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 #33
Damon & Naomi - Attention Shoppers (London, 2001)
I don’t have many recordings of Damon & Naomi but this recording was made by my taping pal Andy who recorded quite a few shows with/for me around that time, I gave the recording its name because at the beginning of Damon & Naomi’s set Damon calls out “attention shoppers” in an attempt to attract the attention of the noisy patrons at the bar.
This was a great show, support had come from The Clientele (first or second time I’d seen them) and The Trembling Blue Stars (sadly neither of their sets were taped). Damon & Naomi were over with Michio Kurihara on the tour that would end with the “Live in San Sebastian” deception (go read your Sub Pop Years liner notes).
I didn’t often bother making sleeves for the recordings I have, but I did for this one. The show dates from a good ten years before my first phone with a camera and since I rarely took a proper camera to shows the picture I used for the cover was not one of mine. A couple of weeks after the London show D&N played in Utrecht in Holland and the pictures from that show by the photographer Stefan Claudius were sent to me to include on AHFoW. I didn’t get permission to bung it on my CD sleeve but then it was never meant for sharing. Stefan’s photos also turned up in the “Song to the Siren” CD booklet.
The sleeve is obviously a riff on the sleeve of the recently released Damon & Naomi with Ghost which also seems to have been the inspiration, ten years later, for the Great Pop Supplement Walking Backwards single.
I eventually did share the recording, and the sleeve, a few years later… and now I’ve just popped it on YouTube…
Listening back now I’m rather taken with how much more boisterous the audience seem to be than they have been at more recent Damon & Naomi shows - is that because we’re all (band and audience) now 24 years older? It really was a cracking show and I’m glad I dragged Andy and his DAT machine along!
Some video from this show turned up on the DVD that was released with Song to The Siren in 2002:
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/062
- Artist: Damon & Naomi
- Title: Attention Shoppers
- Notes: Bootleg of a show at The Garage in London - 15th May 2001
- Packaging: Jewel case
- Format: CDR
The Wondrous World of Damon & Naomi (LP)
This is the Sub Pop LP release of Damon & Naomi’s second album The Wondrous World of Damon & Naomi. I originally bought this on CD around the time of release and bought this LP in 2013 on Discogs for the collection.
I loved Wondrous World on release and never stopped loving it (which is I think why I loved the “bootleg” edition slightly less).
I know I’ve said in the last couple of posts about Damon & Naomi albums that I find it impossible to pick a favourite but, for the annual AHFoW survey that ran from 1996 until 2020, I was obliged to pick an album. For most of those years it was Wondrous World…… except for the years it was … with Ghost.
While it is lovely to have the album in a 12” package it doesn’t have the beautiful collage artwork that Naomi used for the CD booklet… so, swings and roundabouts.
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 12/008
- Artist: Damon & Naomi
- Title: The Wondrous World of Damon & Naomi
- Format: LP
- Bought for £12 in 2013 from a seller on Discogs
- STILL not available on Bandcamp
Previously in my record collection:
- [005] The Wondrous World of Damon & Naomi (CD)
- [154] The Wondrous World of Damon & Naomi (promo CD)
- [261] The Wondrous World of Damon & Naomi (bootleg edition)
Luna announce NYC dates in April
Luna have announced that they will be playing three shows at The Bowery Ballroom in New York in April. Tickets go on sale on Friday 5th December but there is a code for a pre-sale that starts on Tuesday 2nd December (tomorrow).
We have just announced three Luna shows next year at our favorite venue, New York City's Bowery Ballroom, April 2-3-4. Tickets go on sale to the general public this Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern. These shows tend to sell out very quickly, and the folks at Bowery Ballroom have set up an artist pre-sale with code LUNA25 that starts this Tuesday at 10 a.m. and lasts till Thursday 10pm.
Dean Wareham newsletter
The code for the pre-sale is LUNA25 and the tickets can be bought from…
- Luna @ The Bowery Ballroom - 2nd April 2026
- Luna @ The Bowery Ballroom - 3rd April 2026
- Luna @ The Bowery Ballroom - 4th April 2026
Galaxie 500 - This Is Our Music test pressing up for auction
The fourth in the series of Galaxie 500 test pressings is now up for auction. This one is a copy of the Rough Trade UK pressing of the band’s last album This Is Our Music.
As with the previous editions in the series it comes in a unique sleeve, handmade and signed by Naomi Yang. The auction ends on Monday 8th December and has a starting price of $500.
The previous auction for a copy of Blue Thunder ends this evening (10pm GMT)
The first three auctions are now over:
- 1 of 16: Galaxie 500 Today (1988) TEST PRESSING in HANDMADE SLEEVE SIGNED BY NAOMI YANG - sold for $985
- 5 of 16: Galaxie 500 On Fire (1989) TEST PRESSING in HANDMADE SLEEVE SIGNED BY NAOMI YANG - sold for $1,130
- 10 of 16: Galaxie 500 Blue Thunder EP (1990) TEST PRESSING w HANDMADE SLEEVE BY NAOMI YANG - sold for $480
Twelve years ago today (and tomoorow) Dean played two shows at St. Pancras Old Church - I wrote about them on Substack earlier this week:
https://aheadfullofwishes.substack.com/p/dean-wareham-live-at-st-pancras-old
This coming week in history
-
7th Devember 2018 - Dean Wareham and Cheval Sombre played a show promoting their collaborative album of cowboy songs at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC - Mike was their and took a couple of videos - here they are covering Galaxie 500’s Temperature’s Rising - although, not in a cowboy style!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yC-iM5YQnY -
8th December 2010 - Fifteen years ago Dean & Britta were in London - that morming I got an email from Dean “If you have time to kill and feel like stopping by to say hello, we’ll be at the Garage from 3:30 to 6 doing our sound check” - I technically didn’t have time to kill… I was at work - but, you don’t ignore that - and it helped having an accommodating boss!
- 11th December 2011 - Damon & Naomi at Whirled in Loughborough Junction in London:
Between acts I chatted to David and we were then joined by Naomi. We discussed film... David and Naomi discussed arty foreign films... I brought Star Wars and Kiss Me Kate to the conversation.
Damon & Naomi were playing as a duo tonight, and played through a lovely set while behind them was projected suitably cold and wintry pictures (and occasionally the Mac OS, and sometimes just the word BLANK).
