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
[326] Damon & Naomi - 1001 Nights
1001 Nights was a DVD released by Damon & Naomi in 2009 and was a collection of films, the first run was packaged with the first vinyl release of the fake live album previously only released on CD in 2002. My copy is, of course, the version with the LP.
The films on the DVD are
- Song to the Siren - Naomi’s video diary of their 2001 European tour previously released in 2002 on the Song to the Siren / Live in San Sebastian release.
- Japanese Scrapbook - Naomi’s video diary of Damon & Naomi in Japan with Ghost in 2002.
Factory 25 put Japanese Scrapbook on Vimeo to celebrate the re-issue of With Ghost in 2012… and it’s still there:
- Three films by Cedrick Eymenier - films for Within These Walls, Defibrillation, and Cruel Queen.
- Live at O-Nest - which are extracts from the two previously released DVDs of live shows in 2005 and 2008
The LP is white vinyl… now, I must admit that I do still feel a little… cheated by the deception behind Song to the Siren and tend not to listen to it that often because of that - not that it’s not lovely it’s just that it’s not what it was meant to be.
In case you don’t know the story behind the album, while on their 2001 tour of Spain, a dispute with the promoter led to the tour being cancelled - here’s how D&N described it in the liner notes to The Sub Pop Years in 2009:
Naomi chronicled the trio's first adventures in Europe with a video tour diary. That trip finished in Spain, on a somewhat disastrous note: after consulting with our record label there, Elefant, we cancelled a gig in San Sebastian in favor of a promotional appearance on television. Angered by the loss of income from San Sebastian - or maybe it was a loss of face - the tour promoter cancelled all our subsequent shows in Spain, and withheld the money earned from those we'd already played.
We had a week remaining until our flights home. Elefant gamely found us venues for a few impromptu shows, and places to stay. The Spanish misadventure had thrown the entire tour into debt, but we left Europe feeling that our playing together had reached a special point.
Back in Cambridge, Kurihara and we decided to document the arrangements we had developed on the road, before he returned to Tokyo. So we set up in our living room, just as we had every night on that long tour, and played another show. "Live in San Sebastian," we labeled the tape, as a black joke.
Damon & Naomi - The Sub Pop Years sleeve notes (2009)
I guess that this is the TV show that caused all the problems:
Of course… what is a live album? Most live albums are often only nominally live and very rarely a true record of an actual show, but they are normally based on a real live show, this somehow felt worse than doing some studio overdubs, or splicing a couple of performances together. I do understand the frustration that led to Damon & Naomi and Kurihara (and Sub Pop) doing what they did, but calling it “Live in San Sebastian” rather than “Live in our living room in Cambridge, MA” is only deceiving the people (the fans) buying the album.
I do of course appreciate that they have admitted the deception (albeit seven years late).
The release was packaged as an LP in a gatefold sleeve with the DVD living in the middle of an LP sized, folded piece of card that also contained an interview with Damon and Naomi by Haden Guest (Director of the Harvard Film Archive). It also had what was described as a “threedimensional 1001 Nights calendar” which was just a thin glossy sheet with a cut-out template to build a cube, which has 1001 tiny and virtually unreadable numbers - I can’t imagine the cube would have been very sturdy and I have no idea what use the “calendar” would be… so I, like I suspect everyone who bought a copy, just left it in the sleeve.
Wow, that all sounds like me being very negative about this release but I don’t mean to be. The LP is good (despite my reservations) and the video collection is a lovely thing!
- Catalogue Number: AHFoW 12/005
- Artist: Damon & Naomi
- Title: 1001 Nights
- Packaging: Gatefold sleeve
- Format: LP/DVD
- Bought direct from Factory25
- Buy ‘Song to the Siren (Live in San Sebastian)’ on Bandcamp