A Head Full of Wishes » Galaxie 500

Video: A Tugboat covers supplemental

Andy — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:47:50 +0000

As a follow up to my previous Tugboat post, here are a few of my fave YouTube/video discoveries…

Obviously start with the original (and best) – Galaxie 500 under the hoop in 1989

Espanto's sweet Spanish take on it…

Lord exister tugboat – steel pan version!

Quite like the Ne'er Do Evers version and the fact that they're picket-fenced in

And finally Dean & Britta (who are taking the Galaxie 500 songs on the road in the Autumn)

Posted via email from AHFoW (slight return)

More Galaxie 500 shows for Dean & Britta

Andy — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:48:28 +0000

Dean & Britta have announced that they will be playing more shows performing the songs of Galaxie 500 – so far the following dates have been confirmed…

~~19th August – The Trocadero, Philadelphia~~
~~20th August – Bowery Ballroom, NYC~~
19th August – Bowery Ballroom, NYC
20th August – The Trocadero, Philadelphia
16th & 17th September - The Earl, Atlanta (second show added)
11th November - The Troubadour, Los Angeles
13th November – The Fillmore, San Francisco
3rd December – Lincoln Hall, Chicago

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Audio: A fleet of Tugboats

Andy — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:45:47 +0000

I'm a boat, floatin's what I do... by Sarah Brooks

Tugboat was Galaxie 500′s first single, recorded in February 1988 at Noise New York by Kramer and released as a 7” single on Aurora Records. When some other artist decides to cover a Galaxie 500 song Tugboat is the one they invariably reach for. Here’s a selection of those cover versions. If anyone has (or knows of) any I haven’t included please get in touch.

Here’s the original (and best)
MP3: Tugboat – Galaxie 500 (box.net)

This post was prompted by Venice is Sinking who have recorded a lovely version of the track for their new album Sand & Lines.
MP3: Tugboat – Venice is Sinking (via Aquarium Drunkard)
Video: Tugboat (live) – Venice is Sinking

And in no particular order…

Another recent cover version is by SF band Citay who have a version on their most recent album Dream Get Together.
MP3: Tugboat – Citay (box.net)

Mercury Rev played the song for a radio show in Dublin.
MP3: Tugboat – Mercury Rev (box.net)

Fab scottish indie stars BMX Bandits recorded the track for a Galaxie 500 tribute album that was released on Spanish label Elefant Records. The recording also features the lovely Angel Corpus Christi on the chorus.
MP3: Tugboat – BMX Bandits featuring Angel Corpus Christi (box.net)

The Jazz Butcher released a version, titled Tugboat Captain on their 1992 Western Family live album
MP3: The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy – Tugboat Captain (box.net)

MP3: Tugboat – Blue Haired Girl (Jamendo)
Video: Tugboat – Blue Haired Girl
WWW: Blue Haired Girl (MySpace)

British Sea Power released a version on a Rough Trade compilation
MP3: Tugboat – British Sea Power (mediafire)
Video: Tugboat (live) – British Sea Power

Portastatic also recorded their version for Elefant’s Galaxie 500 tribute album, Snowstorm
MP3: Tugboat – Portastatic (box.net)

Spanish band The Standby Connection are an off-shoot of Polar
MP3: Tugboat – The Standby Connection (box.net)

UK 90s indie band Submarine released Tugboat on the flip of their Jodie Foster 7″ single
MP3: Tugboat – Submarine (mediafire)

… and not to be confused with LA indie band The Submarines who recorded their version for an iTunes only EP
MP3: Tugboat – The Submarines (mediafire)
WWW: The Submarines website

The Transmissionary Six recorded Tugboat for KEXP (you can still download the whole set from the KEXP site)
MP3: Tugboat – The Transmissionary Six (box.net)

And finally here are Dean & Britta recorded live in Brittany, France last month
MP3: Tugboat – Dean & Britta (box.net)

Dean Wareham plays Galaxie 500 in Atlanta… in September

Andy — Thu, 13 May 2010 17:09:45 +0000

A show billed as "Dean Wareham plays Galaxie 500" is taking place at The Earl in Atlanta, GA on the 17th September. I'd hazard a guess that this is not, as suggested on the promoter's MySpace page "the first time in 20 years" but similar to the Dean & Britta Galaxie 500 shows in New York, Castellon and Paris in the last couple of years. Still a not too common occurrence. Tickets are on sale now at $18 and given current Pitchfork love for Galaxie 500 and the fact that they have just plugged this show it might be worth getting your tickets in advance!

