition of Cannonball Adderley's
1966 hit Mercy, Mercy, Mercy. That's a serious
track to tackle. It is. And these tracks were
even re -released on a split extended play, sharing
the record with another band on the festival
label called Campact. So they are really establishing
themselves as a gritty, credible R &B club band,
leaning hard into the Hammond organ and driving
bass lines. Yeah. And that credibility leads
to a massive break. Which is the ultimate validation
for a live band. Exactly. In January 1968, The
dream lands a support slot for two absolute titans
visiting from the United Kingdom, the Who and
the Small Faces. Wow! Right? Picture the sheer
thrill of that moment. You are a local band grinding
it out in front of maybe 100 people a night,
and suddenly you are walking out onto a stage
to open for the Who. That is life -changing.
It must have felt like absolute confirmation
that their R &B sound was the ticket to global
superstardom. Opening for international acts
of that specific caliber proved something very
important about The Dream at that moment. They
had serious live chops. You do not get put on
a bill with The Who unless you have the stage
presence and the raw musical energy to hold a
massive audience's attention. The small faces
and The Who were known for blistering, aggressive
live performances. So The Dream was clearly operating
at a very high level of musicianship. But as
the history of the music industry constantly
reminds us, having a phenomenal live show and
a critically respected R &B sound does not always
translate to long -term commercial dominance.
Yeah, that is the hard truth. The entire landscape
of pop music was shifting underneath their feet.
And here's where it gets really interesting.
Because in March of 1969, they make a massive
fundamental pivot. They changed their name from
The Dream to New Dream. Just adding the new.
Yeah, but it's not just a fresh coat of paint.
They completely abandoned their R &B and soul
roots. Completely. They throw out the Cannonball
Adderley covers and fully embrace bubblegum pop.
Wait, so they just dropped the gritty R &B overnight?
You would think the local fans who saw them play
those sweaty club gigs would completely reject
that kind of corporate pivot. Why make such a
drastic change? What's fascinating here is that
it seems baffling from a purely artistic standpoint.
But if you look at the economics of the late
1960s music industry, it makes perfect sense.
OK, break that down for us. The industry does
not run on stage presence. It runs on record
sales. Bubblegum pop was emerging as this incredibly
lucrative, highly targeted genre designed specifically
for a demographic with massive purchasing power.
Teenagers and preteens is upbeat. It is aggressively
cheerful. And most importantly, it is heavily
sanitized. By changing their name to New Dream
and shifting their entire repertoire, they are
making a calculated business decision. They're
following the money. They are essentially signaling
to Festal Records and the broader industry that
they are adaptable and they want a piece of that
mainstream hit -making market share. And the
label immediately puts them to work. Following
this massive identity shift, Festival Records
starts rapidly issuing singles. We're talking
yours until tomorrow in April 1969, and then
right on its heels, Catching Up on Fun in July
1969. Back to back. Yeah. And the titles alone,
I mean, Catching Up on Fun, tell you everything
you need to know about the new vibe. It is worlds
away from the soul of Mercy, Mercy, Mercy. The
strategy behind releasing yours until tomorrow
and catching up on fun just three months apart
is textbook pop music marketing. How so? The
economy of bubblegum pop relies on constant saturation.
You do not give the teenage audience time to
forget about you. You keep hitting them with
these short, sweet, easily digestible tracks
to capture and hold their attention. Right. Keep
feet of the machine. It is a manufactured approach
to fame. They are moving away from the organic,
improvisational feel of the live R &B discotheque
and stepping into the highly engineered, tightly
controlled world of the three -minute hit single.
Moving into 1970 and 1971, the band reaches peak
saturation. And honestly, the calculation actually
pays off. Now there are some lineup changes along
the way to tighten up the sound. They bring in
John Dubois on bass guitar and Peter Reed on
drums, joining Johnston, Cadell, and McGrath.
A fresh rhythm section. Yeah. And with this newly
finalized lineup, they release a single in March
1970 called The Groupie. Now, here is a fascinating
detail about the mechanics of this era. The song
was actually written by a United States songwriter
named James E. Buzz Kaysen, and it was originally
performed by a U .S. group called the Four Fuller
Brothers. Right. But New Dream's localized version
takes off in Australia, hitting the top 30 on
the Go Set National Top 40. We need to pause
and unpack the significance of Go Set here because
it is crucial to understanding how bubblegum
pop operates. Oh, definitely. Go Set was the
definitive Australian pop music newspaper at
the time. Before streaming data or digital algorithms,
print media was the primary metric for measuring
public engagement. Yeah. Hitting their national
top 40 chart based on sales is a big deal. But
what is even more critical for a bubblegum pop
band are the Go Set pop polls. These were reader
determined polls where the fans mailed in their
votes. Right. Reader polls measure a very different
kind of success than live club attendance. Precisely.
A gritty R &B band survives on how many people
buy tickets to the gig on a Friday night. A bubblegum
pop band survives on fanaticism. That's a great
way to put it. They survive on teenagers cutting
out photos from a magazine and mailing in ballots.
The Go Set Pop polls were a direct quantifiable
line to how intensely the demographic was responding
to their newly manufactured image. And the demographic
was absolutely eating it up. They were. In that
1970 Go Set Pop poll. New Dream was voted the
number three group in the entire country. Wow.
Cadel hit number four for male vocalists, Dubois
hit number six for guitarists, and Reed hit number
six for drummers. Yeah. They went from being
a respected local opener to dominating the national
cultural conversation. Which demonstrates the
ruthless efficiency of their pivot. They essentially
looked at the market, identified exactly what
the industry was demanding, engineered their
sound and image to match it perfectly, and were
rewarded with intense brand loyalty and top tier
chart positions. From a purely commercial standpoint,
it was a masterstroke of adaptation. Was it a
masterstroke, though? I mean, sure, they got
the chart success and the magazine covers, but
it feels like a double edged sword. They achieved
this massive peak, but it completely destroyed
their longevity. That is the inherent trade -off.
You trade long -term artistic credibility for
immediate explosive commercial impact. And to
their credit, they rode that explosion to its
absolute limit. Yeah, they really did. Yeah.
That limit hits in May 1971 when they release
their highest charting hit ever, a song called
Soft Delights, which peats at number 21. That's
huge. And again, we see the mechanics of the
global pop machine at work. The song wasn't an
organic creation born out of a jam session. It
was written by Mike Chabon, an Australian -born,
UK -based writer. Yes. It was initially performed
by his early UK group, Tangerine Peel. New Dream
acquires the track. filters it through their
polished bubblegum pop machine, and it becomes
their defining hit. This is the era of the global
session writer. Writers like Mike Chapman in
the U .K. or Buzz Kasin in the U .S. were churning
out these highly calibrated pop songs and labels
would use local bands like New Dream as interchangeable
regional vehicles to localize these hits for
different markets. It's so systematic. It really
is. When you look at the go set pop poll results
for 1971, you see the true peak of this highly
formulaic ecosystem. Jenny Johnston reaches number
five in the female category and the single Soft
Delights hits number seven. They found the ultimate
formula. take an internationally written upbeat
pop song give it a polished local face and maximize
the fan engagement so they have successfully
navigated a complex band merger completely discarded
their original genre rebranded their entire identity
localized international tracks and climbed to
the top of the national print bowls an incredible
run so what does this all mean because just as
quickly as they manufactured the success the
entire thing unravels we hit 1972 and the bubble
gum bubble just bursts despite releasing a few
more charting singles They had a track called
Candy Love in September 71, and another called
Turn 21 in March 72. The group suddenly splinters.
By late 1972, they disband. That fast? Cadell
decides to try solo career, and the drummer,
Peter Reed, goes off to join a completely different
group called Gary Young's Hot Dog. The hit -making
machine just shuts down overnight. This highlights
the immense danger of tying your entire professional
identity to a highly specific transient musical
trend. Bubblegum pop, by its very structural
definition, is ephemeral. It is designed to be
consumed rapidly and then discarded the moment
the next flavor is introduced. The problem with
targeting a preteen and teenage demographic is
that your audience inevitably grows up. Their
tastes mature. They move on. And suddenly that
aggressively upbeat, sugary sound that made you
famous feels incredibly dated. The culture moves
on. And because you abandon your original R &B
credibility, you have no foundation to fall back
on. Yeah, that's the tragedy of it. But if we
connect this to the bigger picture. What makes
the decline of New Dream so uniquely fascinating
is not just that they broke up. It is the highly
unusual timing of their biggest physical release.
Oh, this is where the timeline gets completely
surreal. In 1973, they released their debut album.
It is their sole eponymous studio album, simply
titled New Dream, and it is produced by a well
-known figure named Brian Catt. Right. But if
you are tracking the dates, you realize the glaring
issue here. They broke up in late 1972. They
release their definitive, self -titled, full
-length studio album after the band has already
completely ceased to exist. It is such a strange,
almost ghostly artifact in pop music history.
Usually a debut album is a living, breathing
document. Exactly. It is something a band releases
to define their current era, something they tour
behind, something they use to build momentum.
But here, the label is dropping a full -length
collection of music into the market for a group
that has already splintered, packed up their
gear, and moved on to other projects. this posthumous
album actually sounded like, I want to read a
vibrant, incredibly specific quote from Australian
musicologist Ian McFarlane. I love this quote.
It's so good. He describes the 1973 album as,
quote, a gloriously camp mix of the band's bubblegum
hits, easy listening pop fluff replete with sweet
harmonies and schmaltz strings, end quote. That
description is so perfectly evocative. When he
uses a term like schmaltz strings, you immediately
know exactly what he means. If I break that down
for the listener, what does that actually mean
musically, especially compared to where they
started? When you hear schmaltz strings, imagine
those overly dramatic, syrupy, heavily synthesized
orchestral backgrounds you would hear in a melodramatic
1970s soap opera or an elevator. Oh yeah, I can
hear it now. It is heavily arranged, incredibly
safe, and designed to offend absolutely no one.
is the exact polar opposite of the raw, driving
Hammond organ and the gritty bass playing they
were utilizing when they opened for The Who just
five years earlier. That's day and night. McFarlane
calling it easy listening pop fluff and a gloriously
camp mix highlights exactly what the album was.
It was a time capsule of a trend that had already
peaked and died. It was campy because it was
so aggressively cheerful at a time when the broader
cultural appetite of the mid 1970s was already
shifting toward heavier rock, funk and more complex,
cynical sounds. It's almost like a monument to
a sound that no longer existed. And the story
has one final gasp, a tiny postscript that proves
you really cannot go backward. Right. In 1974,
Johnston and Goodell actually attempt a brief
reunion. They get the name back together and
release two final singles for Astor Records.
Yeah. One is called I Can't Stop Dancing, and
the other is just wonderfully absurdly titled
Schlick Schlack Boom Boom. Schlick Schlack Boom
Boom is perhaps the most desperate attempt at
a bubblegum pop title I have ever heard. Exactly.
But the magic was completely gone. The audience
had moved on. Ian McFarlane had a rather brutal
but entirely accurate assessment of this 1974
reunion attempt. He simply noted that by that
stage, the band's bubblegum pop sound had become
entirely outmoded. obsolescence in the music
industry is rarely a slow graceful fade it is
usually a sudden jarring realization that your
formula simply does not compute with the culture
anymore yeah the 1974 singles are a fascinating
study in trying to recapture lightning in a bottle
they tried to revive the exact formula that brought
them go set glory in 1970 but you cannot force
the culture to regress the teenagers who voted
for them three years prior were listening to
different bands now they grew up exactly the
disco sex they to play had evolved. The sound
was just outmoded. Bringing this entire journey
into focus for you, it is just an incredibly
compressed, wild ride that reveals so much about
how the industry operates. We started in the
sweaty, gritty local discotheques of 1967 Melbourne
with domestic partners and rival bands merging
to form an R &B outfit credible enough to open
for The Who. A great start. Then we watched them
make a highly calculated overnight pivot. tossing
out their credibility to engineer themselves
into a polished, ballgum pop hit machine that
dominated the national reader polls and localized
global hits. And finally, we saw them crash into
sudden obsolescence, releasing their only studio
album after they didn't even exist anymore, and
failing to recapture the spark in a landscape
that had completely left them behind. This deep
dive serves as a perfect structural map of the
pop machine. It shows how brutally fast cultural
trends move, and it highlights the incredibly
precarious tightrope that artists are forced
to walk. That tightrope is so dangerous. It is.
On one hand, you have to adapt to the market
to survive. You have to be willing to change
your sound to achieve that massive mainstream
commercial success, just like New Dream did in
1969. But the counterweight to that adaptation
is that by tying yourself so closely and so cynically
to a specific manufactured trend, you risk losing.
your relevance the absolute second that market
inevitably shifts it is a brilliant case study
and before we wrap up there is a final lingering
thought to mull over specifically regarding that
strange 1973 record the eponymous new dream album
think about the psychology of that release when
a band's definitive artistic statement Their
only full length studio album is released posthumously
after the group has already splintered and gone
their separate ways, whose dream is actually
being realized. That's the question. Is that
album a monument lovingly built to give the fans
a final sense of closure? Is it a cynical, calculated
cash grab by the record label trying to squeeze
the last few drops of revenue out of a dead brand
before the rights expire? Or is it simply the
ghostly echo of a bubble that has already popped,
floating out into a world that has already moved
on? Something to think about. It is definitely
something to think about the next time you see
a highly polished pop album hit the charts. Thanks
for joining us on this deep dive, and we'll see
you next time.