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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Being a rock and roll tourist
Once upon a time I’d go and see the bands I loved when they came through town… it helped that my “town” was London, and pretty much everyone did come through. But I’d very rarely go see bands elsewhere. I was content to see the band once and then wait until the next time they passed through.
I do remember, back in my metal days, of trips to Birmingham and Manchester and some south coast towns to see concerts but by the time I was living in London it seemed there was no real point to it, short of the occasional trek to Brighton.
One of those trips to Brighton was in 1999 when Bob was over from the US for the London Terrastock, and we drove down to Brighton to catch Damon & Naomi (also over for Terrastock) - I arrived home in the early hours of the morning but still managed to post to the list!
Damon & Naomi hit the stage just after 10 and despite suffering some irritating sound problems still managed to dish out a scintillating set featuring a couple of new numbers, a few old numbers (NYC, This Car..., Information Age etc.) and a dreamy cover of Big Star's "Blue Moon". They were bullied into an encore by an enthusiastic crowd and left the stage too soon. Another D+N show another lovely evening.
Andy Aldridge - Galaxie 500 Mailing List (27th August 1999 - 02:23)
But that was just Brighton, hardly any distance at all really. I don’t think I’d ever really considered leaving the country to see a band, that seemed a ridiculous thing to do.
New York City - February 2001
In 2001 Luna played a series of shows in various venues in/around NYC and I somehow convinced Hazel that a holiday in New York, in February, might be a good idea. So off we went. That weekend Luna played two shows at The Knitting Factory. We were put up by Bob in a fantastic apartment high up in the city and walked too much and saw two Luna gigs… well I saw two, Hazel bailed on the second. This was also the trip that featured me melting in Dean’s apartment, a story I’ve told too many times.
February in NYC also meant snow which meant hours on the tarmac at JFK eating tiny bags of peanuts and hoping we’d make it home at some point! Sure there were two great Luna shows but it was all pretty exhausting for a naturally lazy person like me. So, the next few years were pretty much back to just London shows.
Porto - April 2015
In 2005 Luna split… in 2015 they reformed and came to Europe… but not to the UK! Suddenly my hand was forced, if I wanted to see Luna for the first time in over ten years (and I did) I’d have to go abroad. Now, Hazel’s not a Luna fan but she likes a holiday so after some negotiation we chose Porto for our next overseas jaunt.
The band have been mixing up their setlists quite a lot on this tour - the set was splendid but was tinged with concerns about what I never got to hear - of course if they'd played everything I wanted to hear the show would have been hours longer! Friendly Advice was a treat, and 23 Minutes was astounding... and the rest of the set was faultless - Bobby Peru, Pup Tent, Chinatown, Anesthesia, Still at Home etc.
They finished with Bonnie and Clyde... not Indian Summer... I think I missed Indian Summer most - off the top of my head I'm not sure that until Sunday I'd ever seen a Luna show that didn't include Indian Summer.
Luna at Casa da Música in Porto
We had a lovely week in Porto, did a lot of walking, ate lots of great food, saw a great Luna show, met some lovely Luna fans… and came home. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Berlin - April 2016
The following year we decided to go to Berlin to see Damon & Naomi, although this was the tour during which Damon fell down some stairs and wound up in a hospital in London when he was meant to be playing at Cafe Oto, all this was just days before the Berlin show so it did look like he might not get to see them, although we already had our tickets and room booked so we’d get to see Berlin. I got an email from Naomi at three in the morning after the accident assuring us that Damon had been given the go ahead to travel and that Berlin was on. This time as well as Hazel, I dragged the boy along.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpcM2DHfOK8
Damon & Naomi took to the stage played a short prologue set of oldies, opening with Judah and the Maccabees, and including Turn Of The Century, Lilac Land, How Do I Say Goodbye, Helsinki - and sprinkled with Damon filling in the audience with the grizzly details of their London adventure.
Then they played through Fortune - it was my third screening of Fortune and the film is still beautiful (and baffling) and the songs are gorgeous - the album stands beautifully on its own and The North Light is right up there with my favourite Damon & Naomi songs.
We were then treated to an epilogue of covers - firstly a blissful Listen, the Snow Is Falling and closing out the set with a divine cover of Sandy Denny’s No More Sad Refrains.
Damon & Naomi in London and Berlin
We had a lovely few days in Berlin, did lots of walking, ate lots of food, saw Damon’s bruises and saw a great Damon & Naomi show.
Paris - October 2016
In October 2016 Luna were back in Europe and so we decided to take the train to Paris to see Luna on a boat and, a few days later, Britta supporting Keren Ann at The Olympia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvzppIEGYwo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB2nDj-hZbM
After failing to manage to organise a pre-meet for this show we arrived at the venue to find the first act finishing, and the venue already pretty packed - I fought my way to the front and said "hi" to Ulrika before moving back to the merch stand to have a quick chat with Britta who was selling the Ts an CDs.
