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.
35 years ago - Galaxie 500's last London show
35 years ago today I saw Galaxie 500 for the second, and last time - at the University of London Union on Malet Street - sadly I don’t remember it as well as I wish I did - here are some of the bits I do remember:
- I was there with Ken and Graham… pretty sure Nino was there too (I haven’t seen Graham or Nino for years so can’t confirm) - I suspect there were others I’d talked into coming along.
- I might have bought a T-shirt at the gig (although I might have bought that at the Subterania gig).
- It was pretty crowded, we arrived too late to get too good a spot so I was more than half-way back.
- Someone in front of us shouted for “Submission” between every song. The Galaxie 500 Peel session with “Submission” had been broadcast a just over a week before the gig. They didn’t play it.
Our very last English show was at the University of London Union (ULU), the biggest venue we ever headlined. Kramer slathered us in reverb and delay, and we sounded huge. The next day we set off for Rennes.
Dean Wareham - Black Postcards (Penguin, 2008 - p95)
There was a bootleg VHS of this show doing the rounds for years that eventually got an official release on the Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste 2xDVD - here’s Listen, The Snow is Falling from that show:
David was also at the show and wrote about it for the first Everything’s Swirling fanzine a couple of years back:
The bands third album This Is Our Music arrived in September including studio versions of Fourth of July, Spook, Melt Away and Summertime, all of which were previewed at the Subterania gig. Soon after, I found out they were due to play at ULU, the University of London Union, in Malet Street on Thursday 15th November 1990. This was one of my favourite venues, and I was really looking forward to the concert, but having been attacked and beaten up rather badly at Charing Cross station the previous weekend, I was in quite a delicate frame of mind and body, and not too keen on venturing out, particularly as I was attending this one on my own.
As it turned out, it was an amazing gig, with the emphasis on This Is Our Music, but also Blue Thunder, Here She Comes Now and Ceremony as a finale. Naomi delivered a great version of Listen, the Snow is Falling with prior shout-outs from the audience of ‘Give us a smile, Naomi’, which she quite rightly, refused to comply with. Dean was also in the verbal firing line, as certain wags persistently cried out ‘Deano!’ in-between numbers. Thankfully, I made it home okay afterwards, and I was more than a little sad when I learned in April 1991 that Galaxie 500 had split-up.
David Duffin - Everything's Swirling #1 (2017)
The one other thing I know about this show is that Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt of Everything But The Girl were at the show. Tracey writes about it in her fab memoir Bedsit Disco Queen:
After 'I Don't Want To Talk About It' was a hit, Ben and I went to a gig at ULU (the University of London Union) one night, to see Galaxie 500. A couple of studenty Beavis and Butthead types recognised us and nudged each other.
'Look, I-don't-wanna-talk-about-it, chuckled one, and his mate quipped back, 'I-don't-wanna-hear-about-it, and they both snickered, right there in front of us.
Had we suddenly become people who were not supposed to be at a Galaxie 500 gig? Who didn't fit in there any more? Jesus, were we the enemy now? This hadn't been the point. How on earth had THIS happened? There were moments when I found myself wondering, 'Was this really what we meant when we said we opposed all rock 'n' roll?'
Bedsit Disco Queen - Tracey Thorn (Virago, 2013 - p208)
