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.
In case you missed it - a selection of posts from 2025 (2)
A few more selections from my Substack posts over the year.
What should a fan’s copy of a book look like?
Substack: 17th June 2025
Around the time that the book was published Dean sent me a copy, inscribed (you can see the dedication below - I’d just blush if I typed it out) and I read it, pretty much in one sitting… and then read it again. As I wrote pieces for AHFoW, I’d invariably refer to the book for fact-checking, or quotes, or back story. The more I flipped around hunting down something I remembered reading but couldn’t remember where in the book it was, the more battered and bothered the book became.
Galaxie 500 - the band and the car
Substack: 14th October 2025
How Galaxie 500 (the band) were named after the car seems a little under-reported. I can’t find any real evidence of them sitting down to discuss what they should call themselves, no debate, no alternative ideas.
[...]
It’s probably not that much of a surprise that the band are named after a car, it was obviously Dean’s suggestion and Dean talks a lot about cars. Key moments in his career often seem to have a vehicular association.
The Velvet Underground’s Femme Fatale as covered by Damon, Naomi, and Dean
Substack: 30th September 2025
The Velvet Underground’s Femme Fatale is one of the only non-Galaxie 500 songs to have been covered by all ex-members of Galaxie 500.
Femme Fatale was written by Lou Reed when Andy Warhol asked him to write a song about Edie Sedgwick. The song was sung by Nico and was on their 1967 LP The Velvet Underground & Nico LP (and on the b-side of a Sunday Morning 7”).
Brian, Ealing, and Understand
Substack: 22nd July 2025
This is a post where I stray a wee bit off-topic - although I do manage to shoehorn in something appropriate at the end!
I joined the BBC Film and Videotape Library in November 1984, working in the film stores. The library was on an industrial estate in Brentford and contained hundreds of thousands of items of film and videotape and the job of the stores staff was to retrieve and replace hundreds of items a day. It was not a great job, but if you played it right it was tolerable and paid pretty well, and we had a great team of people working there.
When Ken arrived at the BBC in 1990 from Dublin, he did so with a past. Once it had become clear that we were going to be friends he handed me a copy of that past - it came as a 7” single by a band called Brian who, at the time was him, and his friend Niall. It also came with a newspaper clipping that declared that the single - A Million Miles - was Hot Press magazine’s fourth best single of 1989 (and to be honest it was better than the three above it).
Obsessed with the weather?
Substack: 11th November 2025
There’s an interview somewhere (that I haven’t tracked down yet) where Justin (Harwood, Luna’s first bassist) accuses Dean Wareham of being “obsessed with the weather” and accuses him of watching The Weather Channel. Dean denies this… but, let’s look at the evidence?
OK… I did track down the interview, it’s the one by Jen that I reprinted some of in Everything’s Swirling #3, although it wasn’t in the bit I used - you can see it in the Wayback Machine:
Dean: The most obvious thing is when you walk outside — what kind of day it is hits you, and that finds its way into your music.
Jon (NSD): Do you like sunny days, grey days...?
Justin: Dean is obsessed with the weather. He watches the Weather Channel every morning.
Dean: It's just lazy songwriting. I don't watch the Weather Channel every morning.
Justin: You do so.
Dean: I listen to it on the radio.
Justin: We used to ring him up and ask, "What sort of day is it going to be tomorrow?" "Well, it's going to be overcast with a... "It's really bizarre. And he'd be right. Every time. "It's going to get cold in the afternoon, but then in the evening it's going to warm up..."