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.
Review: Dean & Britta's last live streamed shows of the season
On Saturday Dean and Britta played what they described as ther last live stream shows of “the season” (not entirely sure what this means but… more on that later).
They played two sets once again using the Veeps platform and, once again, were enhanced with the addition of Roger Brogan on drums, SFX and technical support. Both sets opened with a video of various clips of Dean & Britta (some I’d not seen before) playing while Roger DJ-ed for half an hour before show time.
On time, and without any noticeable technical issues this time (save for the slight annoyance of the video struggling with autofocus) - Dean and Britta took the stage - and, this time, the stage didn’t involve a sofa - the shows were to be played standing up.
The first set opened with The Incredible String Band’s Air followed by Night Nurse and Galaxie 500’s Pictures. The duo seemed relaxed and were on good chatty form and the periodic dip into the chat-room didn’t seem as intrusive as it sometimes did in earlier shows. That chat-room was lively and fun and added to the enjoyment of the show. The show continued with more dips into the catalogues of Luna (Tiger Lily), Galaxie 500 (It’s Getting Late), and Dean & Britta (We’re Not Supposed to be Lovers). A highlight came mid-set when Dean mentioned that they’d had a request for Slow Song and demonstrated the similarity between that and Scott Walker’s Duchess by playing a beautiful cover of the latter.
As has become a key part of these shows Dean read a couple of poems - a baseball one by Rodger Kamenetz and John Betjeman’s Hearts Together which contains the origin of the phrase Emancipated Hearts.
The show wrapped up with another treat - a beautiful/perfect cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s Homeward Bound - a track that the duo had last performed ten years previously at a benefit show in Central Park.
A couple of hours break and 1:30 am (UK time) came around and the second show was on! Another lovely DJ set from Roger, was followed by the set openers Air and Night Nurse again - this was followed by Galaxie 500’s Flowers.
As it was now evening in the US Dean & Britta shared a drink and were, possibly even more relaxed - most likely because of how smoothly things seemed to be going… that, and the drink!?
The set continued in similar vein to the first show - with a few changes. Duchess was still there and tracks that hadn’t been heard in the first show included The Silver Jews Random Rules and Luna’s Bobby Peru.
Homeward Bound was reprised and the show finished with Galaxie 500’s Tugboat (as requested by Roger).
Both shows were wonderful - the sound was, again, excellent; the band were having fun and the lack of the occasional technical hitches that had affected previous shows made the whole thing a fine way to spend a few hours and made staying up until 3:30 in the morning seem a perfectly acceptable thing to do.
So, I have no idea what Dean & Britta’s definition of the season is but in the chat at the end of the first show I threw out the suggestion that they do a Christmas show, after all there are so many tracks that they’ve recorded over the years that would fit so perfectly in there.
Britta seemed up for it…
Andy: Sad this’ll be the last one of the “season” - you should do a xmas one! Start rehearsing Wonderful Christmastime now and you might have perfected it by December :) - thanks Dean & Britta!
Britta: Hi Andy! Already thinking about xmas songs we can play for a xmas time show
ahlicake: He’s Coming Home!
EggNog: Egg Nog?
itunongar: Listen the snow is falling…
Britta: @ahlicake HI! Yes! “He’s Coming Home for sure!
Andy: Oh you have to do it now Britta!
chriscecil: Superfreaky Memories..I always listen to that around Christmastime.
Britta: Eggnog for sure
Britta: Yeah, super freaky is a nice dark xmas song
Phil & DaraL “It’s winter in New Jersey…”
Britta: I def wanna do Little Altar Boy
Andy: Snowstorm – Old Toy Trains – Stille Nacht - you’ve already done so many seasonal gems
Britta: Hey, that’s almost a full set!
… so… fingers crossed! Feel free to keep up the pressure on them on your social-media platform of choice :)
If you want to enjoy the shows you can still buy tickets as they’re available to watch for a week - head over to Dean & Britta’s Veeps page for details