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.
My record collection
[253] Galaxie 500 - On Fire (MC)
Oh look! I have another copy of Galaxie 500’s masterpiece On Fire on cassette. The spine of this one isn’t as faded as the previous one but otherwise… it’s the same as last time!
I bought this one on eBay in 2012, I suspect it was pretty cheap - back then you could pick up cassettes for pennies, they sell for 20 to 30 quid now but fairly sure I wouldn’t have paid more than a fiver for this one. I still don’t have Today on cassette and the way prices have gone over the last few years suspect I never will.
As well as my second cassette of On Fire, this is it’s seventh appearance in this series with just one more to come.
I’ve said before that I was never that fond of cassettes as a format and wouldn’t even have considered buying this at the time, why pay for a cassette when you could pay for a CD or an LP and put it on cassette! Having said that this one does look rather quaint… I guess I’m just softening up.
I’ve been listening to everything in this series (except any that are sealed (and even some of them) and the VHSs since I don’t have a VHS machine at the moment). Sometimes I think that On Fire is actually improved by listening on headphones, not for any reasons of quality (as I’ve said before many times, my heavy metal assaulted ears are probably not good enough to pass an opinion on that) but because it is an album to be experienced alone.
Shortly after the release of On Fire I was on holiday with some work colleagues, I thought they were friends, some were, but most weren’t. We were driving around Germany in a mini-bus, and drinking a lot in the evenings. I did most of the driving but occasionally someone else would take over for a while. I remember sitting in the back of the bus, putting on my headphones and listening to On Fire and realising that even in this crowd of people I was alone, that this wasn’t how my life was supposed to pan out. Back in London things changed. My life took a new direction, one I was finally happy with. I drank less, I found myself a place to be happy. I’m still there.
It’s funny that to think that Galaxie 500 have had such a profound effect on my life. Two genuinely life changing moments, one while sitting in the back of a minibus in Germany that changed my “friends” and how I saw my life, and one on stage at The Subterania that changed the entire course of my career.
I still listen to On Fire more than any other album and quite often on my headphones and it still feels like an album that has to be experienced alone. Try it.
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 16/002
- Artist: Galaxie 500
- Title: On Fire
- Format: MC
- Bought on eBay in 2012
- Buy ‘On Fire’ on Bandcamp
Previously in my record collection: