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.
Substack
A Head Full of Wishes newsletter #38
My record collection [319] Damon & Naomi - Live in Tokyo, 19 January 2004 (CDR)
This is a CDR that has a few live selections from a Damon & Naomi show in Japan in 2004 that was released on a limited edition numbered CDR through Damon & Naomi’s website.
Sadly, this has gone the way of certain CDRs and has decided to become unplayable on any of my many CD options around the house. Fortunately I did rip it back when it did work - and it probably hasn’t been out of its envelope too many times since then so how these things degrade despite not being played is a bit of a mystery!
The album contains five tracks with 1.5 Damon & Naomi originals and 3.5 covers, and has Damon & Naomi accompanied by Kurihara (of course) on guitar, and by Taisha Takizawa on flute, an instrument that deserves more attention from the world of rock music!
The CD is in a PVC envelope with a paper insert that is numbered - mine is 015 of 100.
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/030
- Artist: Damon & Naomi
- Title: Live in Tokyo - 19th January 2004
- Notes: numbered - 015 of 100
- Format: CDR
- Bought I guess direct from Damon & Naomi on release.
My record collection [320] Luna - Long Players 92-99
This box set of Luna’s first five albums, plus an album of extras, was announced in June 2015 with an uncertain “Fall/Winter” release date. Captured Tracks announced it was taking pre-orders in December because of “overwhelming demand” and suggested it would be released in February or March. The album finally started arriving in June, a full year after the announcement and more than six months after pre-ordering.
In order to save on postage costs I had my copy sent to Mike in the US in the hope that someone would mule it over at some point in the future… that someone was Joakim and that point in the future was before Luna’s show in Oxford in October.
Of course, there was almost nothing in this box that I didn’t already own, probably multiple times, already so I’m not 100% certain that any of these have actually been played before, but happy to give them a spin now - but I’ll spare you a blow-by-blow account - I suspect by now you’re well aware of my love to Luna and my complete lack of any real objectivity or any real ability to describe what I’m listening to.
What I didn’t have of course are the following items:
LP #6 “Rarities”
Rarities was a collection of singles/b-sides and possibly only had maybe two or three genuine rarities - and since I already had almost everything on the LP not much was rare to me!
- Egg Nog - Originally released on the Luna not quite Christmas single in 1992, and on the Indian Summer EP the following year.
- Indian Summer, Ride Into The Sun and That’s What You Always Say - all released on the two 1993 EPs - Indian Summer and Slide.
- Anesthesia (demo) - this was released as a Dean Wareham solo single in 1991.
- In The Flesh - released on a 7” single in 1997 and on the Bobby Peru CD single.
- Bonnie and Clyde - the LP doesn’t say which version this is - it’s the Clyde Barrow version - the fast (better) version. This is probably the least rare track on rarities since it was the unlisted bonus track on the Penthouse CD which is the copy most people have.
- I Know You Tried (demo) - this was the only previously unreleased track so… a genuine rarity - and as far as I know this box is still the only place you can get it (officially).
- Roll in the Sand - this was released on the b-side of the Outdoor Miner single in 1996.
… and Dear Paulina - previously only released on a mail-order only 7” single in 1999 - it was lovely seeing this turn up on this box set although the loveliness was somewhat tempered as the sleeve of the single never made it into the booklet.
Luna - Long Players 92-99 (48 page booklet)
The accompanying booklet, despite the above mentioned omission, was a lovely piece of work containing:
- an oral history made up of interviews with Justin, Stanley, Sean, Lee and Paul Kimble… but not Dean!?
- an interview with Dean by Noah Baumbach - this had already shown up in Salon in May 2016
- a “collection of posters and flyers” from Dean’s collection - just a single page photo, annotated separately.
- a “collection of singles and EPs” from Dean’s collection also a single page photo annotated separately and with a missing single!
There was also a lovely poster by John Conley (who helped me a lot in the making of On Fire | 30 and This Music is Ours.
All in all a lovely package.
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 12/062
- Artist: Luna
- Title: Long Players 92-99
- Notes: Box set
- Format: 6 x LPs
- Bought from Captured Tracks for $100 plus shipping
This coming week in the past
- 23rd January 2018 - Luna recorded a live session for KEXP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gx_qoTJXGk
- 25th January 2019 - Zebulon in Frogtown, LA / 26th January 2019 - The Chapel, SF - a couple of the rare Dean vs Cheval Sombre shows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz5QxUAIRfc
- 26th January 2013 - Damon & Naomi played at Cafe Oto in London
This week’s discoveries and rediscoveries
-
Dean Wareham will be playing a show in Alameda in Chile in May which to my knowledge is the first visit to the country by anyone Galaxie 500 related (although my db is incomplete so I could be wrong).
-
Most of the episodes of Snub TV can be found in full on YouTube so you can watch it the way we did, and fell in love with Galaxie 500 and Snowstorm, back in January 1991:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fya8znG-CQ