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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Galaxie 500's last tour of the UK
I’m not sure that I have enough content to warrant this post, but since it’s 35 years since I last saw Galaxie 500 it seemed odd not to commemorate it in some way, so… here goes…
On the 1st November 1990, 35 years ago this week, Galaxie 500 started their final UK tour, over the next two weeks they played twelve shows around the country finishing up at ULU in London where I saw the band for the last time.
1st November 1990 - Riverside, Newcastle
The tour started at the Riverside in Newcastle (in the North East of England) - I moved to the NE in 2021 by which time The Riverside had been long closed - although I did a sort of pilgrimage, there was a plaque - it didn’t mention Galaxie 500!
2nd November 1990 - Venue, Edinburgh
My pal Murray was at this show… here’s his ticket
3rd November 1990 - College of Building and Printing, Glasgow
There are a couple of recordings of this show doing the rounds here’s their second encore:
4th November 1990 - Dance Factory, Dundee
I have nothing for this except that this is, to the best of my knowledge, the only time that Galaxie 500, or anyone who was ever in Galaxie 500, has played in Dundee. I’d like to hope that if it ever came to pass that I was living in or near Dundee that might change.
5th November 1990 - Liverpool, Polytechnic
It seems that Rough Trade had shelled out the train fare to send the inkies journos to Liverpool since the show was reviewed in both the NME and the Melody Maker a couple of weeks later:
They've got one beautiful song, and the fact that they repeat it again and again doesn't make it any less effective. It just makes it easier to lose yourself in the gentle layers of their dreamy whirlpool of sound.
Kev McManus - One Song Wonders (NME, 17th November 1990)
There's something very real about Galaxie 500, about hearing this incredible sound coming from these fragile, almost timid people... Dean, wistful in blue light; Naomi, swaying gently in crazy earrings, her fluid basslines defining the sound as much as Peter Hook's did Joy Division or Wobble's did PiL. Think of their antecedents - "Atmosphere", "Candy Says", "After The Goldrush" - and think how wonderful it is that in 1990 amid all the chaos in the world a band can still sound so untainted, so human.
Galaxie 500 - Liverpool Polytechnic (Dave Simpson - Melody Maker, 17th November 1990)
God, I miss being able to read prose like that week in and week out! There’s a postcard from Dean to Damon and Naomi from when he was over doing press in August 1989 where he writes “But these weeklies are more than a little ridiculous” - and they were, beautifully so!
7th November 1990 - Leicester University
Greg took this photo of Dean at the show at Leicester
9th November 1990 - Waterfront, Norwich
Sorry, I have nothing for this show either… I can’t even shoehorn anything in. Dean was scheduled to play a plays Galaxie 500 show at the Waterfront in 2020 (and I had plans to go) but COVID killed that show and it was one that never got rescheduled.
10th November 1990 - Leadmill, Sheffield
After the Dean Wareham show in Leeds earlier this year Janet came and introduced herself and mentioned that she had some photos from shows that Galaxie 500 played in Sheffield back in 1990, taken by her pal Scragga. A couple of weeks later these beauties turned up.
A while later a fat envelope turned up with prints so… they’re now in “the museum”!
You can see more pictures from Sheffield in a couple of earlier posts:
11th November 1990 - Bierkeller, Bristol
While Galaxie 500 were in Bristol on this tour Phil McMullen interviewed them for Terrascope, he talked about the interview for the Temperature’s Rising oral history:
What I hadn't realized when I walked into the dingy little dressing room the band had been allocated, was that here was a band at crisis point. They were barely talking to one another, let alone to journalists.
"How would you describe your music?" I asked. "It's bollocks," replied Dean. Thanks, Dean. Naomi was more circumspect, and came out with what I felt was the most telling remark of the whole evening. "People always ask me why I don't smile on stage. Why should I, though? There's nothing especially cheerful going on up there..."
Phil McMullen quotes in Temperature's Rising (Yeti, 2012)
The interview, in the Winter 1990/91 issue of Terrascope didn’t give (m)any clues to the state of the band. I’m not sure if the photo used in the magazine was from Bristol, but they’re all smiling… off-stage!?
Phil opened the Terrascope piece with a review of sorts of the Bristol show:
Nine dates into their November '90 UK tour, Galaxie 500 glided into Bristol, settled gently on the piss-stained floor of the chosen dungeon of a venue, and proceeded to hold the audience spellbound with their convoluted melodies and textured guitar tones. I trust they were spellbound anyway; most were silent, some stood and swayed and others just sat and hugged each other. It's ideal music for that sort of activity. And then Galaxie 500 would suddenly burst open at you like the unfurling of a flower in Spring, showering heads in colour and pollen and inviting them to step inside before devouring them completely with noise. And all the time the three of them just stood there, aloof and unsmiling, creating a fervour that sat shimmering in front of the stage, just out of reach of those who were tuned in and invisible to those who had dropped off.
Phil McMullen - Ptolemaic Terrascope (Winter 1990/91)
More ridiculously beautiful prose!
13th November 1990 - Goldwyns, Birmingham
I have nothing… I’m sure it was great… move along
14th November 1990 - International 1, Manchester
Wow! Nothing from Manchester either, two big cities letting me down. Galaxie 500 had headlined the same venue in June with Teenage Fanclub supporting, so, I guess you can watch that…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnZjs7Zq-rY
15th November 1990 - ULU, London
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.
There was a bootleg VHS of this show doing the rounds for years that eventually got an official release on the Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste 2xDVD - here’s Listen, The Snow is Falling from that show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuFD-gh7FbE
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)
