Morseland, 07/14/00 - It was Friday evening and I was feeling ill. None the less, I caught the train up to the "way the hell out of the way" Morseland as I'm currently staying in the student residence in southern Chicago. I managed to fight my way into the overcrowded, overheated, over-black clad venue. After being ID-ed, tagged, and a lot of pushing, I was in! Apart from being inconveniently located to everything, this club was absolutely the hottest, muggiest, crowed, smoke filled place I have ever been into in my life, which, in no way, helped my illness. After taking my place towards the back of the room and removing my now sweat soaked jacket, I planned the best route to get past the tall, leather clad "boy-girl" in front of me.

I managed to get quite close to the front just as Garden of Dreams walked on stage. They started the set with an unusual beginning song – "Winters Eternal Wish". Admittedly this was a song I didn't really like when I first heard it on the album, but one which I now have a strange attraction to – especially the live version. A strong way to start a gig.

The band then kicked in with a new, more straightforward, song that landed somewhere between Radiohead and Electronic. Again, I didn't particularly like this song at first, but as it progressed I found it more interesting and I was rather pleased with the composition at its conclusion.

All the while, the band proceeded with an excellent light show that gave a visual tone to the theme of the music. Small pinhole lights from every direction really made you feel as if you were in heaven. Truly a wonderful offering – combined with the video projection, this was the best I have seen from the likes of a "local" band. If nothing else, the visual presentation alone would have been worth the $10 ticket price.

Then followed "Velvet Waves" and the seemingly crowd pleasing "Glow". More people pushed forward and the crowd began to move in melancholic dance as the darkly outfitted audience sang along with Gene's "I don't want to fall…". This was certainly a careful, well chosen set list of songs, collected and arranged to first blow your mind and then reshape it into the Garden of Dreams way of seeing things.

Guitarist William continued with some in-between song jamming - little did we realize that this was the start of another song. We hear "You see this world through someone else's eyes" in Gene's angelic, ghostly wailing and "In the Shadows of a Ghost" has suddenly surrounded us. A beautifully sad song that builds up and up (or down and down) until the end when we are left with a swirling cloud of noise that leaves the audience feeling so desolate and sad that anyone would wonder how the band could have played this without falling to pieces.

We hear more songs from "EVERYTHING" including the splendid "Bleeding Soul", which is probably my favorite track of all. The added, jangle melody lead flashes us back to early Smiths or U2 as a young female fan pushed forward, leaned on the stage and shouted, "I LOVE YOU" to Gene, who smiles and turned to finish the song.

The light silhouettes Gene, making him truly seems like an idol whom we should worship as the final song, "The Griffin", began - defiantly an unexpected highlight to the evening. A brilliant song, so good, we are left with a feeling of complete and total bliss, which is ironic considering the lyrics of the song.

When Garden of Dreams all too soon left the stage, I knew it was one of the best local gigs I had ever been to. I wish they could have played some more, but there is only a finite amount of time, and there are too many excellent songs. It really was spectacular, but to get back to more mundane things, time to get some water… talk about one hot venue!