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 #65
Another quiet week for me (this is becoming a theme). The Northern League football season started last week (in July!!) so I saw my first proper match of the season last weekend watching Whitley Bay not winning a match they deserved to. Yesterday we took a train/bus excursion into the Scottish Borders to visit family.
I must admit that my listening this week has mostly been nostalgic dips into my NWOBHM past so this newsletter is actually being put together with the help of Raven’s Rock Until You Drop, an album that was made a couple of miles from where I’m listening to it. I know that the AHFoW/NWOBHM cross-over is probably pretty small - possibly just me - but, just in case… I did write a little about Raven and my love of metal on my personal blog a couple of years back. Rock Until You Drop is a masterpiece and I’ll not have any truck with anyone who disagrees :)
OK, for the folk who haven’t left or unsubscribed at that, a little closer to 2020s me (rather than 1980s me) I’ve been listening quite a lot to the new Cornershop and Bubbley Kaur track that was released a few days ago. One of the two videos for the track had some lovely footage of the Damont record pressing plant in Hayes back when it existed, and was getting plenty of use. It’s a beautiful look into a bygone era.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHZXjzNKLLE
It’s Dean’s birtheday tomorrow - since I haven’t got a birthday post together you can make do with last year’s - which also has links to lots of previous posts all contain pics, and most contain mp3s and/or videos.
… and, if it’s Dean’s birthday tomorrow that means it must be Stanley’s on Sunday.
Happy birthday Dean and Stanley
It looks like Dean & Britta’s upcoming show as part of Free Music Olympia is going to be live streamed here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjw5WCamiUU
My record collection [373] Dean & Britta - White Horses
Dean & Britta’s gorgeous cover of White Horses first appeared on their second album Back Numbers in early 2007, and then was released later on this seven inch single on Sonic Cathedral later that year.
The single has a Sonic Boom mix of the song on the a-side and a version Française on the flip. The lyrics for the French version were provided by long time friend of AHFoW Franck Dewannieux and is a lovely translation but my schoolboy French can’t hear any mention of horses so it’s clearly not a literal translation. It is beautiful of course. It’s ridiculous how much I love songs sung in French (and so many films made in French) when, despite many years of trying, my grasp of the language is still hopeless.
The single came in a Sonic Cathedral sleeve and was accompanied by a badge which matched the label on the single… as you can see in the above pic my badge is degrading… as badges often do.
White Horses was written by Michael Carr and Ben Nisbett for the UK import of Yugoslavian/German TV show Ferien in Lipizza, it was originally sung by “Jacky”, who is actually Jackie Lee. The theme song was so successful that it was apparently dubbed back onto non-English versions of the show.
The show was shown regularly on British TV during the summer holidays, dubbed into English and I loved it, partly for the theme tune and partly because of a pre-teenage crush on the show’s lead, Helga Anders:
If memory serves it was Sonic Boom who suggested that Dean & Britta cover the song… given that he is British, and approximately the same age as me I wonder if his love of the song was driven by similar experiences of summer holiday TV (and pre-teenage infatuations).
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 11/040
- Artist: Dean & Britta
- Title: White Horses (Sonic Boom mix) / White Horses (version Française)
- Format: 7” single
- Bought direct from Sonic Cathedral
My record collection [374] Luna - The Days of Our Nights (Beggars Banquet CD)
This is the CD version of Luna’s The Days of Our Nights that was released in the UK when it was supposed to be by Beggars Banquet and bought by me on the day of release from, very possibly Beggars Banquet in Kingston.
The album’s release and reception has been well covered in the previous posts in this series - particularly in the one for the vinyl reissue from three years ago, so I’m not sure I have much to add.
Dean and Sean were in the UK around the time of release for the Bowlie Weekender that they played at as a duo. I didn’t go to this - I did ponder going and even rang up about it - specifically about bringing a two-year-old along - but decided the cost, and the two-year-old made it inconvenient. The NME reviewed it…
Dean Wareham, looking a bit like he'd been recently exhumed, could be said the be the American Stuart Murdoch; unashamed preppie types, his songs combine beautiful melodies with arch not-quite-funny observations.
Beset by feedback problems, they're playing to a hardcore of devotees who will forgive anything, even the terrible drum machine that sounds as though it was rescued from a Bontempi organ.
They are metaphorically naked and endearing; Dean's strange falsetto vocals which make up for the lack of a keyboard or stringed instrument are simultaneously endearing and scary, which can also be said of the songs. Sadly, they didn't do their wonderful version of 'Sweet Child O' Mine'.
Postcard from Bowlie - NME (26th April 1999) (via Wayback Machine)
They also recorded a couple of songs for London station XFM that I remember listening to, but don’t have a recording of sadly:
I listened to Luna on (London station) XFM a couple of nights back and they sounded pretty good for stripped down versions Math Wiz is potentially the best track on the album and the "live" version was pretty cool it came complete with a "Hi I'm Dean..." "...and I'm Sean" intro made me smile. Moon Palace was a surprise firstly I expected them to be relentlesly pushing the new album, and secondly it was blessed with an organ (that's as technical as I get!) and a drum machine very nice too.
Galaxie 500 Mailing List - Andy Aldridge · Fri 30 Apr 1999 23:25
If anyone has a recording of that I’d love to hear it.
I also remember seeing fly-posters for the album around London, I think there was one on the derelict building at the top of our road. I regret not taking a picture but in those pre-digital days you didn’t waste a frame on a picture of a poster.
My long-standing Days coolness gets less cool with each passing year. Maybe because as well as the music I also have a growing Mailing List nostalgia. I know I say it every time but damn I miss those days, that community, and those friends - some I still have but many I have lost touch with - who were so important to me back then.
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/054
- Artist: Luna
- Title: The Days of Our Nights
- Notes: Beggars Banquet
- Packaging: Jewel case
- Format: CD
- Bought from a record shop the week of release
- Buy ‘The Days of Our Nights’ on Bandcamp
Previously in my record collection:
- [059] Luna The Days of Our Nights (LP)
- [084] Luna - The Days of Our Nights (Jericho CD)
- [258] Luna - The Days of Our Nights (Elektra promo CD)
This week’s anniversaries
1st August 2011
As well as Dean’s birthday the 1st August is also the anniversary of Luna’s show at the World Trade Center in 2011 - I wrote about it, and what followed in a blog post five years ago:
OK that’ll do but… imagine me down the front here (I don’t think I was at this gig but was at many like this).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3y9xisGOpc