A Head Full of Wishes

A couple of Luna shows from the late 90s are currently being seeded on bittorrent site Dimeadozen.

The first is a nice audience recording from a show in Austin, TX in April 1998, and well worth grabbing - here’s an mp3 sample of them playing Firnedly Advice.

Dimeadozen: Luna - 1998-04-04 - Austin TX registration required

The second is a beautiful recording of them while touring The Days of Our Nights in Burlington, VT in December 1999 - it’s a treat to hear the songs from that album that so rarely get an outing these days! Here’s an mp3 sample of them playing Hello Little One. This was one of Justin’s last shows with the band (it may even have been his very last). I suspect that’s him on the trumpet here.

Dimeadozen: LUNA - Burlington, VT 1999-12-13 (SBD Master - Stellar!) registration required

Another video for a track from Dean’s I Have Nothing to Say to The Mayor of L.A. has just been posted. The video for Robin and Richard was shot during rehearsal and recording by Roger Brogan, and edited by Britta.

A new video for Midnight from Damon & Naomi’s recent album A Sky Record has just been shared. The beautiful watercoloured/animated/illustrated video was made my Elisa Ambrogio (of Magik Markers).

So this bull is not Zeus, but they are not a regular bull either; they are special. This bull has a robe. The bull meets a reflective spinning sphere, and suddenly is not alone.

There are many subtle layers to this song, it has a wonderful momentum and purity of purpose, and it has so much water lyrically: rain, beaches — the first words are being washed by floods (of feeling). It made me think about a type of love that can feel secret but is all-consuming, and I thought of the type of love a vocation becomes.

I started with movement of watercolors that do not immediately saturate but run, and then soak the page, creating patterns like veins and waves hitting the shore, staining the table, turning the paper delicate and easy to tear. Leonora Carrington conferences of anthropomorphic creatures, a Laurie Anderson instructional diagram, Gary Larson’s The Far Side and old Tennessee Tuxedo cartoons all informed the vibe.

The sphere leads the bull to the places they can go together. The forbidden quality of midnight, nighttime, and the newly forbidden quality of the crowd, the absent cacophony of voices. Together they find a return to the cacophony, the chaotic joy of others. That is fraught in its own way, things have been forgotten and must be relearned. To feel alien is alien. Or is the bull still alone in a bare bulb room, projecting into rooms filled with hands and mouths, being visited not by the bluebird of happiness but the chicken of depression? There’s a place we can go, this song promises, and I chose to believe it.

– Elisa Ambrogio

It’s been one week since the release of Dean Wareham’s fantastic I Have Nothing to Say to The Mayor of L.A. so here’s a quick round-up…

Reviews

• UNCUT magazine gave the LP 9/10 and its album of the month accolade
• Mojo magazine gave the LP 4/5

For listening

• Dean chatted at length about the album and plenty more for the Enjoy Your Life podcast

For reading

• Concrete Islands - Ask A Few Questions: Dean Wareham Interview

Upcoming On Saturday (23rd October) Dean will be presenting a listening party via Zoom:

join us while we listen to Dean Wareham’s new album I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY TO THE MAYOR OF LA with a video premiere and a short Q & A with Dean and others who worked on the record, this will happen Saturday via Zoom, starting at 11 a.m PST. It’s limited to the first 100 who sign in that morning

… limited to the first 100 who sign in so… bookmark that link!

11:00 PST is…

• 13:00 EDT
• 19:00 BST
• 20:00 CET

Here are a few bits and pieces that have appeared since Damon & Naomi’s gorgeous A Sky Record was released a couple of months back:

Reviews

• Tyler Wilcox reviews the album for Aquarium Drunkard

  This is one of Damon & Naomi’s most purely gorgeous sounding records — and considering the glories of what’s come before, that’s a real accomplishment.

• Louder Than War gives the album 4/5

  There isn’t a dramatic re-invention here, picking up at a similar end point. But there’s renewed clarity and purpose with A Sky Record all the same.

