A Head Full of Wishes newsletter #59

2026-06-19
Categories: substack

Substack
A Head Full of Wishes newsletter #59

Well… the weather looks like it might have finally got summery and I’ll at last be able to fly the flag (T-shirt) around Whitley Bay… obviously unappreciated by the locals and summer seaside visitors… although to be honest I’ve no idea how I’d react if someone did acknowledge my impeccable taste in T-shirts.

Talking of T-shirts Dean and Britta have started taking pre-orders for a “Dr Kiko’s Tours” T-shirt in honour of their friend and Euro tour manager Dr Kiko who should have been 58 this week.

Kiko Loiacono (aka Dr. Kiko) was a much loved UK and European tour manager for Luna, Mogwai, the Growlers, White Fence, Gruff Rhys and many many others. He passed away in his sleep in 2022, the night before he was to undergo a procedure for a hernia. Kiko was a wild and generous character, he liked to buy multiple copies of his favorite records and give them as gifts. He spent his holidays raising money for refugees in Eastern Europe. In his honor, and after discussing with his sister Ameliana, all profits from these shirts will be donated to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund who provide medical and humanitarian aid to injured and ill children in Gaza and Lebanon.

The T-shirt is being sold in aid of The Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund and pre-orders are being taken in Dean’s online shop until 30th June.

Here’s a pic of the logo on Kiko’s van parked outside The Cluny in Newcastle in 2022.

Simon Reynolds book Still in a Dream: Shoegaze, slackers and the reinvention of rock 1984 -1994 has just been published - my copy arrived on Wednesday and it’s a fairly weighty tome so I haven’t made my way through it as yet (I’ve never been the quickest of readers) but first look makes it a very promising read. I’ve always been fond of his writing since he was writing for the Melody Maker way back when, and his Blissed Out collection from 1990 was one of the first books that opened my eyes wider than they had been up until that point.

Chapter 10 of Still in a Dream opens with a pic of Galaxie 500 so I guess I can now forgive him for leaving them out of the select discography in Blissed Out!

Earlier this week I reprinted Joe’s plea from 2017 to get Luna included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

https://aheadfullofwishes.substack.com/p/from-the-archive-vote-for-luna

Joe also recently has pointed out a number of omissions in the New York Times’s recent list of the 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters suggesting that Dean should also qualify for that list.

He’s written great stuff solo, with wife/bassist Britta Phillips, and back in the day with Galaxie 500 (Tugboat!). For me, though, Luna is where Wareham’s immense talent is most successfully realized. Every song through their seven-album, several-EP run is at least good, and an admirable percentage are excellent and beyond.

Stop the presses! Addendum to NYT by Joe Belk

Two newly digitised Galaxie 500 shows available to download

Two recordings of Galaxie 500 have just been popped onto the Internet Archive Live Music Archive as part of the astounding Aadam Jacobs Collection.

The shows were both recorded in Chicago, the first at the Cabaret Metro in March 1989 - the recording here includes a radio interview (of sorts) with the band before the recording

Galaxie 500 Live at Cabaret Metro on 1989-03-29

The second show was at the Lounge Ax in October 1990.

Galaxie 500 Live at Lounge Ax on 1990-10-12

The recordings are part of a collection of thousands of shows recorded around Chicago by Aadam Jacobs from the mid 1980s well into the 21st Century and the Live Music Archive is in the process of digitising and presenting them for download (or stremaing) via the Internet Archive.

It’s well worth wading through… if you have too many hours to kill!

Aadam Jacobs Collection at the Live Music Archive

My record collection [361] - Various artists - Homesleephome2

Homesleephome2 was released in 2002 by Italian label Homesleep and is a collection of cover songs and has Luna covering Jonathan Richman’s Fly Into the Mystery.

Luna’s cover had previously been released on a 5CD Benicassim compilation in 1998, although it was mis-titled on that release as Fly Into the Sun.

The album is a pretty cool collection but like all such compilations is a little hit and miss. Hits, as well as Luna’s contribution, to my ears are Life Without Buildings’ cover of Prince’s Pop Life, which suits them perfectly, although maybe it helps that I didn’t really know the original. The Zephyrs cover Greyhound Going Somewhere that Dean had covered on the Cagney & Lacee album and is cool but neither can match Bobbie Gentry’s version. Former Spaceman 3 bass man Bassman plays on a fairly straight cover of Spaceman 3’s Sound of Confusion with an Italian band Mirabilia, and then has a solo shot at Can’s You Doo Right. I also quite like Of Montreal’s take on Friends of Mine, but maybe because I love the original so much.

