Today Jonathan Richman reaches 61 (I know 61!!) – obviously he is close to the heart of A Head Full of Wishes… and here’s a few reasons why. Have a great day Jojo!

MP3: Galaxie 500 – Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste (live at The Kennel Club, San Francisco, 15 Oct 1990 – via box.net).
YouTube: Dean & Britta – Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste.
YouTube: The Modern Lovers – Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste.

MP3: Galaxie 500 – Back in Your life (via box.net).
YouTube: Jonathan Richman – Back in Your Life.

MP3: Luna – Fly Into The Mystery (via box.net).
YouTube: Jonathan Richman – Fly Into The Mystery.

In the waiting room of the Union Station

MP3: Damon & Naomi – Shine a Light (Rolling Stones cover recorded for Xfm 11th may 2011) (via Box.net)

Have a listen to The Rolling Stones original.

Luna - photo by Thomas Barrasso

Surprised I haven’t posted this one before. The Bad Vibe Merchant first turned up on the Beggars Banquet single of Superfreaky Memories and was also added as an extra track on the Brazilian release of The Days of Our Nights.

MP3: Luna – The Bad Vibe Merchant (via box.net)

Damon & Naomi have just given their website a makeover – it’s still in its infancy and it’ll take a while to fill up – but you can take a look over there.

Every so often, and in the case of record company websites, every album, a band’s page gets a makeover… here a little visual history of Damon & Naomi’s web presence over the years…

The Wondrous World of Damon & Naomi (1997)

Playback Singers (1998)

Damon & Naomi with Ghost (2000)

I think there’s (at least) one missing here – although if memory serves it was very similar to…

damonandnaomi.com (1997 - 2012)

Sean writhes half naked

After the filming we went to make a short film, an art film, to be directed by Sean’s old friend Matthew Buzzell. He wanted to interview me for the film, but first he wanted me to get loaded, so my tongue would loosen. We went to Musso and Frank’s for steak and martinis.

“Get the house martini,” said Matthew. “It’s made with Gibley’s vodka, but it’s perfect.”

After a couple of those martinis, I was tipsy, but not drunk enough for Matthew’s liking. He took us over to the Viper Room, where his friend Linda was the manager. It’s a silly place. The first time I was there, Wilt Chamberlain was exiting the club just as we were entering, stooping so as not to bump his head in the narrow corridor.

We arrived back at the Hollywood Roosevelt around midnight and got down to the business of making the film – Psychobabble. There was no plot and no script. Matthew made it up as he went along. The premise was that Sean would writhe half naked on the bathroom floor, while I stared into a mirror giving drunken answers to Matthews personal questions.

Matthew had one other suggestion.

“How about if you make out with Britta, or let her walk on your back>” he asked. “And I’ll film it.”

I didn’t think that was such a good idea. Not filming it, anyway.

Matthew went on to make the film of Luna’s final tour Tell Me Do You Miss Me and has recently directed the video for Elk City’s Jerks on Ice that features Sean Eden and can be seen (if you’re in the US) on the MTV web site.

After a few years of touring round both the “13 Most Beautiful” and “Dean Wareham plays Galaxie 500″ projects Dean & Britta are starting to work on new albums… separately. Dean this week headed to San Francisco to start recording his first solo album with producer Jason Quever of SF indie band Papercuts. While on the west coast Dean & Britta will be playing a couple of “plays Galaxie 500″ shows at the Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco on the 11th May (Friday).

They’ve also added some “plays Galaxie 500″ dates in NYC and Texas in July as well as another “13 Most Beautiful” show in New York in October. Check all upcoming dates here.

Today is Luna’s last drummer’s birthday…

Here’s Lee playing the intro to 23 Minutes in Brussels on a Japanese arcade machine…

Here’s Luna’s Astronaut which was co-written and, I think, mostly arranged/produced by Lee

And here’s Lee’s Bandcamp page with an album full of his advertising music

Dean & Britta recently provided some music for the film The Dish and The Spoon (which is getting a showing in Boston this Friday (today), Saturday and Sunday). The film is directed by Alison Bagnall who previously made the film Piggie that starred our very own Dean Wareham.

Dean Wareham in Alison Bagnall's Piggie

Uterus was an alternative version of the track that eventually appeared as Knives from Bavaria on Dean & Britta’s first album L’Avventura. The version made for the film had completely different lyrics. Dean & Britta posted an mp3 on their website but it got lost in a revamp – so if you missed it you can now grab it here…

MP3: Dean & Britta – Uterus (4.5MB via box.net).

This AVClub review of the film makes mention of the music including Uterus and a song I know nothing of

If nothing else, Alison Bagnall’s feature directing debut Piggie deserves a nod of welcome for not sporting a wall-to-wall soundtrack of quaintly droning guitarscapes, like seemingly every other American independent film today. Instead it’s only half quaintly droning guitarscapes. The other half features a set of off-kilter pop-folk songs, co-written by the movie’s star, Savannah Haske. Songs like “My Brand New Boyfriend” and “Retrograde Uterus” fit the personality of Haske’s character, at once childlike and sexually curious. They’re the muted cries of a woman whose emotions are stranded in girlhood.

While Piggie is probably Dean’s biggest role in a film, he has dabbled elsewhere…

A featured role in Matthew Ross’s short Lola – here’s the whole film:

A featured role in Pumpkin Hell – check that out over here.

A small appearances in (Untitled) by Jonathan Parker – a fair bit of Dean’s performance turns up in the trailer:

You may have also come across him in Mr Jealousy and Highball (both by Noah Baumbach) and an episode of Law and Order.

Damon will be reading from his recently published book of poetry Afterimage at Dweck Center, Brooklyn Public Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn on Wednesday 11th of April (that’s tonight!). The event starts at 7pm – more details from the Ugly Duckling Presse website

All I know about this recording is what’s written on the back of the Beautiful View CD single sleeve that this was released on. The track is called “California” without the usual parenthetical addendum and the sleeve informs us that it was…

Recorded live and mixed by Brent Sigmeth at Pachyderm Studio, Cannon Falls, MN

I’m not even sure if that means that it was recorded live AND mixed or recorded live THEN mixed… There is a (small sounding) audience applauding at the end.
MP3: California (live) – Luna (via Box.net)

Previously on AHFoW you can hear Luna reluctantly playing California (All the Way) on The World Cafe in 1997

Disappearing act by manyfires

Magic Hour were the psych rock band that Damon & Naomi formed with Kate Biggar and Wayne Rogers of Crystalized Movements (and Twisted Village) after More Sad Hits. The band released three albums and a couple of singles between 1993 and 1996. Sally Free and Easy, from the band’s first album, is the only Magic Hour song that was sung by Naomi and because of that, and because it was gentler and sweeter and folkier than a lot of Magic Hour’s output, it could have just as easily fitted onto a Damon & Naomi album.

The song was written by English folk-singer Cyril Tawney in the 1950s and has been covered by pretty close to everyone, from Davy Graham, The Pentangle and Bob Dylan to Flying Saucer Attack and a very wonderful version by Trees.

Magic Hour’s version is up there with the best and it’s a shame that it has been mostly lost to Damon & Naomi’s past (Magic Hour don’t even have a Wikipedia page… I should fix that some time!)

MP3: Damon & Naomi – Sally Free and Easy (MP3 via Box.net)

Cyril Tawney died in 2005

Nice Penthouse-era video of Luna playing 23 Minutes in Brussels at The Knitting Factory in New York City in 1995

Tom Rapp and friends soundcheck at Terrastock 6

The big news of the first Terrastock festival in Providence in 1997 was the reappearance of Tom Rapp, prime mover of Pearls Before Swine, and absent from the music scene since the mid 70s. On Thursday 8th March Tom will turn 65, much of his second coming involved Damon & Naomi (hence it’s appearance here) – they performed together a number of times, Damon produced (and they both appeared on) his comeback album A Journal of The Plague Year and appeared on the new recordings that appeared on the Pearls Before Swine compilation album Constructive Melancholy.

He seems to have drifted back into reclusion, his last appearance that I’m aware of was at the 6th Terrastock festival (here’s an mp3 of that perfomance) that took place in 2006.