• Pitchfork give the album 7.2

  A Sky Record is especially generous with Kurihara’s majestic guitar, which is as much of a draw as Damon & Naomi’s calming melodies.

For listening

• Damon & Naomi have a lengthy discussion of A Sky Record, and Sky Records on the Free Association podcast
• They also have a nice chat on the Aquarium Drunkard podcast

For watching
You can still watch the lovely film they made at The Peabody Essex Museum premiering the album

Dean Wareham’s covid-cancelled … plays Galaixe 500 tour of early 2020 is looking like it might finally go ahead after (at least) two postponements. The UK dates have mostly been rearranged (although there doesn’t seem to be one scheduled for the North West as yet) for late January / early February and he has also added dates in France, Germany, Norway and Spain. There are still a few gaps in the schedule so there may ne more dates to come.

Damon and Naomi are the guests on the latest edition of the Aquarium Drunkard podcast

Our talk covers the duo’s days in Galaxie 500, Naomi’s interest in boxing, Damon’s ever fascinating and insightful takes on the state of the industry, and their gorgeous new album, A Sky Record.

Damon has also recently launched a Substack newsletter, The Dada Drummer Almanach which promises…

new music, old music, my own music, my friends’ music, music I’ve found while traveling on tour, music that’s found me at the flea market, record store, or on my favorite AM radio station (there is still one where I live, in Cambridge MA, although at night it’s only audible within a mile or so of the transmitting tower).

I’ll be writing about sounds I hear at art exhibitions, in books, in my garden, and in my head (no drummer doesn’t have at least a touch of tinnitus).

I’ll be writing about drums.

You can sign-up for free, or pay $5 per month and join Damon in subscriber-only roundtables.

Dean Wareham has just shared another track from his forthcoming album I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor of L.A. accompanied by a lovely new video directed by Judith Berndsen and edited by Britta Phillips.

Just as Much As It Was Worth is the third track from the album following on from The Past is Our Plaything and Cashing In.

You can pre-order the album from Dean’s website or from record stores - in the UK it is available to order from Norman Records.

Dean Wareham has just released a new track from his forthcoming album I Have Nothing to Say to The Mayor of L.A.

The track Cashing In is accompanied by a video by L.A. based experimental filmmaker Leanna Kaiser:

You can also listen to the track in all the usual places.

The new album will be released on 15th October and can be pre-ordered from Dean’s online shop in an exclusive cherry coloured vinyl.

Featuring Britta on bass and synth, Roger Brogan on drums, and yours truly on guitar and also playing my new “Hooky” 6-string bass in the coda, Peter Hook’s signature model now made by Eastwood guitars. If you watch video of old New Order gigs you realize that so many of the memorable guitar lines were in fact played by Peter Hook on this instrument.

I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people remembering the events of the 11th September 2001 but since my memories are tied in with Luna I thought I’d just post something here.

On the 1st August 2001 (Dean’s birthday) Luna, then very much a New York band, played a show on the Center Stage at The Twin Towers - just over a month later the world was changed by the events. All the photos in this post are from that show (most, possibly all, by Pablo Chang - if you spot one of yours, uncredited, do shout).

Back then the Galaxie 500 Mailing List was still a fairly vibrant discussion forum, mostly full of Luna fans, many of whom were from NYC so the events that played out in the city on that day were documented somewhat on the mailing list.

One of the active members of the list, Steve, was known to work in WTC2, and all Luna band members lived in the city. While it didn’t need this connection to be affected by the events it did rather bring it home, even to the folk whose home was far away.

Looking through the mailing list archives of that day here are a few of the posts. I hope no one minds me re-posting their words.

Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 16:43:32 +0100
From: andy@grange85.co.uk
Subject: current events

With what I’ve been watching and reading over the last 2/3 hours, and the sickness and fear (for the world as a whole) I feel I just wanted to say that I hope all NYC listmembers are safe.

I fear the world will not be the same again.

-Andy