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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[377] Galaxie 500 - Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste (DVD)
The previous copy of Galaxie 500’s 2004 DVD release in this series was still in it’s wrap so this is the first look at the actual content.
Disc 1
Disc one opens with the four videos made for the band by Sergio Huidor. These had previously been available as tiny Quicktime videos on the box set discs (and subsequent CD releases) but it was good to finally have them in decent quality.
- Tugboat is packed with explosions and crashes and other violent imagery - intercut with occasional shots of the band. The film is dusty and scratches and the cutting is quick and repetitive and ends up being hypnotic, as well as disturbing. Naomi’s wearig her spiral earrings. - (Watch Tugboat on YouTube).
- When Will You Come Home opens with actual shots of the band, in colour, which is probably why it’s my favourite of the four. Dean’s wearing a Shimmy Disc T-shirt, It is intercut with other random shots, some with the camera pointed at the TV - (Watch When Will You Come Home on YouTube).
- Blue Thunder is completely colour inverted, someone a while back “fixed” the colour and popped it on YouTube but the band had the video taken down since it (literally?) contradicted the film-makers vision - it was nice to see the band like that though. It is the w/sax version. Lots of car crashes in this one - (Watch Blue Thunder on YouTube).
- Fourth of July is the one with sparklers and a gorilla and Naomi as an angel, which makes it the most fun of the three - although… more explosions and I guess literal Fourth of July references. Quite a few costume changes in this one - I think Dean wears at least three different shirts, maybe more - (Watch Fourth of July on YouTube)
Next up five live performances billed as a live archive:
Middle East, Cambridge MA - May 1988
An afternoon show supporting Beat Happening
- “pretty much the first time we played in front of an interested audience” (Damon)
- “the truth is we were just learning to be a band” (Dean)
It has two songs that were never released - a cover of Jonathan Richman’s “Back in Your Life” and an original called “Buzz In My Head”.
It’s sweet to see the band at this early stage.
Commonwealth School, Boston MA - April 1989
When Damon was collecting material for this release he asked me if I could ask the Galaxie 500 Mailing List if we had (or knew of) any videos of the band. Dan Pearson got in touch with me that he’d seen a video of them playing at The Commonwealth School under a basketball hoop. I mentioned this to Damon and he confirmed that they already had a copy of it andthat it was “one of the surprises I promised you for the finished DVD!” (on a side note Dan put on Galaxie 500’s last show and I wrote about it on Substack a few months back - and about Dan who sadly passed away at the beginning of the year).
So this is the “basketball hoop” show. Also you get a first good look at the Damon’s very cool bass drum head:
The Galaxie 500 logo was hand painted on Damon's bass drum head in 1990 by Sam Stone, who had been a sign painter in Boston since 1932 — the sign on his door said, "Sam Stone: Man of Letters". We asked him to paint the name the way a jazz band would have done in the 1930's or '40s and he obliged. He retired and closed his shop in 1993.
You can buy a T-shirt with the design on it.
Kennel Club, San Francisco CA - March 1990
This opens with a classic VHS title overlay which is so quaint (if I remember the next set has more of this). The band have a rather lacklustre liquid light projection. I love liquid light shows but this one is rather unimpressive - although maybe the muted VHS colours aren’t helping. Dean’s wearing a Spacemen 3 T.
Club Lingerie, Hollywood CA - March 1990
Yep a very high quality title screen for this one (thanks to VIDEO BOB).
Two days later and Dean is still wearing his Spacemen 3 T-shirt. Kramer is on-stage with them for Pictures and Ceremony. Dean’s voice is really struggling by the time the band get to Pictures. Two songs from this show were released as a single with pre-orders of this DVD set which I’ve written about twice - [088] Galaxie 500 - Snowstorm / Pictures (7”) / [222] Galaxie 500 - Snowstorm / Pictures
Kennel Club, San Francisco CA - October 1990
Back to The Kennel Club and another projection… although this one is more colourful and so better. Dean’s wearing a proper shirt and Naomi has her black and white flower earrings on. The show finishes with Melt Away which follows a storming version of Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste which seems an interesting choice - … Youth… sounds like a set closer so it almost feels like the band are being purposely contrary by playing another song after it.
