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
The AHFoW Substack clip show
So, it turns out that last Friday’s newsletter was the 100th post in the A Head Full of Wishes Substack, and that the post on Galaxie 500’s London venues was the 50th Tuesday post of (kind of) new/original content and that means I can surely get away with a clip show!
I’ll pick out some of the bits that I liked best, not because they were the best written (I’m not really a writer, I’m a fan), and likely not necessarily the most interesting (I’m not an after-dinner speaker, I’m a fan) - just stuff that I enjoyed posting.
Before all that I thought it might be worth revisiting the first post and the reasons I gave for starting this new arm of AHFoW and see how they have panned out. You might want to scroll past this because I do get a little bit maudlin by the end of this section!
1. Most folk don't visit my website - this is sad but true - they'll read half a post on Facebook or Instagram and then move on - and honestly quite often the best bits aren't on Facebook or Instagram.
I think this is likely still true, and I’m not sure whether Substack has made any great inroads into getting my efforts in front of people. I’ve always maintained that I do this for myself but it is always nice to know that I’m not the only one reading it.
2. Not everyone is on Facebook or Instagram (or any of the other social platforms you can find me) and there is no single place to reach people who might find my ramblings of some interest.
I’m not actually too sure how #2 is any different from #1 - it was just my chance to have moan at the state of social media. The Substack of course just made this issue worse, introducing a new place to reach people.
3. The social media algorithms are skewed in favour of advertisers, and just like I don't want to take money from readers, I also don't want to give money to the likes of Meta or Alphabet, so even people who follow me on these platforms generally don't get to see what I post.
Substack does at least put my content into the inbox of subscribers whereas a follower on Instagram may never see my post. I know it’s slightly contradictory to wish for the alorithms but I don’t think my Substack posts ever reach non-subscribers to any great extent.
4. I have been using a Mailchimp email list, but that is a bit restrictive (for us mean people not willing to pay).
Substack seems to be a better way to get my weekly newsletter out than Mailchimp - although it has been more work for me since every newsletter is now lovingly hand-crafted while Mailchimp just grabbed content from my RSS feeds.
5. The platforms I use don't seem to have a culture of sharing (any more) - or maybe my posts just aren't interesting enough to share?
Maybe Substack doesn’t have a culture of sharing either, or maybe my posts are just not share-able - according to my Substack stats (and removing myself) apparently in those 100 posts other folk’s sharing has generated less than 100 views and two subscriptions :(
6. My blog doesn't allow debate or discussion very easily - and when it did it was often buried under spam.
Nope, very little debate or discussion on the platform - very few comments, no chat engagement of note.
Now there has been some engagement beyond Substack, a little Facebook, Instagram, or Bluesky discussion, I do get a few emails and direct messages about posts, and I genuinely appreciate all/any feedback or interaction I do get, it’s nice to know that while it is for myself there are others who might appreciate it.
All in all I think that sounds like a bit of a failure although, maybe the content is just a little too niche to truly get engagement when everything is so fractured, and there is too much pull on our attention. I am also aware that I’m just not aggressive enough in self-promotion so a lot of the blame undoubtedly can be placed at my door, but I’ve never been the sort of person who can beg for engagement or promote myself (I just stew in my own misery when some crappy Insta account does a lazy post of a Galaxie 500 picture and gets hundreds of likes while my lovingly crafted attempts barely get noticed).
The AHFoW clip show
Back in October I talked about Galaxie 500’s name:
https://aheadfullofwishes.substack.com/p/galaxie-500-the-band-and-the-car
Annoyingly I forgot to include one of my favourite stories about the car so am getting to do that here - this is how I wrote about it to the mailing list back in 2010.
Back in the early days of the mailing list I got an email from a gentleman by the name of Dallas S. who was absolutely livid that a lowly obscure band would name themselves after this wonderful car and that they were obviously useless because they couldn't think of an original name. He was incredibly rude, whining about how he'd joined the list expecting car talk and instead had obscure indie rock delivered to his inbox.
I pointed out to him that originality in anything was rare (and pointed out that his parents hadn't done such a great job on that front with his name) I also mentioned how he perhaps ought to have done a little research into the mailing list before joining and rather than shout at me he perhaps ought to shout at himself for not being smart enough to do that...
I never heard from him again...
Periodically over the years fans of the car would wander by the mailing list and website and most were rather sweet (if a little baffled) and quite impressed that the car had inspired the band name Mr S., however, was just a complete nob.
Dean & Britta’s COVID shows
I wrote two posts looking back at Dean & Britta’s livestreamed shows (and ad-hoc online appearances) and tried to frame it in the wider context of 2020 - although the wider context ended up mostly being about my COVID year(s). It was a good excuse to post a load of lovely videos though.
https://aheadfullofwishes.substack.com/p/from-the-archive-dean-and-brittas
https://aheadfullofwishes.substack.com/p/dean-and-brittas-covid-shows-part
Luna’s sleeve art
I wrote a couple of posts about the different art and artists (and designers) whose work had appeared on the front of Luna’s records. I love that Luna supported artists, and worked hard at making their record sleeves always interesting and often beautiful… and (almost) always just resisted using a band pic.
https://aheadfullofwishes.substack.com/p/the-luna-record-sleeve-art-gallery
https://aheadfullofwishes.substack.com/p/the-luna-record-sleeve-art-gallery-0d1
Covers by Damon & Naomi
It always gets mentioned Dean’s exquisite way with a cover, but Damon & Naomi are no slouches in this department so I wrote a post picking out some of the gems from their catalogue:
https://aheadfullofwishes.substack.com/p/covers-by-damon-and-naomi
Dean and Dean & Britta in the north of England
A great, long, rambling post about a surprising and thrilling week spent following Dean & Britta around the North of England:
https://aheadfullofwishes.substack.com/p/dean-and-dean-and-britta-in-the-north
If I can keep it up expect another clip show in another 100 posts!
Thanks for reading, thanks for subscribing (if you do), and… thanks for sharing this post :)