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
[388] Miscellany
We’re now approaching the final straight of this series. After this post there will be one more post each for Dean & Britta, Damon & Noami, Luna, and Galaxie 500 and then, probably a retrospective/wrap-up. But before we reach that final run in I thought I’d maybe run through a couple of things that technically don’t fit the criteria and yet are still in “my collection” and maybe one or two that aren’t!
I have of course already ignored my own rules on a few occasions… but, here are a few more:
AHFOW 10/090 and AHFOW 11/047 Elefant Records tributes to Galaxie 500
The “tribute album” had a flourishing in the late 80s, notably those produced by Hal Wilner, but a watershed moment might be considered Terry Tolkin’s The Bridge: A Tribute to Neil Young perhaps because of its lean towards more left-field/alternative artists. In the wake of this so many tribute albums came out. It wasn’t until 1997 that Galaxie 500 got a long ovedue tribute, on Spanish label Elefant. The album Snowstorm: A Tribute to Galaxie 500 was preceded, a few months earlier, by a 7” EP called A Tribute to Galaxie 500 that was described as an “advance single”.
The EP had four tracks:
- US band Hula Hoop covered “Sorry”
- US band Holiday Flyer covered “It’s Getting Late” - John Conley of Holiday Flyer later provided his invaluable layout and design skills for the two AHFoW tribute albums On Fire | 30 and This Music is Ours.
- Japanese band Venus Peter covered “Blue Thunder”
- Spanish band Pequeñas Cosas Furiosas covered “Snowstorm” (listed on the sleeve as Snow storm)
The EP was a proper tribute, it mentioned the albums the songs were from and what year they were released in, and credits all three memners of Galaxie 500.
A few months later a double CD arrived, of the four tracks on the “advance single” only two were on the album (Hula Hoop and Holiday Flyer).
The CD is great, inevitably there are hits and near-misses on a 29 track album, but I love more than I just like. Maybe I can’t help but love anyone who wants to cover Galaxie 500. There are of course stand-outs but I feel a little mean picking favourites when there are so many I love. But I will mention a couple that have an AHFoW connection:
The album opens with The BMX Bandits cover of “Tugboat”, with guest vocals by Angel Corpus Christi, who I’ll call a friend even though I’ve never met her in the flesh, or indeed spoken to! She has of course put in a few appearances in this series already.
Polar who cover King of Spain, is long time friend Miguel (a friend I have actually met in the flesh) who contributed to both of my tribute albums as the fabulous The Standby Connection. The drummer of Polar, and The Standby Connection Paco Grande also mastered On Fire | 30
Holiday Flyer, as mentioned above.
Watoo Watoo cover When Will You Come Home. Watoo Watoo appeared on the mailing list compilation Decomposing the songs of Galaxie 500 and Luna and Michaël of Watoo Watoo also appeared on On Fire | 30 with his current project Vacance.
The sleeve notes for the album were written by Andrea Troolin, who has already put in appearances in this series, as the person who steered the Galaxie 500 box-set into existence, and as the proprieter of Grimsey Records who released what might be my favourite Damon & Naomi single.
AHFOW 10/096 - Never Lose That Feeling vol.2
Never Lose That Feeling was a series of three compilation albums released by indie label/promoters Club AC30 from 2005 to 2009, The albums were collections of mostly fairly obscure indie bands covering (generally) slightly less obscure indie/shoegaze classics. Volume two found its way into my collection because it contains a cover of Spectrum’s “How You Satisfy Me” by Britta. It also contains an interesting cover of Galaxie 500’s Blue Thunder by East Anglian band Fiel Garvie (who released three very lovely albums between 1999 and 2006 a couple of which you can find on their Bandcamp).
The album also has a track by Sing-Sing, Emma Anderson’s post-Lush project, covering Lush! They have just kicked off a reissue project.
I’m not entirely sure why I decided to include this compilation in my collection and not…
The Belltower - Exploration Day EP
The Belltower was Britta’s post-Jem pre-Luna band that were active in the early 90s. Exploration Day is the only release I have by them, and I only picked it up a couple of years ago in Beatdown Records in Newcastle. It is however rather lovely. I do have most of the rest of their catalogue downloaded and their one album, Popdropper, is so wonderfully early-90s. The band set up camp in London for a while and I may well have seem them… but there are so many support acts I might have seen!
This clip of them is perfect, it has Britta with lovely dark hair making eggy-bread. This is the sort of thing that YouTube was made for!
Max Q - Sometimes
Luna’s first London show was at The Underworld in Camden (in the basement of The World’s End pub) at the end of February 1992. One of the support bands that night were called Winterset and they gave out free singles. Not their singles but clearly they had acquired a load of 7”s from a charity shop, or one of The Record and Tape Exchanges. I never kept the one I got, to be honest I probably left it at the venue. I have no memory what it was.
A while back I reminisced about the show and Mike got in touch and sent me a photo of the single he still had. It sort of made me feel a little negligent for not having kept mine. I kept in occasional touch with Mike and a couple of years ago he asked for my address and this arrived.
The sticker on the front reads “Taking a lead from Carter and Sonic Boom Winterset thought we’d give away a free seven inch single at tonight’s gig” - this was the one that Mike got. To be honest I’ve nver listened to it, and never hunted down the track. The “vocals by Michael Hutchence” hype sticker is the sort of thing that does the exact opposite of what it should do with me… but… I guess I should…? I guess!?
Well, that was quite appalling to hear, and especially to look at. Sorry.
I did record one Winterset track that night, it had Gina Morris (formerly of Stereolab) guesting on vocals.