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An oral history of Galaxie 500 on Pitchfork

Andy — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:07:14 +0000

Pitchfork has just put up a lengthy oral history of Galaxie 500 featuring interviews with all the key players in the band's history. I'm only a couple of pages in so eager to see how it turns out! Here's a couple of choice snippets I've come across so far…

Kramer (Galaxie 500 Producer/ "Fourth Member"): To be perfectly honest, when they first came in and played for me, I thought these kids must be lying. There's no way they went to Harvard; they sounded so fucking retarded! One chord for an entire song, played that slowly? Come on!

Naomi Yang: I think one of my fondest memories of being in the band was when we were opening for the Sundays in England and Harriet [Wheeler] lost her voice and cancelled the London show at the last minute. Rough Trade scrambled to get a gig for us in London that night and came up with a pub; I think it was called The Falcon. It was packed and instead of the big stages that we had been playing with the Sundays we were back to being in our usual atmosphere of a tiny sweaty rock club. It was a really relaxed and completely fun gig– it just felt like we were cut loose from music business responsibilities and could just play music! I guess the music going well was always at the center of my best memories.

Posted via email from AHFoW (slight return)

Galaxie 500 in Greenberg

Andy — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 23:12:31 +0000

So… another Noah Baumbach film and another appearance on A Head Full of Wishes – Greenberg features Galaxie 500's Strange on the soundtrack… it's not in this trailer, James Murphy did the music so the trailer has features LCD Soundsystem.

In previous Noah Baumbach films: Dean & Britta provided a song for Margot at The Wedding; Dean & Britta selected (and provided) the music for The Squid and The Whale; Luna provided music for Mr Jealousy; and Dean even put in an acting appearance in Highball.

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Galaxie 500 – the car

Andy — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:53:15 +0000

Many years ago when I put together the (very long neglected) FAQ for the web page I included the question "What is a Galaxie 500?" and for a while actually had trouble finding a picture of the car to include as evidence of where the band pinched their name. Eventually someone sent me a picture, and then I started just linking to the Yahoo! category (remember, from the days when Yahoo! was a directory!) I never, knowingly, saw one in real life until the Goodwood Revival in 2002

Nowadays the car is better represented on the web than the band – most (new) "Galaxie 500" pictures on Flickr and videos on YouTube are of the car. It doesn't bother me, maybe because, despite not being the sort of person who cares about cars (don't own one, don't want to) I quite like looking at these gas-guzzling monstrosities from an era when a car could look individual and no one cared what damage it might do to the environment.

Anyway I do like looking and I mostly like looking at the logos – so i put together a gallery on flickr of some of my favourite pictures of the varied Galaxie 500 logos…

Here's a picture of my son Adam patiently appeasing his boring old man by posing next to a Galaxie 500 in 2003…

-=Andy=-

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Video: Venice is Sinking performing a lovely cover of Galaxie 500′s Tugboat

Andy — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 19:21:44 +0000

Check out this video of the excellent Venice is Sinking performing a lovely cover of Galaxie 500′s Tugboat. If you love it, and I’m sure you will, you should probably go and pre-order their upcoming album Sand and Lines which has a very beautiful cover of the track recorded live in the Georgia Theatre over four days using only two stereo mics (and without an audience). The album’s proceeds go toward restoring the theatre which was devastated by fire shortly after the album was recorded.

Update:You can now head over to Aquarium Drunkard were you can check out the album version of Venice is Sinking’s cover of Tugboat – so go do that now.

Galaxie 500 reissue reviews round up

Andy — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:14:39 +0000

Lots of love around for the Galaxie 500 reissues – here’s what I’ve found so far – please feel free to add more in the comments (or email me).

Mark Richardson on Pitchfork – Today 9.5; On Fire 10.0; This Is Our Music 8.3

It’s not that there isn’t plenty of good music in this vein being made. It’s that one band, 20 years ago, did this sound so well and with so much personality, they set a difficult standard for newcomers to meet.

Alexis Petridis in The Guardian – Today/On Fire/This Is Our Music *****

That said, no one really sounded like Galaxie 500 at the time. If they didn’t appear as bafflingly other as their contemporaries Pixies [...] they still seemed alien compared to their peers.

Suitcase Orchestra

Their music was as fiery as anything that was coming out of Seattle at the time but its power was expressed gently – a breeze can do anything a hurricane can, it just takes a little while longer.

Gemma Alver on Virgin – 8/10

Despite recent efforts to emulate sounds of bands like Galaxie 500, others end up sounding like they did it on purpose.

Dom Gourlay on Contact Music – Today 9/10; On Fire 9/10; This Is Our Music 9/10

‘Decomposing Trees’ is quite possibly one of the most haunting pieces of music ever committed to tape, tenor sax coda and all.

Alex Hegazy on Drowned in Sound – Today 8/10; On Fire 8/10; This Is Our Music 9/10

Contained within this full set of Galaxie 500’s outputtings is a force stronger than you might realise.

A.Tzikas on ALTsounds

deep washes of reverb drenched guitar jangle and basic, almost skeletal arrangements of bass and drums that twinned with Warehams wavering, wailing, woeful and sometimes heart-breaking raw vocal create not so much ‘dreampop’ as an entire dream world

Mike Barnes on BBC Music

With the help of producer Kramer, the songs sound slightly distanced, which has the effect of drawing in the listener to meet them halfway.

Galaxie 500 – Everett True’s Song of The Day

Andy — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 10:00:35 +0000

Unbeknownst to Everett True (or at least it was until I tweeted him and told him so) he probably played a significant part in the very existence of A Head Full of Wishes. When Galaxie 500 split in 1991 I was pretty much the only Galaxie 500 fan I knew and it was only the writing of ET that made me aware that other folk missed them as much as I did. Without that reassurance I’m pretty certain that I might not have bothered to create this web site in 1994 (and the mailing list the following year).

ET has just made Galaxie 500 his Song of the Day on the excellent (and wonderfully inflammatory) blog “Music That I Like”

The bass was pure ‘Ceremony’-era Joy Division, of course, and nothing wrong with that. The drums were as responsive as I’d yet to witness in a rock band. The guitar solos increased the feeling of distance, of loneliness. The lyrics… well, I never could quite get my head around their pleasing mundaneness. I always figured they had to be something more (and even to this day remain unconvinced that they’re not).

Previously on AHFoW – ET reviews Dean Wareham’s Black Postcards.

Galaxie 500 reissues out today

Andy — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:22:15 +0000

The deluxe reissues of Galaxie 500′s three albums are released today by Domino Records. Each CD is paired with a bonus CD: Today comes with the “Uncollected” set that was collected for the 1996 box set; On Fire has the band’s two Peel sessions; This Is Our Music has the live recording from Galaxie 500′s last European show in Copenhagen.

Alexis Petridis in The Guardian…

No one is currently offering Galaxie 500′s melange of trebly guitar, serpentine basslines, fragile vocals and oddly jazz-inflected drumming (This Is Our Music borrowed its title from Ornette Coleman). Certainly, no one currently sounds like singer Dean Wareham. Listening to his high voice floating wildly off-key in a way that simply wouldn’t be allowed these days for fear of upsetting daytime radio play, you’re reminded of a vanished age before Auto-Tune, when alt-rock’s aims and ambitions and audience were noticeably different.

The albums are available in deluxe double CD packs, LPs (no bonus discs) or as digital downloads.

