Shoegaze: Welcome to the club

I've been playing music for a very long time...since I was in middle school. I have a pretty eclectic palate, but I have some staples pretty common for those of my generation. Shoegaze and its variations (specifically Dream Pop or Dream Rock) would never have been something I guessed I'd latch onto. Sure, the 1980s brought this musical idea to the masses with bands like Cocteau Twins, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine, but they were really overshadowed by synth-pop and New Romantic acts (Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Eurythmics), superstar pop (Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince), and in the US, hair metal and arena rock. For me, while I liked almost all of that, groups like Van Halen, Journey, Foreigner, Def Leppard, REO Speedwagon, Night Ranger, Rush, and others were really more my cup of tea. I honestly never gave the shoegaze genre much, if any thought at all. In 2024 I discovered that Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson was involved in a non-Rush project called "Envy of None,"…