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
[313] Dean & Britta - Variations (CD)
And so we arrive at what should be the last (of three) Christamases of this series. Most posts are picked at random but for Christmas I’ve tried to be seasonal for a couple reasons:
- It seems right for AHFoW to get into the Christmas spirit.
- It would seem odd writing about Christmas songs in July!
“But”, I hear you ask, “what has a compilation of Dean & Britta rarities got to do with Christmas?”, well…
Variations was a digital only EP released in January 2008
“But”, I hear you ask, “digital only!?”
Officially it was digital only release but Dean & Britta had some CDs made to sell on their US tour in February and Dean sent me a copy, obviously packed up and posted around Christmas - it arrived on the 10th January.
The EP contains six songs from Back Numbers remixed by a number of different folk - Scott Hardkiss, My Robot Friend, Britta, Sonic Boom, Sand Pebbles, and Richard Formby - and one track, Song of You which was actually a solo Britta number that was released on an Esopus covermount CD in 2005. The version on Variations is a Tony Visconti mix and credited to Dean & Britta.
You can hear the Esopus version on their website and the Tony Visconti mix on YouTube (or wherever you stream).
The sleeve of the EP was a photo of Dean and Britta taken by Michael Lavine and is a riff on the image used for the poster of the 1966 film Blow-Up (carrying on the Antonioni theme from L’avventura) - the original shot features the photographer (played by David Hemmings), with his shirt unbuttoned, straddling his model (player by Veruschka). Dean and Britta’s variation has Britta in the David Hemmings role (but buttoned up) and Dean being the model… but… unbuttoned!
Mubi did a blog post about the posters for Blow-Up a few years back (where I lifted that image from!).
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/009
- Artist: Dean & Britta
- Title: Variations
- Notes: Signed by Dean
- Packaging: Digipack
- Format: CD
Previously in my record collection - Christmas edition: