A Head Full of Wishes newsletter #18

2025-08-22
Categories: substack

Substack
A Head Full of Wishes newsletter #18

OK - this is a bit hastily thrown together this week since I’m mostly out and about following Dean & Britta (in a non-stalky way) around the north of England. Normal service will be resumed next week, or the week after!

I’ve hastily written up the first of six shows I’ll be seeing this week on AHFoW - with pics and videos - both shows have been amazing - and very different!

Dean Wareham and Sea Power play Galaxie 500 in Hebden Bridge.

Dean & Britta in Hebden Bridge

Galaxie 500 - Today (Aurora LP)

The last credit on the back of Galaxie 500’s debut album Today reads “Photograph by Eugene Atget” - back in 1990, without access to the Internet you’d just accept that sort of credit as it is, look at the lovely, and rather unusual, picture on the front, and then slip the record out of its sleeve and get on with the business of listening.

So, for a long time I never really gave much thought to Eugene Atget. Things like was he a friend of the band? or what other albums covers he might have taken photos for? just didn’t cross my mind. But that all changed with the coming of the Internet, suddenly the urge to know everything can be satisfied - and those questions can now fairly easily be answered - for those two the answers are “no” and “none”, because he didn’t even take the photo for this album”.

Eugene Atget was a pioneer of photography who worked in the late 19th and early 20th century in Paris and was dead long before he could be commissioned to photograph for album covers. He took thousands of photographs of Paris and was considered a documentary photographer - taking photographs to provide an archive of the architecture and life of Paris, and also would suuply photographs for artists such as painters and stage designers. As such his work only became recognised as art after his death in 1927.

There is a lot of Eugene Atget’s photographs available - MoMA has 2,914 of his photos online and, after a little digging around I managed to track down the one that Naomi picked to use on Today:

Eugene Atget - Bagatelle, roseraie. 1921

Now obviously in 1988 when Naomi was designing the cover of Galaxie 500’s debut album she didn’t have the luxury of paging through the photos on MoMA’s website so I asked her how she came to find the photo and how she came upon the work of Eugene Atget:

My father was the photographer John Yang and so I grew up around a lot of classic black and white photography. My father had a large collection of photo books that I would look at, and we would go to photography shows together, usually at the Met or MoMa.

Eugene Atget was one of my father's favorite photographers, as was Minor White (whom he actually studied with in the 50’s for a summer), and Cartier Bresson, Edward Steichen, Andre Kertesz, Bill Brandt, Brassai…. the list goes on… so to me, these were household names! And so I knew their work at a young age.

So when I was thinking about the cover for “Today” I was just leafing through various books, wondering what might work, and I actually took the image for the cover of “Today” from a book my father had "The Work of Atget" (a multi-volume set, I can’t remember which volume) which was published by the Museum of Modern Art. In a way it is a strange juxtaposition: the word "Today" and an overgrown rose garden from 1921 in Paris, but somehow the lushness of it all seemed perfect to me.

Email from Naomi - 26th July 2025†

Naomi also mentioned that she “stole the classic layout of a Blue Note jazz album” ~ so the package was this wonderful mix of early 20th Century photography, mid 20th Century jazz design, and late 20th Century guitar rock ~ all combined to make this perfect, unique, and timeless album.

After Naomi’s email arrived I of course fell down a rabbit hole of Blue Note jazz album covers - I have a few Blue Note albums but none that were too close to Today… not as close as maybe this one…

Catalogue Number: AHFOW 12/032
Artist: Galaxie 500
Title: Today
Notes: Aurora LP
Format: LP
Bought on eBay around 2009 for a lot less than they go for now, although I can’t find how much.
Buy ‘Today’ on Bandcamp

Previously in my record collection:

† Of the photographers Naomi mentioned I was only familiar with the work of two of them, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Bill Brandt. So I had/have so much catching up to do!

This Music Is Ours (CDr & booklet)”

This Music Is Ours was the second (and so far last) tribute album put out by A Head Full of Wishes - this was to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Galaxie 500’s third album This Is Our Music five years ago.

The tribute album for On Fire, On Fire | 30 in 2019 had turned out better than I thought possible, and that was almost entirely down to other people who I leaned on rather heavily to get it done, in particular Hannah, who basically project-managed the physical product, and John who took everything I threw at him and handed back the lovely book and sleeve that the release came in.

I was reluctant to throw more work their way so I wasn’t going to bother with a This Is Our Music tribute… but then COVID and the shit-show of 2020 wore me down and so in August I decided to go for it. Both Hannah and John got back in touch as soon as I put out the call and offered their services again - and one of the key reasons that This Music Is Ours exists is down to them.

With the planned release date to be early October, to match This Is Our Music, it gave all the contributors some pretty tight deadlines to work with but they all, without exception, pulled through.

Here are a few random notes about the release:

The album was originally going to be called Swells like the ocean - a lyric from Hearing Voices.

The album got its final name from the last sentence of the introduction to the book. I must admit to being quite proud of that introduction:

Galaxie 500 called their third album This Is Our Music. Which I suppose it was.

Within six months of its release the band had split up.

Maybe you can hear the end of the band on the album, but I never could. Maybe “way up high and going too fast” or “seems like everything is business” should have clued me in but I was never so astute.

All I heard was the band I loved still progressing, not necessarily getting better, or worse, but getting on.

When you have three near-perfect albums the very idea of ranking or rating them is ridiculous. But the internet loves a list, and music publications love a score, and when that happens with Galaxie 500 it’s This Is Our Music that invariably props up the list, and has the fewest stars.

But then you look at the track listing and you have to wonder how that can be. This is the album with Fourth of July, and Hearing Voices, and Summertime, and Listen, the Snow is Falling. It’s inconceivable that an album this strong could be anything but top of any list.

When Dean says that “half of it is good” or Kramer suggests that “it could have been twice as good” I think that they’re hearing more than the album. I think they’re hearing the making of the album, the friction, the frustration, the anger and impatience. Maybe they can hear the end of the band. I don’t hear that.

Perhaps the album’s title isn’t being said by the band - maybe it’s being said by us.

This music is ours.

This Music Is Ours introduction

While only two of the pieces of art were credited to me I was actually responsible for more of them. Getting folk to make music wasn’t as hard as getting folk to contribute art - even if my definition of “art” was as loose as possible, So I filled all the gaps.
Sean Eden of Luna appeared on two separate tracks on the album.
The booklet has a reproduction of a polaroid that had been taken at (and pinned to the wall in) the Covent Garden Rough Trade shop.

Galaxie 500 at The Rough Trade Shop, Covent Garden (unknown photographer)

Dean showed off the copy I sent to him during one of their COVID live streams.

It’s a fantastic album - and you can get it for pay what you like on Bandcamp. Unlike On Fire | 30 I didn’t make the mistake of producing too many physical copies of the CD, so they all sold out. If anyone however does want a CD copy of the also brilliant On Fire | 30 give me a shout because I still have quite a few of them!
Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/159
Artist: Various artists
Title: This Music Is Ours
Notes: Tribute album
Packaging: CDr / booklet / postcards / badges / stickers
Format: CD
Buy ‘This Music Is Ours’ on Bandcamp

Previously in my record collection:

[162] On Fire | 30

This week in history

18th August 1997 - Luna’s Pup Tent released in the UK
MP3: Luna - Pup Tent, behind the music

SubstackA Head Full of Wishes newsletter #18

Galaxie 500 - Today (Aurora LP)

This Music Is Ours (CDr & booklet)”

This week in history

Substack
A Head Full of Wishes newsletter #18