Substack
The Galaxie 500 mailing list (slight return)

Probably just a quickie this and I’m pondering taking the extra posts to fortnightly since I always seem to be chasing my tail.

If anyone fancies writing something for the Tuesday Substack posts please get in touch.

I mentioned in last Friday’s newsletter that I had started, with the aid of AI, to try and organise and analyse the content of the Galaxie 500 mailing list and so I thought I’d give a run down of how that’s going - this might get a bit technical and probably a bit heavy on numbers and for that I apologise.

The other thing that’s probably worth mentioning is that I really have no clear idea what I intend to do with the data once I have it in some sort of order - but it’ll be nice to hopefully find some items of interest.

First I’ll just repeat my plea from Friday…

I've spent a bit of time (with the help of AI) organising the Galaxie 500 mailing list archives which have been chaotically living spread across multiple mailboxes (and in various online repos). What I always knew was that there was as significant gap in my archive most notably between the list's launch in July 1995 to 1998 - there was some cross-posting to alt.music.galaxie-500 usenet group so I have managed to salvage some but if anyone has any old, old mailboxes that might have anything from the mailing list from those years please get in touch]. I suspect there are gaps right up to August 2004 when I moved to GMail - if you have anything please shout!

A day or so later Michael got in touch and passed on a lot of digests from the early 2000s - which was both surprising and brilliant! Seriously if anyone has anything…

A quick recap - the mailing list started in the summer of 1995 and had it’s ups and downs before drying up around 2016. Membership was normally above 200 users, and occasionally much higher.

I wrote a post about the mailing list a few months back.

https://aheadfullofwishes.substack.com/p/the-galaxie-500-mailing-list-est

What I had

Over the years I had accumulated quite a lot of mailing list content, mostly in the digests that were sent out periodically, but also some individual posts (I subscribed to both).

One of the issues with analysis is that the digest format changed a number of times over the years so in an effort to extract as much as possible I tried to categorise them… so I ended up with 13 mailboxes…

• mailinglist.mbox - 13844 posts (This is my primary collection - mostly later individual posts.)
• alt.music.galaxie-500.mbox - 3291 (This is a download of the usenet group from archive.org and is full of spam.)
• galaxie-michael.mbox - 566 (One of two collections sent by Michael…)
• galaxie-michael-2.mbox - 4089 (… and the second one.)
• mailing-list-individual.mbox - 610 (Some individual posts.)
• mailing-list-majordomo.mbox - 239 (The first of six ‘digest’ variants.)
• mailing-list-v1.mbox - 236 (digest variant.)
• mailing-list-v2.mbox - 2
• mailing-list-v3.mbox - 515
• mailing-list-v4.mbox - 16
• mailing-list-v5.mbox - 5
• mailing-list-forwarded.mbox - 8 (Some digests that were forwarded to me.)
• usenet-scrape - 1636 (alt.music.galaxie-500 posts scraped from Usenet Archives… so much spam!)

Total - 25057

A lot of the posts were digests with multiple posts, normally 10 to 20 posts. There were however also likely a lot of duplicates. some admin, some stray nonsense so… after doing some tidying up and de-duplicating I ended up with the following (although I am a bit concerned that some valid content has been missed - so might revisit).

mailing list explorer

Posts	24247	I suspect my cleaning might have been a bit heavy-handed
Contributors	1056	this is clearly wrong! Although I had probably 10+ different email addresses over time!
First post	5th December 1996	Gerry asking for the lyrics of Time
Last post	23rd October 2016

The earliest post from me was from the 6th December 1996 and as well as explaining the list it touches on the recent arrival of Lee Wall into Luna:

From: Andy Aldridge

On Dec 6, Michelle wrote...

Hi Michelle...
...and anyone else who cares...

› I'm new to this. 
> Can someone explain how this works? 
> How many people will read what I write?

The list is run through my dial-up account every that arrives on my computer is then sent out to every "full" list subscriber as soon as possible (approximately 140 emails sent out for every email in - no wonder I'm poor!).

When there have been a number of postings, and when I remember to check I'll send out the "digest" version of the list which goes out to another 100 people.

So every email you write eventually reaches about 240 folk, although there are a couple of duplicates (me for one!) and I'm sure a couple of dead addresses - but 200+

› Can anyone give me any info on Luna's new drummer?

All I know is what's been posted here...
1. he's a mate of Sean's
2. his name's Lee something
3. he used to be in a NYC band called '44'
4. err that's it

Anymore info would be great - has anyone heard of (or better still heard) 44?

-Andy

Other early analysis I have done is to run the archive alongside the database of shows to try and see when people talk about specific gigs.

mailing list show analysis

For instance I found this rather sad post just ahead of Luna’s show at Dingwall’s in October 2002:

From: Andy Aldridge Source: List 
Date: 2002-10-28 

It's been over three years since Luna toured Europe and...

* without any substantial record co. support [1]
* with Dean's tour diaries making ocasional references to not enjoying European touring "I'm re-reading my tour diary from Europe, I am confronted with how much of it sucked"
* with reports of sub 200 audiences [2]

...I can't help but think that tomorrow night might be the last time I see Luna in London...

[1] Beggars Banquet seem to be pretty half-hearted in their support/promotion for Romantica and there seems to be no sign of a release of Close Cover...Their website has a section dedicated to "Current Beggars Banquet UK activities including links to new releases and tour dates" which doesn't even mention Luna. Admittedly there was the ad in Uncut but it seems to me that BB don't seem to see Luna as a viable proposition for promotional investment...shame.

[2] I'd be really surprised if there's much of a crowd tomorrow night - there's been no promotion (as far as I can tell), the tickets are outrageously overpriced (11.50!!!), it's a Tuesday night. 

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow night but can't help but be concerned that this might be the end of Luna as an international concern...

- -=Andy=-

==Andy Aldridge
 http://www.grange85.co.uk

I just looked at my photos of that show and Dean didn’t smile much! Sadly my taper pal didn’t record the show.

Luna at Dingwalls, London - October 2002

But, then I posted…

From: Andy Aldridge Source: List
Date: 2002-10-30 

OK - it's really late so I'll do a proper review tomorrow. Luna were superb tonight a pretty full Dingwalls - so my fears were unfounded

The band seemed to enjoy it

High points - Freakin' & Peakin', Friendly Advice, Tugboat (oh yes!), 23 minutes, Indian Summer, all the others...
Low points - none

Chatted with Dean, Lee and Britta afterwards - they're all so nice.

GOD I LOVE THIS BAND SO MUCH and tonight was so good, maybe there was a bit of absence making the heart grow fonnder...how sad am I - I haven't stopped smiling yet.

Bed

I also ran a bit of analysis to see which bands we were mostly talking about…

• Galaxie 500: 8,564 mentions
• Luna: 18,537 mentions
• Damon & Naomi: 2,442 mentions
• Dean Wareham solo: 679 mentions
• Dean & Britta: 2,564 mentions

Finally I also did a bit of experimental mining for opinions of releases - here are a few extracts on how Claude AI thinks that the mailing list received the release of Dean & Britta’s first album L’avventura - just for clarity nothing I’ve ever published has been written (or even tidied up with) AI so this will all look a little… cleaner than my usual messy rambles… also, it mightn’t be accurate (but then I’m probably not that accurate all the time either!).

L'avventura generated substantial discussion on the Galaxie 500 fan mailing list around its June 2003 release, with threads continuing through the end of 2003 and into 2004. Posts peaked during June 2003 when the album became available, with follow-up discussions about reviews, availability issues, and year-end rankings. Additional activity appeared in 2008 regarding a vinyl reissue. The 195 relevant posts indicate this was a significant release for the fanbase, though discussion was concentrated in the months immediately following release.

Overview of mailing list discussion (Claude AI)

… and it plucked out a few posts for particular comment:

• Darren declared: “G500 was great, Luna is even better and L’Avventura works beautifully,” positioning it as part of Dean Wareham’s strong output trajectory.
• Andrew stated he would rank it above White Stripes and other 2003 releases, calling it “well worth the very little ‘hype’ that it has received.”
• Andy Aldridge, the list’s most vocal supporter, included it in his 2003 best-of and defended it against skepticism.
• Richard enjoyed the album but noted that “Some of the songs on the album do sound a lot like Luna” and wished Britta Phillips was “showcased on more of the songs,” believing that was the album’s intended focus.
• Elisa expressed strong attachment to the opening tracks (“Night Nurse” and “Ginger Snaps”) but found herself less engaged with the rest: “I jusy didnt find the rest of the album as deliciously sticky as the opening tracks.”
• Britta Phillips participated directly in the mailing list, providing insider information about the vinyl reissue process and manufacturing details—a notable instance of an artist engaging with fan communities.

Next steps:

• I’m going to revisit the content extraction because I think some legitimate posts have been pruned either as admin, or duplicates.
• There is likely some more content in the old Dejanews usenet archive, that Google has in their Google Groups copy of alt.music.galaxie-500 - although going into the usenet posts introduces another level of spam hell!
• Perhaps look at creating a full text index to make for more intricate searches.
• Try and get a life!