I think Fly Into the Mystery might have been another song recorded in the 1973 sessions with Kim Fowley but there are live versions from as early as 1971, a version finally got officially released on Rock and Roll with The Modern Lovers in 1977.

Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/094
Artist: Various artists
Title: Homesleephome2
Format: CD
Bought at the time of release, probably from a West End record shop.

My record collection [362] - Cheval Sombre - I Found It Not So / Where Did Our Love Go

This Cheval Sombre single was released in 2008 by Static Caravan and contains I Found It Not So on the a-side. It was produced by Sonic Boom and has instrumental contributions from both Dean and Britta. Britta also mixed it.

These two sides of softly building melancholia find Cheval Sombre teaming up with Sonic Boom, who features here as well as lending production touches, and with Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500, Luna...) and Britta Phillips (Luna).

I Found It Not So is infused with a sense of sleepy reverie; a low-key lullaby which echoes and chimes while floating around your sub-conscious. Sumptuously trip-wired with sveltely layered psychotropic glazes of looping out of body transcendental hypnotics, plangent guitar melodies creep and intertwine, moving to a warm climax. It's all topped off with barely-there vocals, a whispered dream filled with a sense of longing which belies the almost post-coital atmosphere.

Static Caravan website, 2008

In 2009 Dean & Britta played a show at St. Giles in the Fields in London and Cheval Sombre provided support. Dean and Britta, and Sonic Boom joined him to play I Found It Not So:

Cheval Somre - I Found It Not So (London, 2009) (play on YouTube)

Dean and Britta had covered the song for their 13 Most Beautiful project that debuted at the end of 2008.

I also saw Cheval Sombre (without Dean or Britta, but with Sonic Boom) at St Pancras Old Church in 2012 which was released on cassette (and digital) by Sonic Cathedral. Although, when I say I saw Cheval Sombre…

The b-side of this single has a cover of The Supremes’ Where Did Our Love Go which closed that London show and is also on the live album.

Catalogue Number: AHFOW 11/063
Artist: Cheval Sombre
Title: I Found It Not So / Where Did Our Love Go
Format: 7”
Bought direct from Static Caravan for £4 plus postage.

Previously in my record collection:

Upcoming anniversaries

20th June 2019 - Luna release Something in the Air

Luna’s cover of Thunderclap Newman’s Something in the Air was released today in 2019 with a show at The Social in London with a “special guest DJ” but no memebers of Luna. But a lovely if rather sparsely attended show.

22nd June 1990 - Galaxie 500 at Glastonbury

Galaxie 500 at Glastonbury (photo: Robert Richards (creative commons)

That Summer we were invited to play some festivals in Europe. First up was Glastonbury. It rained all week leading up to the Glastonbury Festival and the field turned to mud. Our shoes were hosed down before we went on, to clean off the mud we had picked up backstage, where the Happy Mondays were kicking a football around. I looked out at people wearing plastic bags on their feet [...]. We were the first band on the big stage on day one, playing at noon to thirty thousand people. I should have been terrified, but I wasn't. The people were so far away, and I didn't know any of them personally, except for Kramer who was out at the mixing board [...].

Kramer wanted to join us for a few songs, like he had done on the last European tour. But Damon & Naomi didn't want him onstage anymore. They now thought it was a bit strange to have the producer jump onstage with us, and maybe they were right. I said I didn't mind if he played a few songs, but they had made their minds up [...]. In the middle of our third song I heard a sound behind me - it sounded like someone else was playing guitar. Kramer. He had given the house sound engineer some pointers and had quickly made his way through the crowd to the stage, where he found my spare guitar and a spare amplifier. He couldn't resist - he was Kramer. He wanted to play on the big stage at Glastonbury.

Dean Wareham - Black Postcards

Galaxie 500 - Decomposing Trees / Melt Away / Snowstorm / Ceremony - Glastonbudy 1990 (play on YouTube)

SubstackA Head Full of Wishes newsletter #59