A Head Full of Wishes is a site for Galaxie 500, Luna, Damon & Naomi, Dean & Britta and Dean Wareham. With news, articles and lists of releases and past and future shows.
My record collection
[265] Dean & Britta - Neon Lights (12")
Neon Lights was recorded during the pandemic in Dean and Britta’s home studio and released on Quarantine Tapes… twice, once Britta’s original mix and then the Matt Fishbeck/Holy Shit remix that was given the original German title.
This 12” single contains both those versions and two additional remixes by Matt Fishbeck - the first called the Baxter Street Bounce which has a snippet of repeated, sampled, dialogue which I haven’t figured out the provenance of, maybe it has none? I assume the “cassette bounces by Philip Haut” credit relates to this remix?
The second new version is called piano remix and is mostly a long, meditative piano piece with Dean’s vocal and some treated and layered Dean and Britta voices, there’s a little bit of guitar about three minutes in, but then drifts back to the gentle piano and treated voices. It is hypnotic and beautiful.
Matt Fishbeck/Holy Shit contributed a cover of It’s Getting Late to the series of Galaxie 500 covers made to tie in with the COVID-affected RSD release of Copenhagen. On the YouTube page for his cover he wrote a lovely piece about how important Galaxie 500 were to him:
I learned how to play guitar by learning and practicing Dean's leads and solos, so the heaving, spectral music of Galaxie 500 is imprinted in me. it's part of the very DNA of my musical sensibilities. I remember the first thing I ever read about the group. It was a review in the NME (Melody Maker?) of one of their first London gigs. There was a line in it that I loved, and remember: "they have only one song, and the fact that they play it over and over again makes it no less beautiful." It was the first music I'd ever heard that seemed like it was made for private listening, that didn't imply an audience. listening to galaxie is something we do on a kind of loop. Record ends + we start it again... then happily again, so much so that we all inevitably feel like we have a personal stake in their songs, they're ours. A clever bargain, mind you, for in the same way their songs have a way of "belonging to us" (and equal to the degree to which this is the case), the songs ultimately also manage to own us. We are seduced, we surrender, we are suspended, we are caught. Willing captives—can you deny it?
Matt Fishbeck - It's Getting Late (YouTube)
I love that he says that “it seemed like it was made for private listening” - which I’ve always believed - in fact I wrote as much a couple of months back in a post about On Fire:
Sometimes I think that On Fire is actually improved by listening on headphones, not for any reasons of quality (as I’ve said before many times, my heavy metal assaulted ears are probably not good enough to pass an opinion on that) but because it is an album to be experienced alone.
My record collection [253] Galaxie 500 - On Fire (MC)
… anyway here’s Holy Shit’s cover of It’s Getting Late:
Matt also links to a video of his high school band covering Tugboat which is frankly adorable!
Dean sent me this in early 2021, the sleeve is signed but also included in the package was an unsigned sleeve… and a hat. I notice that the sleeve has the URL deanandbritta.net which isn’t used any more, and was I think brought into existence when deanandbritta.com got hacked.
When I thanked Dean I told him that I got “a nostalgic buzz for a proper 12” single that played at 45rpm” which Dean then described as “the best sounding format”… and this does sound great.
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 12/018
- Artist: Dean & Britta
- Title: Neon Lights
- Notes: One single, two sleeves
- Format: 12” single
- Buy ‘Neon Lights’ on Bandcamp