North American edition Galaxie 500 reissues shipping now

Andy — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:47:43 +0000

This was just sent by Damon & Naomi to their mailing list and gives details of the Galaxie 500 reissues and what the differences are between the 20|20|20 (North American) versions and the Domino (rest of the world) version. Sorry for the big cut and paste…

The new CD reissues of Galaxie 500 on 20/20/20 are in stock and shipping now from our website. These are 2-CD editions, pairing each of the three original Galaxie 500 albums with a bonus disc of archival material –

Today, with second bonus disc Uncollected (rarities and outtakes)
On Fire, with second bonus disc Peel Sessions (recorded for BBC Radio 1′s John Peel Show)
This Is Our Music, with second bonus disc Copenhagen (recorded live by Danish National Radio)
Price is $15 each, plus shipping.

To anticipate a question some of you might have: the tracklists and mastering of these CDs are identical to those out later this month from Domino Records in the UK (and to the previous editions of these discs released by Rykodisc), but the packaging differs slightly — the 20/20/20 booklets feature a color reproduction of the complete original LP art for that album, plus liner notes by Byron Coley discussing all six discs in the collection, illustrated with black and white photos of the band. The discs are housed in thinline 2-CD jewel cases.

Domino’s packaging, also in jewel cases, will look the same from the outside, but they elected to omit the back of the original LP covers from the booklet, and instead added images taken from Rykodisc’s previous packaging of the bonus discs. They also added liner notes by UK music writers, which can be found on their website. Other aspects of the booklet design, including the images of the band, differ as well.

Damn looks like I’ll need to buy both sets!

Galaxie 500 reissues reviewed in The Guardian

Andy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:21:12 +0000

There’s a rather lovely five star review of the Galaxie 500 reissues in The Guardian by Alexis Petridis

Heard 20 years on, Today, On Fire and This Is Our Music prove not every aspect of that era’s indie rock as been stripmined in recent years. No one is currently offering Galaxie 500′s melange of trebly guitar, serpentine basslines, fragile vocals and oddly jazz-inflected drumming (This Is Our Music borrowed its title from Ornette Coleman). Certainly, no one currently sounds like singer Dean Wareham. Listening to his high voice floating wildly off-key in a way that simply wouldn’t be allowed these days for fear of upsetting daytime radio play, you’re reminded of a vanished age before Auto-Tune, when alt-rock’s aims and ambitions and audience were noticeably different.

Pre-order Galaxie 500 deluxe reissues and get the music early

Andy — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:53:51 +0000

On 22nd March Domino Records will be re-issuing the three Galaxie 500 studio albums on vinyl (with download voucher) and double CD packages. If you pre-order the albums from Domino by March 7th you will be able to download the tracks on March 8th (two weeks before release).

The CD issues are all released with bonus discs: Today comes with the Uncollected disc that was first made available as part of the Ryko box set and was subsequently released by Rykodisc as a single CD; On Fire comes with the Galaxie 500 Peel Sessions album (previously released in the US on 20|20|20 and This is Our Music comes with the Copenhagen live album previously released by Rykodisc. The vinyl editions don’t include the bonus discs but do include a download voucher for mp3s.

Even if you have already all of this it’s worth heading over to the Domino site to read the three essays written for the albums – in particular the lovely one written for Today by Stewart Lee…

I had a new life in a shared flat way out west, and a walkman primed with a tape of Today soundtracked a year of snowy winters, data input jobs in offices on industrial estates, and cigarettes smoked on night bus journeys back from unpaid open-mike stand-up gigs in far flung corners of the city. I saw Galaxie 500 three times in 1990, every gig a transcendental experience, and I clocked the back of my own head bobbing on live TV footage of a show in Ladbroke Grove.

Video: Dean & Britta playing Galaxie 500

Andy — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:18:23 +0000

I’ve come across a few videos of Dean & Britta’s recent show at Tanned Tin where they played a set of Galaxie 500 covers…

Ceremony:

Snowstorm:

Blue Thunder:

Also spotted this rather lovely picture on flickr by Nathan Wind

UPDATE:
Another video (thanks Nathan!)

Dean Wareham plays Galaxie 500 – Temperature’s Rising (Live at Tanned Tin 2010) from Nathan Wind on Vimeo.