DANCE LIKE DOKKEN.
For the first TNUC article of 2022, I wanted something that will both fry your brain and make you get up out of your seat to jump around the room. This isn’t the time for wallowing in post-holiday season blues. Get ready for a thrill ride.
This dance cover of the all-time classic ripper ‘In My Dreams’ by Dokken came across my desk this week and I pretty much launched out of my chair and coughed up Cooler Ranch Dorito dust all over myself. My initial thought was how am I only NOW finding out about this?! With Dokken being one of TNUC’s most sacred bands, I can’t wrap my head around how this got by me.
I should hate it…but I don’t. Being also a fan of early 90s dance music, this works for me. I wouldn’t trade it for the original song even if I was held at gunpoint, but if this came on inside the club and I was wearing my Z Cavariccis, I would be doing cartwheels across the dancefloor.
Kiddie pop group The Party were created by The Disney Channel and were made up of cast members from The All New Mickey Mouse Club. “The Party” was a backronym for “Positive Attitude Reflects Today’s Youth”!
The group had some moderate success and toured as openers for both Vanilla Ice and Taylor Dayne. Their cover of ‘In My Dreams’ ended up being the band’s biggest hit on the charts, peaking at #34 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #16 on R&R (Radio and Records Chart Top 100). The song would also score the group appearances on shows such as Club MTV, a Disney Channel special titled “Go Party!” and another concert tour — this time with the R&B group Hi-Five.
This probably never happened, but it’s fun to imagine Don Dokken showing up all strung out and pissed off in 1990 for a lunch meeting with members of The Mickey Mouse Club. “Do any of your parents know a good blow dealer?”
The Party – In My Dreams [free d/l]
uncletnuc.com 
I imagine this track getting the crowd worked up at Studio K or Cloud 9 at Knott’s Berry Farm. Just thinking about that takes me to a happy place.
Holy hell… this is just incredible. Not gonna, The Wolf has blasted this song 3 times in a row and it’s making me want a ripper! Can’t wait for the next Full Moon when the Night Wolf is on his prowl for loose women and the Devil’s Dandruff, with his mighty Walkman on blasting this raging tune!
Wow. I feel like I’m 6-9 years old again. This stuff is corny as hell ( I would argue that the early 90’s were even cornier than the 80s) but I also absolutely love it. Without your article I wouldn’t have even known it was a cover of a heavy metal song. Nowadays this kinda stuff only exists in our dreams (sadly). This music makes me think back to those summers in the early 90’s when my parents would rent a beach house a few miles from home. Instead of only 1 day/weekend at Disneyworld each year, we had an entire summer to hang out with family, friends, make new friends, and get baked on the beach to learn how to swim and bogey-board when we weren’t barbecuing it up or wasting endless quarters at the nearby arcade while stuffing our faces with endless burgers, fries, pizza, soda and chicken nuggets at the grill they had right there IN the arcade (with the bar for the grown-ups right next door). Don’t worry, we burned it all off on our bikes on the bike path that went on for miles, on top of all the swimming.
Even now, 30 years later, if I were rich I would buy a place there. It’s called “Breezy Point” in Queens, NYC.
I hate to tell you but all my life I thought this was an original song for The Party until only recently when I heard the original (which I now also love). One of my best memories is being 10 or 11 and my babysitter playing this loud on the radio on my parents’ stereo.
I like their song “I Found Love”. https://youtu.be/_o8zywZ_wjg