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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My favourite covers of Galaxie 500 songs
Tomorrow evening Dean Wareham will be playing a show supporting Sea Power and billed as “Dean Wareham and Sea Power play songs of Galaxie 500” - this is a warm up for their set at Sea Power’s Krankenhaus Festival which is taking place this weekend at a castle in Cumbria.
Back in 2003 Sea Power, then known as British Sea Power, released a cover of Galaxie 500’s Tugboat for a Rough Trade compilation album, and have periodically been throwing it into their sets ever since - they also released a cover of Strange on the extended deluxe edition of their first album The Decline of British Sea Power so, while it was a lovely surprise to hear that this was happening, it was perhaps not that much of a surprise!
Sea Power’s Tugboat is beautiful and, since I’ve loved Sea Power from back when they were ‘British’, I am really looking forward to tomorrow night, and to seeing them do it again at the festival on Friday!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM9fqFOMWt8
Back in the run up to Christmas 2016 I made a series of posts called My favourite Galaxie 500 covers - these weren’t really my favourites, I didn’t spend any time analysing, and one made it into the list because the artist fished for a place! :-).
Here’s how I explained my reasoning:
For a little idleness in the run up to the end of the year I thought I'd just post some of my favourite cover versions of Galaxie 500 songs. Now, I love covers of Galaxie 500 songs - I pretty much love them all, even when they're not that great, because a band choosing to cover Galaxie 500 already endears me to them. The ones in this series might not be the best, and I'll certainly leave out covers I love more, but they are generally ones that when I hear them they make me feel good for all sorts of reasons.
My favourite Galaxie 500 covers #1
So, ahead of tomorrow’s show I thought I’d revisit my “favourites” and maybe throw in one or two more… depending how long this post gets! There is no order to this and I’m certain to miss things out that I’ll regret omitting the minute I hit “publish”. It’s worth noting that my posts were made before the 20+ covers project that accompanied Galaxie 500’s RSD Copenhagen release. I’d be interested to know what you think I might have missed out!
Hefner - Oblivious
https://darrenhayman.bandcamp.com/track/oblivious-song-for-galaxy-500-tribute
Hefner were a band I sort of missed at the time - I knew of them, but somehow managed to have a completely erroneous idea of who they were and what they were like so I never gave them any of my time. Then, I heard them… when it was too late to get the full benefit of them.
Their cover of Oblivious is a sort of reminder of my carelessness - it’s a beautiful cover, and with Darren’s voice berating me for just how ridiculously misguided I was to ignore them. And, as if it hasn’t sucked me in enough it has a gorgeous Formbyesque uke strum† in the close out.
Hefner split up shortly after I discovered that they weren’t the band I thought they were but Darren has never stopped making records, and is tirelessly imaginative in his inspiration - from outdoor swimming pools, to dogs in space, from London’s failed Eiffel Tower to Thankful Villages. All worth a listen and a few quid! As is so much of the stuff he has on Bandcamp.
The cover of Oblivious first appeared on Elefant’s Snowstorm: A Tribute to Galaxie 500 - a splendid double CD tribute album that appeared in 2001 and was more recently released on the expanded edition of Hefner’s debut album Breaking God’s Heart - which can be had for just a tenner - forty songs, including this one for £9.99!
† - All uke strumming is Formbyesque btw - no matter how contemporary you try and make it all I see is sweet George strumming and gurning.
La venganza de Cheetara - Way Up High
https://lofirecords.bandcamp.com/track/la-venganza-de-cheetara-way-up-high
Back in 2016 I declared that I had only came across La venganza de Cheetara a couple of weeks ago and that I know very little about them. To be honest nothing’s really changed in the almost nine years since then.
Here’s what I know - they’re from Argentina, they’re a trio, that’s it.
Their cover of Way Up High is a beautifully gentle instrumental version, with brushed drums and gentle keys and carefully picked guitar and was released on an Argentinian Galaxie 500 tribute album No Tan Buenos Pero Diferentes (Un tributo a Galaxie 500) which has another of my favourites that’ll appear down the page a bit! The title of the comp translates as (according to Google) “Not So Good But Different (A Tribute to Galaxie 500)”.
I bought their 2016 album Valles and they did share some new music in 2018 but nothing seems to have come of that and it’s been very quiet since.
Ballboy - Tell Me
https://ballboy.bandcamp.com/track/tell-me
I adore ballboy and Gordon (of ballboy) has oft-stated his love of Galaxie 500. This cover of Tell Me is from The Sash My Father Wore and Other Stories which is the ballboy album that’s pretty much just Gordon. And it’s a beauty.
I saw Gordon play a solo gig in Wimbledon library about the time of this release - he didn’t play Tell Me - he said he couldn’t because his version was all about the cello. He wasn’t wrong - Tell Me is a beautiful song, and Gordon’s almost angelic delivery of the lyric is a joy - but the cover is all about the cello. I’m glad he didn’t play it. The gig was a joy but Tell Me had no place there.
Ron Harrity - Cold Night
https://aheadfullofwishes.bandcamp.com/track/cold-night-2
Back in 2004 I had the idea of doing a fan tribute album by folks on the Galaxie 500 Mailing List - it was a good plan, sadly it was poorly executed… over the next eighteen months the grand vision slowly (very, very slowly) fell apart - entirely due to my lack of any clue.
Lots of nice people had sent in recordings and after a shameful delay I finally burnt a bunch of CDRs, threw together a monochrome sleeve and sent copies out to anyone who wanted one. I have no idea how many - I just kept sending them out until folk stopped asking - and then I put it all on a website to download.
The album was a lovely mix from enthusiastic bedroom recordings, to full blown studio offerings; from straight covers to “interpretations”. There were four Galaxie 500 tracks and nine Luna ones. And I love every single one of them.
At some point uring that eighteen months lead time, Ron Harrity offered to help out - and I shamefully never jumped at the offer - things would have been so much better if I had. Ron had been in a wonderful band called Nord Express, a few years earlier I’d been sent a tape of their stuff and had become a fan.
Ron had chosen to cover Cold Night - and it starts a gorgeous, gentle retelling of the Galaxie 500 song that builds beautifully and finished perfectly.
When I released the Galaxie 500 tribute album On Fire | 30 in 2019 I asked Ron if I could include his beautiful Cold Night as a bonus track and he agreed, so it’s available to buy/stream/download/pay-what-you-want on Bandcamp along with the rest of the album.
Half - Sorry
https://theblogthatcelebratesitself.bandcamp.com/track/half-feat-jason-russo-hopewell-mercury-rev-sorry
So I kicked off this series without really thinking it through - I set two stupidly arbitrary rules for myself[1] ~ the second one was not to over-mine the rich seam that the tribute albums provided. This meant I had to pick from them for reasons that might seem a little… unfair.
Blue Thunder, a Tribute to Galaxie 500 was released earlier this year with some gems - and when I started this series I had no idea which track (or tracks) I’d pick from it.
Then this happened:
@grange85 @ahfow nudge nudge https://t.co/3f2cv6cJQN 😉
— Half (@herelieshalf) November 11, 2016
So, fifth in this series of my favourite Galaxie 500 covers is this very splendid cover of Sorry by “North East England-based bedroom producer” Half and featuring Jason Russo formerly of Mercury Rev. Who knows? I might have picked it anyway - it starts with a lovely organ, has some nice programmed percussion and a pedal steel all of which might easily have been enough to get them in here - but I’ll admit that the tweet was definitely the clincher!
Las Ligas Menores - Fotos
https://lasligasmenores.bandcamp.com/track/fotos
This is the second track from No Tan Buenos Pero Diferentes (Un tributo a Galaxie 500) but Las Ligas Menores had shown their Galaxie 500 love long before that. There are a couple of clips on YouTube of them covering Strange - a charming, if a little rough, live version, and a sweet acoustic cover.
But then, three posts into my 2016 series of favourite Galaxie 500 covers I got an email from Bandcamp notifying me of Ni una canción a (then) new release by Las Ligas Menores. The three track release is “un simple adelanto de nuestro segundo LP” and the third track was called Fotos. I popped my headphones on at work and played it but got called away before I reached track three.
A few hours later I came across the page still waiting patiently in my browser to be finished and the word Galaxie in the album’s description caught my eye. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? Fotos is, of course, a cover of Galaxie 500’s Pictures - and a lovely Spanish language take on it.
There are a few clips of them doing the cover live, including this sweet acoustic version as a duo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycIxWf-v8N0
Rainer Maria - Hearing Voices
Way back at the turn of the century, while the internet was just a toddler, video was a rare treat, Spin.com had a series of videos shot very lo-fi and barely produced. Rainer Maria decided to have a go at Galaxie 500’s Hearing Voices for them.
That anyone should choose a Galaxie 500 cover was a treat and being able to see them doing it was a joy. Even if it was a tiny Flash video stream it was still a joy.
I nabbed a bit of software that enabled me to download the Flash stream and it lived on my computer for a few years, and then on a post on my blog for a while before it vanished - seemingly lost forever.
In the ten years since it went AWOL Rainer Maria’s cover of Hearing Voices started acquiring a sort of mythical status in my head - possibly a great lost track, possibly the greatest of Galaxie 500 covers? Most things turn up on YouTube eventually - but Spin’s videos haven’t and my periodic searches for it came to nothing - all I could ever find to prove that it ever existed at all was on my own web site.
The Internet Archive/Wayback Machine - is a remarkable thing doing an amazing job - it’s preserving our modern history when others (like myself) aren’t doing it as well as they should. A bit of digging and I came across it - my hunt was hampered slightly by the fact that at some point I’d wrongly named the file as a cover of Plastic Bird.
Anyway… there it was, in all it’s shuddery, lo-res joy. The cover is rough, it’s not produced at all - just a couple of poorly placed cameras in a poorly set-up room, and whatever sound that the camera’s in-built mic could manage.
Maybe absence did make this heart grow fonder, but coming as it did, in the days before YouTube and before Elefant’s tribute album, when finding someone who knew Galaxie 500 was a treat, means that Rainer Maria’s cover of Hearing Voices is still one of my favourites. It’s good to have it back in my life.
And, that’s where my original series ended, but here are a few other covers I love, although, like I said above I do pretty much love all Galaxie 500 covers!
Now, Tugboat is very popular, so much so that I have a post which collects over twenty covers and since the first of the arbitrary rules in my 2016 series I mentioned above was no Tugboats I’m going to make amends and pick a couple here,
Joanna Gruesome - Tugboat
https://indietracks.bandcamp.com/track/tugboat
Joanna Gruesome’s cover is still one of my favourites. Before it turned up on the flip of their Sugarcrush single there had been live versions turning up quite regularly on YouTube. Damon even expressed his pleasure “I think they got our primitivism - Thank you @JOANNAGRUESOME”. And, as I mentioned in a Substack post a few weeks back Dean joined them on-stage at Indietracks to sing it with them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bnSlMPFLzs
BMX Bandits with Angel Corpus Christi - Tugboat
https://bmxbanditsmusic.bandcamp.com/track/tugboat-with-angel-corpus-christi
The only reason that this wasn’t in my favourites series back in 2016 was because of my no Tugboats rule because this is right at the very top of my favourite Galaxie 500 covers. Duglas is such a joy as a performer and ACC’s phoned in (?) contribution is the icing! This was first released on the fantastic Snowstorm a trubute to Galaxie 500 album released by Elefant back in 2001, and is also now available on a lovely BMX Bandits retrospective.