230. Song No. 3,480: “Flying Horses,” Dispatch
Silent Steeples, 1996

Given how close Silent Steeples comes to sounding like my favorite Guster album and how much I absolutely love this song that sounds like a college friend’s dorm from where the kind of drinks that could stun a herd of bison flowed, I am still a little surprised neither inspired a completist’s frenzy to acquire every Dispatch studio album, live recording, import, rarity and bootleg I could get my hands on. “Flying Horses” in particular is truly one of those songs that just makes my heart happy and the rest of me want to sing along every time I heard it—the exact kind of magic I typically, desperately and secretly hope that every other song in musical outfit’s catalogue will recapture in replication.

Honestly, though, I think that’s a consequence of simply liking jam bands better if not in theory then in measured doses, rather than enough to make a steady aural meal of them. I love getting lost in a journey of an indulgent instrumental interlude, but I also tend to lose focus on the music without some lyrics grounding my attention. And I need some variety, too: Song after song of lengthy riffs and freewheeling improvisations makes for great background noise and do tell an incredible story of a song’s evolution when you’re treated to a few different live recordings of the same track, but those are far from the only moods I come to music with.

But I do absolutely love this song that College Me thankfully had some fleetingly sober clarity of mind to not only ask what my friend’s roommate was listening to but also remember the band and song names, thus catapulting “Flying Horses” to years of gluttonously repeated plays casting it in such warm recall that finding it again through this project was one of those time when a song felt like a happy return and a homecoming bearhug all wrapped up in one big thump of my heart welcoming back this long-forgotten song it instantly recognized as a fond favorite it’ll never even come close to over-playing.