A Head Full of Wishes

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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Categories: substack

Substack
Covers by Damon & Naomi

Perhaps because Damon & Naomi don’t do covers quite as frequently as Dean it might be easy to think that they aren’t just as smart at selecting and interpreting others songs for their own releases but you’d be very wrong.

Here are a few of my favourite Damon & Naomi (and one Magic Hour) covers. Most of these are from quite early in Damon & Naomi’s catalogue, they are certainly recording fewer covers in recent years… which is a shame, although they still pop out surprises live occasionally!

Yoo Doo Right - CAN covered by Damon & Naomi & Batoh & Kurihara

Yoo Doo Right was 20 minutes long when released on CAN’s Monster Movie LP in 1969, probably because 20 minutes was long enough for one side of a record. The song however had been edited down from a 6 hour live improvised concert held at Schloss Nörvenich, CAN’s castle in North Rhine-Westphalia. Damon & Naomi’s cover also was also from a live convert, and also filled one side of a record… although, that record was a 7” single and was under six minutes long.

Yoo Doo Right was recorded in Cambridge, Massachussetts in April 1998 with Michio Kurihara and Masaki Batoh of Ghost and was released on Grimsey Records which was a small indie label run by Andrea Troolin who had been a key player in the release of the Galaxie 500 box set a couple of years earlier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0SQMlUpB8U

The flip of the single also had a rather brilliant cover of Dylan’s It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue - so, two for the price of one!

Spirit of Love by COB covered by Damon & Naomi

Clive Palmer was in the Incredible String Band for their first album in 1966, he then went on a trip to India and Afghanistan and when he came back decided to not rejoin the band, moved to Cornwall and carried on making music. In the early 70s he formed C.O.B. (Clive’s Original Band) which recorded two albums, the first of which, in 1971, was called Spirit of Love…

In March 1997 Damon & Naomi played their first London show as a duo at the tiny 12 Bar Club. I still remember that show with a mixture of bliss and discomfort but the most enduring of the blissful memories is the instrument that Naomi used. A sruti box is a simple one pitch harmonium that produces a beautiful drone.

In the July 1997 issue of Ptolemaic Terrascope Damon & Naomi gave an interview which showed off the still tender wounds of the Galaxie 500 split. As a fan it was a hard read. Up until that point I was blissfully unaware of just how sad the split was.

The 7” single that came with the magazine featured Damon & Naomi doing a cover of C.O.B.’s Spirit of Love, a sweet folk ditty sung over that lovely sruti box drone. And because of that and because of the fond memories of that first Damon & Naomi show, Spirit of Love is one of my favourite Damon & Naomi tracks.

https://damonandnaomi.bandcamp.com/track/spirit-of-love

Sally Free and Easy by Trees covered by Magic Hour

OK, I know that Sally Free & Easy wasn’t originally by Trees. It was written in the 1950s by English folk singer and songwriter Cyril Tawney, but I can’t help but think that the Magic Hour version was more likely a cover of the track as recorded by the English folk band Trees for their brilliant 1970 album “On the Shore”.

Oh but all the greats of English folk (and beyond) probably have it in their repertoire - Pentangle, Davy Graham. Bert Jansch, Marianne Fathful…

Magic Hour released their cover on the 1994 album No Excess is Absurd and it was the only track in the band’s repertoire to feature Naomi singing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZRz4SksCyM

There’s a lovely video of a Magic Hour show in London in 1994 playing it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNUydzH-2Rg

This Changing World by Claudine Longet covered by Damon & Naomi

This Changing World wasn’t originally by Claudine Longet, although back when Damon & Naomi recorded it for their debut album More Sad Hits even they didn’t know the provenance of the song.

Back in 2014 I did a series of quick posts highlighting the originals of covers of songs by all the AHFoW related bands - most were of the template [track] recorded by [artist] was originally by [original artist] and here’s a youtube link to the original. The entry for This Changing World was long and spread over two blog posts! I love Damon & Naomi’s cover but also I love that at the end of those two posts I could write “So, This Changing World was the b-side of the song that came seventh in the 1968 Eurovision song contest”.

Originally recorded by Line & Willy as De l’automne a l’automne in 1968 but recorded in 1970 by Claudine Longet as This Changing World (De l’automne a l’automne) which is where Damon & Naomi became familiar with it and recorded it as just This Changing World (brave out the drum solo at the beginning it is worth it!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiBQVz2XEQ4

If you’re interested in a clearer explanation you can read those two earlier posts here:

Memories by Soft Machine covered by Damon & Naomi

Memories was a very early Soft Machine track from 1967, written by Hugh Hopper and recorded as a demo by Hopper, Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers by Yardbirds’ producer Giorgio Gomelsky - that snippet of my knowledge was lifted from a cool article about early Soft Machine by Julian Cope.

Damon & Naomi’s version includes the line “pet shops where people knew us”, later it was pointed out to them that the lyric was actually “past shops where people knew us” although to my ears it still sounds like “pet” in the Soft Machine version.

Damon & Naomi covered the track for their first album More Sad Hits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61rjY_xStPs

I Shall Be Released by THe Band covered by Damon & Naomi with Tom Rapp

I know, it’s a Dylan track - but (apparently) Dylan never released a version of it until 1971 whereas The Band’s version of I Shall Be Released was on their debut album Music From The Big Pink in 1968, and even Tom Rapp had released a version before Dylan on the 1969 Pearls Before Swine album These Things Too.

It’s possibly most famously performed by (almost) everyone in The Last Waltz, but has been recorded by anyone worth their salt in the years since it was written - the notable covers section on Wikipedia and reads like a Who’s Who.

Damon & Naomi played it at the first Terrastock with Tom Rapp and that version was released on the All Access CD released with the commemorative edition of Ptolemaic Terrascope. Here however is a video of their performance of the song at Terrastock (3:55 in)- the sound’s not as good as the CD but… video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1ws0Z4r3qQ&t=242

There are plenty of other covers I could have chosen,,, songs by Big Star or The Beatles of The Everly Brothers or Tim Buckley… have a look through my originals category.