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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A Head Full of Wishes newsletter #70
Home from the Krankenhaus festival which, depsite the rain and lack of any AHFoW connections, was still a very enjoyable few days of music, train rides, woodland walks, and owls. Stereolab on Friday night were a joy, even if they didn’t spend as much time with their first few albums that I’d have liked. Here’s one of the two trips to earlier in their career:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzJAkrsOxgE
Firestations on Sunday evening were excellent, and I also enjoyed the sets of Exploding Head (well the little I managed to catch) and TTSSFU. On Sunday night Sea Power performed a joyous run-through of The Decline of British Sea Power.
… also, lots of festival food and coffee was consumed.
The rest of the week has been pretty quiet, back to the usual routine.
Happy birthday Damon
Another journey round the sun completed for Damon. I just noticed that while I have quite a few pics of me with Naomi I seem to have none with me and Damon. Hopefully I’ll fix that next time they’re over. In the meantime here he is, with Naomi, playing How Long from last time they were over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEKXvQodCsE
Of course last time they were over they played an astounding trio of encores that have been released on Bandcamp and are well worth paying whatever you can afford for!
https://damonandnaomi.bandcamp.com/album/whats-past-is-prologue-live-at-caf-oto
Naomi Yang - film-maker
I’m not sure its been officially announced as yet but Naomi’s next project does already have a page on Naomivision and sounds absolutely fascinating!
Dean & Britta playing 13 Most Beautiful
Dean & Britta are playing a rare performance of 13 Most Beautiful at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, OK on Saturday (5th September), tickets are still available and it’s well worth catching if you’re within striking distance. Although I have no idea how many people are within striking distance of Tulsa!
Luna tour and new T-shirts available
Luna head out on a tour of the US that runs from the middle of September into October and in preparation they have made a couple of new T-shirts available on their website (and will of course be available at the shows). One is a new design by Rob Carmichael, the second is a new edition of the “Faye Dunaway” shirt that the band first used in 1993.
You can see all of Luna’s upcoming dates here with ticket links.
My record collection [383] Luna - EP (Shock CD)
1998 was almost certainly the year when I became a collector of all things AHFoW related. Up until then I just bought the records that were released and easily tracked down, in shops. But in 1998 this EP came out and was released by Australian indie lable Shock to promote the bands tour of Australia in September 1988†.
I actually can’t remember how I acquired this EP but suspect it was either direct from Shock, from an Australian online store, or perhaps a fan in Australia nabbed it for me. I was hoping the mailing list archives could shed some light but sadly not.
The EP contains the album version of Tracy I Love You and five tracks recorded live for radio shows.
- Pup Tent, Everybody’s Talkin, and Bobby Peru were recorded for KCRW, the sleeve says in September 1997, but my db says 1st October 1997 which I suspect was the broadcast date.
- IHOP and Friendly Advice were recorded at Pachyderm Studios (where Pup Tent was recorded) for REV109 in December 1996.
This is the second Luna release that is known a “EP”, the other one was released in 1996.
I wrote about the sleeve in the second part of the Substack post about Luna’s sleeves:
Justin Harwood recently posted a flyer on his Instagram for a show at The Supper Club in NYC that he described as being “one of about 50 with different graffiti” - and some of those were collected on the front cover of this EP which was released to coincide with Luna’s Australian tour in September/October of 1998.
The “graffiti” artists listed on the sleeve are Sean Eden, Steve Ellis (I guess the same one responsible for Romantica above), Lisa Burnett & Kirsten Collins (although on Justin’s Instagram post the Devo artwork was credited to Mollie Brown.)
The defaced photo was taken by Jill Greenberg.
The Luna record sleeve art gallery (part two)
You will notice the rather wrinkled state of the sleeve of my copy. This shows that as well as the point I became a collector, this release was also the point where my not being a particularly careful collector came to light. This got dropped this into the bath shortly after it arrived!
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/057
- Artist: Luna
- Title: EP
- Notes: Shock Records EP
- Packaging: Slimline jewel case
- Format: CD
† - Also in 1998 I subscribed to the Sub Pop Singles Club just to get a Luna single so this year was definitely the point at which I became a collector
My record collection [384] - Dean Wareham - The Dancer Disappears (promo CD)
This is another Sonic Cathedral radio promo CD that I picked up on eBay for the sake of the collection. The Dancer Disappears was the first single from Dean Wareham’s self-titled album released in 2014.
Unlike the other single I bought at the time, this one is maybe a little more difficult to justify buying since it is a one track CD and contains only the album version of the track.
But, I think I can justify it because it has some lovely promo rubbish, I guess written by Nat at Sonic Cathedral!?, to try and convince the radio stations to play it:
It's a disco inflected ode to having one last big blowout, and sounds not unlike The Go-Betweens getting down with New Order and The Field Mice.
According to the BBC 6Music last.fm account The Dancer Dissappears was played three times on the station during April 2014.
There was a video to accompany the single, but was closer to one of those “FilmFinders” clips that used to turn up on The Old Grey Whistle Test back in the day than it was to a proper video.
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/178
- Artist: Dean Wareham
- Title: The Dancer Disappears
- Notes: Radio promo
- Packaging: plastic sleeve
- Format: CD
- Bought from an eBay seller for £3.49
This week’s anniversaries
- Damon & Naomi with Ghost was released on the 5th September 2000
- It seems that 6th September will be the the eigth anniversary of the the last time that Luna played in London which let’s face it is far too long!
Well that’ll do for this week. The my record collection series is coming to an end in the next few weeks I’d be happy to take suggestions with how to fill my time when that’s all done!