Sleeping Tapes by Jeff Bridges: Zany, Sweet, and Strangely Effective
We all saw the Superbowl Ad with Jeff Bridges sitting bedside a happily sleeping couple while making soothing noises with a bowl and stick. It’s strange, hilarious, and really intriguing. I seriously thought that it was a joke, but it indeed is not. Jeff, “the Dude,” Bridges, has made Sleeping Tapes! If you haven’t seen the Superbowl Ad, here it is again, in it’s entirety:
Fellow contributor to CultureSmash, and friend, Dwyane Pate had given a listen to this album long before I did. He said that it was hilarious, and somehow I knew that would be the case. It looked like a mockery, but why in the WORLD would Jeff Bridges make a mockery of sleep tapes. Ah, my friends, that is where the rabbit hole gets deeper.
Now you all are on the same page that I was on before I started this journey. First, I went to the website sleepingwithjeff.com, where you can stream the entire album for free. I found out that you can also download the album for whatever you want to pay for it, and get this, ALL of the proceeds to go NoKidHungry.org. I did a little research into this charity, and fell in love with it. Not only are they working to end child hunger, BUT they also have a programs to teach parents how to feed their kids better and to get more nutritionally sound lunches and breakfasts in schools. Sign me up. I immediately bought the album.
Now, I needed to give it a listen. Jeff Bridges is very… Jeff Bridges in the album, going on and on about crazy stuff. At one point he just chants “Sleep. Dream. Wake Up,” which might be soothing on anyone else, but when you think of Mountain Man-like looking Jeff Bridges, with a white Russian in one hand (because he will ALWAYS be The Dude for me) saying this, you just have to giggle. But then he gets to a sweeter side, there’s one track where he talks to school children, and tells them about how he used to “meet his daughter in their dreams at their special tree.” The little girl that he’s talking to, speaks of how she likes to fly in her dreams, and although it giggles you out of your half-waking-ness, it still lulls you into a happy state.
Now, no good sleep tape review would be complete without the reviewer actually trying to sleep to said tapes. And so, I took a nap to these… I KNOW, my job is so hard. I started to drift off more at the track “Temescal Canyon,” where Jeff describes going through the canyon, just the two of you. Oh, and some guy who’s name may or may not be Neal that you wave to. I was laughing, nay snorting through some of this, but after a time, I felt myself drift off! I couldn’t believe it! The silly Sleeping Tapes by Jeff Bridges put me to sleep! And very good sleep, I might add. I woke up feeling happy and refreshed, and a little stunned.
You can download the album or buy several sweet packages. There are no CDs of this album, which makes the slight hipster in me very happy. You can buy either the Vinyl of the album or actual cassette tapes, and on the website, when you stream it, you see a cassette tape deck to the side with the tape actually rolling. It’s so great. The site was built with SquareSpace, a new website interface. It’s kind of like a wix.com. It seems like a very nice site, and you can see how Jeff made his album, and his website, which is another really hilarious video.
All in all, I would highly recommend at least downloading this album. You can download it for a dollar and ALL 100 cents of that dollar goes to feeding some child better… and you get a good giggle and a good nights sleep. Everyone wins, especially the Dude.