I moved forward again and found a decent spot on a raised area to the left of the stage before second support act Matt Elliot started. Under normal circumstances I might have found somewhere else to be during his set but the spot was good enough to hang onto.
Managed to be found by both Franck and Michael before Luna started but it was too crowded to track down any of the folk I hadn't previously met but said they were going to be there.
Another splendid Penthouse set was followed by a couple of sizeable encores including Sean doing Still at Home, plus Malibu Love Nest, Bewitched, Tiger Lily, Ceremony and Indian Summer.
Of course Paris was beautiful and, despite having been a few times before, we still did all the trad touristy things, saw the Mona Lisa from a distance, stood under the Eiffel Tower because we couldn’t be bothered queuing to go up, and walked lots and ate plenty including at one point with these two…
But… if we’re going to go through all the hassle of going abroad shouldn’t we make the most of it? Why see one show when we could see two?
Santander and San Sebastián - October 2017
In 2017 Luna played a tour of Spain and we flew over stayed in Bilbao, hired a car, and saw shows in Santander and San Sebastián, but oddly not Bilbao which happened a week later by which time we back home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh0IMdohRy4
We had a lovely few days driving around, seeing the sights… and eating, and walking.
Aarhus, Copenhagen, and Stockholm - September 2018
In 2018 we decided to follow Luna on the Scandinavian leg of their tour - the original plan was to have started in Hamburg but in the end we flew streaight to Aarhus.
We arrived at the venue while The Telenovelas were rattling through a sweet and faithful cover of The Go-Betweens Right Here. The stage was low and the room was spacious and airy. It was more comfortable than London which made for a more relaxed feeling show.
Aarhus's surprise was a fantastic Black Postcards, a song that took on a life on Luna's farewell tour of 2004/5 but had pretty much slipped out of the repertoire since their 2015 reunion. "It's never the same twice".
Luna in Aarhus - September 2018 (AHFoW)
Aarhus was … wet!
Next stop Copenhagen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYK_L4Qiim0
We took the train from Copenhagen to Aarhus sharing the carriage/journey with Joakim and Ulrika. We arrived in the rain and went looking for, and eventually finding, food. Always the priority on arrival in a new city.
Luna were playing in Loppen in Freetown Christiana, a strangely bohemian part of the city. We wandered through the drugs stalls and ate falafel and drunk lemonade ~ I'm not sure Freetown was ideal for my uptight-ness. Motorhead's Killed By Death played on a nearby radio.
Luna played I Want Everything which I was hoping to get to hear on this tour but hadn't turned up in the two shows so far. I noticed that Fuzzy Wuzzy had been crossed off the set list. That was a bit sad (luckily Mike also noticed the crossing out and took steps to rectify that in Stockholm).
The band were tight and the crowd were fans - Chinatown almost drifted into sing-a-long territory. It was a good show - but the heat and the crowds meant when the ending arrived it came as a bit of a relief.
Luna in Copenhagen - September 2018 (AHFoW)
We were only getting a day in each city, which was quite exhausting since we were trying to see everything. We failed but saw plenty.
… and, finally on to Stockholm:
Debaser was on the waterfront, it didn't have the character of Copenhagen's venue but it had air and space, it had high ceilings and a high stage. Also, when I arrived, it had almost no punters.
The venue slowly started to fill but it didn't seem like the show was going to pull a crowd. Then, all of a sudden it had. The audience was suddenly decent and enthusuastic and Luna made it worth their while. Tonights surprises was the first live outing for Luna's cover of Roy Orbison's California Blue; and a blinding Fuzzy Wuzzy to close the show (thanks to Mike's efforts)
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Luna in Stockholm - September 2018 (AHFoW)
Since we didn’t have another Luna show to rush off to we spent a little longer in Stockholm and visited the important places - the library, and Greta Garbo’s grave
Then 2020 happened and COVID killed travel, and our reasons to travel, and we didn’t see a show overseas again until we saw Dean in Groningen last year - maybe 2026 will see us getting back into the swing of things.
When I was struggling to fill up a fanzine a few years back Hazel offered up a little piece explaining how much she loved the opportunities of travel my Galaxie 500 fandom provided:
If Andy hadn’t been a Galaxie 500 fan, I’d never have been to gigs in New York, Porto, Berlin, Paris, and Dunfermline. If Andy hadn’t been a Galaxie 500 fan I’d never have been to Abbey Road Studios and appeared on the cover of a single.
I’m not a fan though. I don’t see why I should be either. I like some of their songs but Andy and I have never shared a bond over the band unlike I suspect he has with a great number of non-family members. I see it like the relationship that you have with a partner who keeps an allotment or works on steam engines. You like the fruit and veg and the occasional trip out but generally you can leave the obsessive to it.
Trainspotter - Hazel Simpson (Everything's Swirling #1)