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.
Friday recycling: 30 years ago my life took a turn
This is recycled from my Everything’s Swriling last year - but 30 years seems a bit more significant than 29 so I’m reposting here… it’s a bit personal but… this is my blog
So… at, I’d guess about 22:30 on 27th June 1990 this happened (38 minutes and 22 seconds in):
… this pretty much changed the course of my life… as follows:
1990: I was working in the film stores at the BBC - not a great job but the pay wasn’t too bad (with some overtime) and enabled me to get out and see gigs. I’d already been there six years (apart from a 18 months as a film projectionist) so it was looking like I was stuck there.
22:30 1990-06-27 - Galaxie 500 returned to the stage for an encore after a brilliant main set - they were joined by Kramer and played Ceremony, followed by Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste. I was mesmerised.
1994: I’d been messing around with the internet from pretty early on and towards the end of 1994 I acquired some free web space. But what to do? So I taught myself how to code for the web and built a Galaxie 500 web page, because I still remembered that feeling from four years before. I was now a webmaster!
I’d now been working in film stores ten years… it was definitely looking like I was stuck there.
1995: I set up a mailing list for Galaxie 500 (and Luna and Damon & Naomi) fans.
1999: I’d managed to get a job working on a European digitisation project, I shared an office with BBC I&A’s first media managers who were then asked to help work on developing an intranet site for BBC Information & Archives - Research Central - I found myself roped in as the only person who had any experience developing for the web (becuase of Galaxie 500). I ended up doing quite a lot of the work on it. At some point it became my full time job.
Research Central changed over the years, it became research.gateway, and then Research Gateway - the job changed, the site changed - as people learned the web they needed less help and more tools - we gave them that.
200?: Actually I’m not sure exactly when, the powers that be decided that my skills (because of Galaxie 500) would be put to better use not as part of the archives but as part of the wider BBC intranet. Lots of people thought this was a good thing - but… taking me away from archives wasn’t good at all. Unfortunately over the following few years a variety of managers came and went and none of them had a clue what to do with us.
2013: After too many years of doing nothing and not getting anywhere I happened upon an advert for a job as the Webmaster at The National Archives. I applied for, and got, the job because of, you know… Galaxie 500. I was back in an archive. Home.
2020: 30 years on and I still get a buzz thinking about that show, 26 years on… still a webmaster.
