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.
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A Head Full of Wishes newsletter #12
My record collection #265 - Dean & Britta - Neon Lights (12”)
Neon Lights was recorded during the pandemic in Dean and Britta’s home studio and released on Quarantine Tapes… twice, once Britta’s original mix and then the Matt Fishbeck/Holy Shit remix that was given the original German title.
This 12” single contains both those versions and two additional remixes by Matt Fishbeck - the first called the Baxter Street Bounce which has a snippet of repeated, sampled, dialogue which I haven’t figured out the provenance of, maybe it has none? I assume the “cassette bounces by Philip Haut” credit relates to this remix?
The second new version is called piano remix and is mostly a long, meditative piano piece with Dean’s vocal and some treated and layered Dean and Britta voices, there’s a little bit of guitar about three minutes in, but then drifts back to the gentle piano and treated voices. It is hypnotic and beautiful.
Matt Fishbeck/Holy Shit contributed a cover of It’s Getting Late to the series of Galaxie 500 covers made to tie in with the COVID-affected RSD release of Copenhagen. On the YouTube page for his cover he wrote a lovely piece about how important Galaxie 500 were to him:
I learned how to play guitar by learning and practicing Dean's leads and solos, so the heaving, spectral music of Galaxie 500 is imprinted in me. it's part of the very DNA of my musical sensibilities. I remember the first thing I ever read about the group. It was a review in the NME (Melody Maker?) of one of their first London gigs. There was a line in it that I loved, and remember: "they have only one song, and the fact that they play it over and over again makes it no less beautiful." It was the first music I'd ever heard that seemed like it was made for private listening, that didn't imply an audience. listening to galaxie is something we do on a kind of loop. Record ends + we start it again... then happily again, so much so that we all inevitably feel like we have a personal stake in their songs, they're ours. A clever bargain, mind you, for in the same way their songs have a way of "belonging to us" (and equal to the degree to which this is the case), the songs ultimately also manage to own us. We are seduced, we surrender, we are suspended, we are caught. Willing captives—can you deny it?
Matt Fishbeck - It's Getting Late (YouTube)
I love that he says that “it seemed like it was made for private listening” - which I’ve always believed - in fact I wrote as much a couple of months back in a post about On Fire:
Sometimes I think that On Fire is actually improved by listening on headphones, not for any reasons of quality (as I’ve said before many times, my heavy metal assaulted ears are probably not good enough to pass an opinion on that) but because it is an album to be experienced alone.
My record collection [253] Galaxie 500 - On Fire (MC)
… anyway here’s Holy Shit’s cover of It’s Getting Late:
Matt also links to a video of his high school band covering Tugboat which is frankly adorable!
Dean sent me this in early 2021, the sleeve is signed but also included in the package was an unsigned sleeve… and a hat. I notice that the sleeve has the URL deanandbritta.net which isn’t used any more, and was I think brought into existence when deanandbritta.com got hacked.
When I thanked Dean I told him that I got “a nostalgic buzz for a proper 12” single that played at 45rpm” which Dean then described as “the best sounding format”… and this does sound great.
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 12/018
- Artist: Dean & Britta
- Title: Neon Lights
- Notes: One single, two sleeves
- Format: 12” single
- Buy ‘Neon Lights’ on Bandcamp
My record collection #266 - Luna - Season of the Witch (CD)
This is my CD copy of Luna’s cover of Donovan’s Season of the Witch and is the first copy I bought around the time of release.
As with the 10” vinyl copy the CD has the three tracks Luna played on The Mark Radcliffe Show in December 1995, you can listen to the whole session on YouTube.
The video for Season of the Witch was directed by Mary Harron who directed the film it comes from, and I’ve already posted about that too!
So maybe I could post about the Donovan original… but I already did that too - although there’s nothing particularly insightful there so probably not worth following that link!
Everyone covers Season of the Witch, so, here are my favourite three covers that aren’t by Luna
- Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and Trinity - recorded it in 1967 - this TV performance is great… although Julie’s look is a major contribution to that!
- Sam Gopal recorded it for their 1968 album Escalator… and yes, that’s Lemmy singing (so I get another Motörhead reference in here).
- Actually only just came across this Meursault cover but it is pretty darned good:
- Catalogue Number: 10/017
- Artist: Luna
- Title: Season of the Witch
- Format: CD
Previously in my record collection:
This week in history
8th July 2008 - Dean & Britta at Carnegie Hall
Dean & Britta played the UK premiere of 13 Most Beautiful at The Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline in July 2008 a show that featured an electrical explosion and an encore of Tugboat and Strange
You can read my review on AHFoW.
A couple of days earlier they had played the show in Marseille and there’s a fantastic set of photos from that show on Flickr.
11th July 2017 - Luna at Gold Diggers
The reformed Luna played a show in Los Angeles which was used to record a video for their cover of The Cure’s Fire in Cairo. Too far for me to be there, but Josh was kind enough to write up the show for AHFoW.
You can see the resulting video on YouTube
This week’s discoveries and rediscoveries
- I rediscovered Luna’s lovely instrumental ‘Swedish Fish’ that was used on a promo for a children’s book in 2010 (AHFoW).
- What are the most surprising bands (or songs) that Dean has decided to cover over the years? I picked five for my Substack earlier in the week.
- I saw the lovely Dawn Landes at the weekend - she asked me who was on my T-shirt, well who do you think was!? “Oh… I know Dean” she replied, “have you read his book?”. The show was mostly performed sitting on the bar in the saloon of a pub in Gateshead. Here she is playing Meet Me at The River,
- Damon’s next book, Why Sound Matters, will be published by Yale University Press on 21st October, and is now available to pre-order (AHFoW).