I’ve always been rather impressed that the live archive section of the DVD manages to not repeat any songs despite being from five different shows. Although I do wonder if that means there were some repeats left off that we aren’t getting to see.
Finally on disc one is a performance recorded in London for MTV Europe that has a couple of songs and an interview with Paul King (whose band King had had a couple of top 10 singles before he became an MTV VJ). The YouTube channel ScottishTeeVee has a version of this that intercuts with a later interview recorded in the summer of 1990.
Disc 2 - BOOTLEGS
The second disc has bootlegged video of two complete shows, the first in Atlanta at the beginning of 1990 is fun. The band seem relaxed and comfortable and Dean is quite chatty. Dean’s in his Spacemen 3 T-shirt again and tries to blow some bubbles, and fails.
The second show is from London and this was the second and last time I saw the band live - I wrote about my memories of this show (or lack of them) for a Substack post a while back:
Our very last English show was at the University of London Union (ULU), the biggest venue we ever headlined. Kramer slathered us in reverb and delay, and we sounded huge. The next day we set off for Rennes.
Dean Wareham - Black Postcards (Penguin, 2008 - p95)
And so we come to the gig I was at, the second, and last time I saw Galaxie 500 - sadly I can remember very little of the show…
- I was there with Ken and Graham… pretty sure Nino was there too (I haven’t seen Graham or Nino for years so can’t confirm) - I suspect there were others I’d talked into coming along.
- I might have bought a T-shirt at the gig (although I might have bought that at the Subterania gig).
- It was pretty crowded, we arrived too late to get too good a spot so I was more than half-way back.
- Someone in front of us shouted for “Submission” between every song. The Galaxie 500 Peel session with “Submission” had been broadcast a just over a week before the gig. They didn’t play it.
The one other thing I know about this show is that Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt of Everything But The Girl were at the show. Tracey writes about it in her fab memoir Bedsit Disco Queen:
After 'I Don't Want To Talk About It' was a hit, Ben and I went to a gig at ULU (the University of London Union) one night, to see Galaxie 500. A couple of studenty Beavis and Butthead types recognised us and nudged each other.
'Look, I-don't-wanna-talk-about-it, chuckled one, and his mate quipped back, 'I-don't-wanna-hear-about-it, and they both snickered, right there in front of us.
Had we suddenly become people who were not supposed to be at a Galaxie 500 gig? Who didn't fit in there any more? Jesus, were we the enemy now? This hadn't been the point. How on earth had THIS happened? There were moments when I found myself wondering, 'Was this really what we meant when we said we opposed all rock 'n' roll?'
Bedsit Disco Queen - Tracey Thorn (Virago, 2013 - p208)
The booklet
The booklet has an interview with Dean, and Damon and Naomi by James McNew of Yo La Tengo - it actually reads like it was meant to be an audio commentary which would have been nice, but ends up as a written commentary. It is a nice read and you can hardly notice that it was obviously two interviews. It’s very casual and sometimes quite funny.
The booklet also has some photos of memorabilia that later turned up in the oral history book. The other significant bit of the booklet is on the back page…
Thank You
Sergio Huidor, Todd Ploharski abd Nick Wickham for their help locating master tapes used in this compilation; and Andy Aldridge and the Galaxie 500 mailing list, who helped search for live recordings of the band.
DVD booklet credits
OK, so just significant to me… but hey. It’s an official Galaxie 500 release that has my name on it. How is that not exciting?
I pre-ordered this from Plexifilm when it was announced - I actually bought two copies but gave one away as a prize a few years ago (although by then I’d already acquired the a third copy).
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 13/004
- Artist: Galaxie 500
- Title: Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste
- Format: DVD
- Bought from Plexifilm for $27.95 (+ postage)
Previously in my record collection: