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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Luna in South America in 2001
Now, I have been known to travel to see the bands I love but must admit that I wasn’t in South America in 2001, I enjoyed the shows through the proxies of the Internet and the Galaxie 500 Mailing List. I probably wouldn’t really have been in a position to post about this tour at all if Fernando hadn’t got in touch and sent me pictures and reminiscences of Luna’s visit to Brazil.
In August 2001 Luna announced that they had planned a tour of South America starting with a date in Sao Paolo on the 18th September. A week before that first show the world changed (see 20 years ago in New York City for a round-up of how the events of 11th September played out on the Galaxie 500 Mailing List). This seemed for a while as if it might have an impact of Luna’s travel plans but the day before that first show…
The Brazilian Consulate in New York, closed since September 11, had finally opened for business, and Lee picked up the work visas for our South American tour. Expecting long lines and extratight security, the four of us headed out to JFK a good four hours before departure time, but check-in took a mere ten minutes.
Dean Wareham - Black Postcards
The tour involved twelve shows in thirteen days, ten in Brazil followed by one show in Uruguay and finishing in Argentina. The Days of Our Nights had recently been released in Brazil on Trama Records so squeezed into all of that was also some press/promotion work.
As 2001 was before YouTube and social media the mailing list, and Luna and Britta’s websites, were the main sources of information. Fortunately there were a couple of Brazilian list members and a couple of folk got in touch with me via the website and sent me some pictures - I have long lost touch with all of these people (that’s where social media has failed… at the social bit), I hope they don’t mind me digging them out again.
Dean wrote in quite a bit of detail about the tour in Black Postcards… I’ll try not to raid that too heavily but as it’s pretty much my only primary source…
The first two shows of the tour were in Sao Paolo:
Five hundred people came to see our first show in Sao Paolo, which was a nice surprise.
[...]
Eight hundred beautifuk people came to the second show. We were stunned. I was also stunned by the small jolts of electricity from the microphone. They didn't seem to have the grounded three-prong plug there in Brazil, just the two prongs.
Dean Wareham - Black Postcards
One of the “beautiful people” at that second show was Carla who sent me these photos… remember this is 2001 when our tiny screens and dial-up internet meant that 400 x 262 was an acceptable size for photos on a website!
Next on to Belo Horizonte, these pictures were sent to me by Pedro:
There is also most/all of a show from Belo Horizonte that seemed to get broadcast on TV and can be seen on YouTube, they’re all a bit low-res and have occasional sound drop outs - I keep hoping a better version will turn up at some time - you can see all the videos but here they are playing 23 Minutes in Brussels:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZdYAcqAHzE
On the 26th September they were in Sao Carlos and the whole of that show eventually arrived on YouTube - here they are playing Slash Your Tires:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idnf-KaSGVg