Here’s a few bits and pieces (and I’ll add a little personal reminiscence down below)

Here’s Damon & Naomi with Tom performing Bob Dylan’s I Shall Be Released at the first Terrastock in 1997
MP3: Damon & Naomi (with Tom Rapp) – I Shall Be Released (mp3 via Box.net)

Here’s Tom covering Damon & Naomi’s Tour of the World also at the first Terrastock in 1997
MP3: Tom Rapp – Tour of The World (mp3 via Box.net)

Here’s Damon & Naomi covering Pearls Before Swine’s Translucent Carriages for the For The Dead in Space tribute album
M4A: Damon & Naomi – Translucent Carriages (mp3 m4a via Box.net)

Here’s Tom interviewing Damon & Naomi (and a little the vice-versa)

Here’s a review of Tom Rapp performing with Damon & Naomi in NYC in 1997

Tom Rapp fan page

After Terrastock in 1997 Tom got in touch with me, and sent me a tape of Damon & Naomi’s performance, we exchanged occasional email, I had only been introduced to Tom’s work a few months previously by Galaxie list member Bob who had put me two tapes together of the (then) hard to find records, so it was odd going from ignorance to exchanging email in a matter of months.

Tom played Terrastock in London in August 1999, his first appearance in London for almost 30 years… I had a ticket, I also had a two year old son I had to look after, schedules changed and I arrived at ULU just as Tom left the stage. After Damon & Naomi’s performance later on I got the chance to chat with Tom, a really sweet guy, to be honest I can’t remember too much of what we talked of (awe can do things to your memory) but we certainly talked about Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music – I had heard of, but not heard a great deal of it. A couple of months later and a large and unannounced package was delivered to my door containing the complete 6xCD Anthology with a postcard that read…

Hello Andy
Congratulations. You have won The Terrastock UK ticket stub drawing.
OK – Actually I have 2 of these – one was a gift – so now this one is a gift to you. Good to meet you at T3.
Tom Rapp

Blown away – doesn’t even begin to describe my feelings. That was 13 years ago, in those 13 years I’ve lost touch with Tom, I’m probably the worst person in the world at maintaining friendships.

The last I heard of Tom was that he’d left Philadelphia for Florida. Wherever you are Tom, I hope you have a great birthday!

Luna LPs getting first vinyl release

This just turned up on Dean’s Facebook page… it links to a blog post that doesn’t seem to exist but I guess more details are on the way Blog post on Dean & Britta’s website.

On Record Store Day (April 21, 2012) Double Feature Records will release limited edition (1,000 copies) 180-gram vinyl LPs of Luna’s Romantica and Rendezvous albums. Mastered by Scott Hull at Masterdisk, NYC, we just got test pressings in; they sound great and the images by Chas Ray Krider and Steve Ellis look beautiful too. These albums were originally on compact disc only; this is the first time they’ve been on vinyl.

OK… found the rest of the post - I guess it’ll reach the Dean & Britta blog eventually – post now on Dean & Britta’s blog – (and probably warrants kicking some life into Fuzzy Wuzzy).

The post also mentions that Bewitched will get it’s first ever vinyl release (on the Gotta Groove label) some time this year and that a vinyl release for Penthouse is also in the works.

Better dig out the deck and make some room on your shelves!

Almost exactly 20 years ago, on the 27th February 1992, Luna first arrived in London. I had been heartbroken by Galaxie 500′s demise when Dean decided that it had “become more like a job than a hobby“. In the nine months since, Damon and Naomi had released the lovely Pierre Etoile EP (under the (also lovely) name Pierre Etoile… which I’m still sort of sad they didn’t stick by), and Dean had released the, also wonderful, Anesthesia single. This made the break a little more palatable, so by the time we were standing in the Underworld waiting for Dean to take the stage with this new band that wasn’t Galaxie 500 I was getting comfortable with the idea of it – two great bands where there’d once been only one.

The show was great, of course, the original pre-Sean Luna line-up of Dean, Stan and Justin, was supplemented with Mercury Rev’s Grasshopper on guitar, and the band seemed comfortable with each other and OK with dealing with the “they’re not Galaxie 500″ expectations of an audience which, for the most part, like me, seemed OK with that.

I recorded the show on my new Walkman Pro – so new that I had no idea how it worked, so most of the recording is a distorted, muddy, mess. Before the encore I flicked a switch and turned a knob and managed to get a decentish recording of the encore, so here, recycled (again!) for your delectation is Luna performing Galaxie 500′s Temperature’s Rising as the encore of that first London show.

MP3: Luna – Temperature’s Rising – Underworld London 27th February 1992 (via Box.net)
Show details/setlist: 27 Feb 1992: Luna @ Underworld, London, UK (on AHFoW database)

“Bah! One track? Call that ‘recycling’?”

While in town that week Luna also recorded their only Peel session you can head over here and grab that too
Article and MP3s: Luna – Peel Session – 1992