A Head Full of Wishes newsletter #0003
I listen to the 2008 vinyl release of Dean & Britta's debut and watch the film of Luna's farewell tour + Luna shows in Texas, Dean & Britta in the UK and anything else I've come across this week.
My record collection [247]
Dean & Britta L'avventura (LP)
This was the first vinyl release of Dean & Britta’s first album released in November 2008.
While having a look through AHFoW to find out when this was released I found a news item that declared that this vinyl release would come with a CD copy of the album and I think this explains how the second promo CD came into my possession! It was added to the vinyl releases since the bonus tracks couldn’t be squeezed onto a single LP. Obviously this was fixed in a different way in last year’s RSD release.
The reissue was announced in July but was delayed by pressing problems:
There was a delay because the first test pressing had a flaw (nasty sound in the middle of "Your Baby").
- Britta on the Galaxie 500 Mailing List - 27th October 2008
Lovely LP of course and it was great to finally get it on vinyl only five years after its first CD release, Back Numbers took 12 years!
Catalogue Number: AHFOW 12/019
Artist: Dean & Britta
Title: L’avventura
Format: LP
Previously in my record collection:
My record collection [248]
Luna - Tell Me Do You Miss Me (DVD - region 1)
This is the US copy of the documentary of Luna’s “farewell tour” of 2004/5 and is, obviously, pretty much the same as the rest of the world copy with the exception of the region encoding. Wouldn’t life have been easier for everyone if they had made it region free in the first place? It’s not like it’s hard to bypass region encoding anyway?
This, I think, was sent to me by the director Matthew, or maybe by Dean - I don’t think I bought it (but did buy the UK copy).
I must admit that it seems odd watching the film now that Luna are once again a going concern, like so many of the reasons for splitting up the band turned out not to be good enough to stay split up. That means that they should never have split up in the first place… wait, it just occurred to me that I’ve written this before… just shy of a year ago:
Now, I tend to be of the opinion that when a band splits up, for good reasons, they should probably stay split up, and if there were good reasons to split up the reasons to get back together tend not to be as good (and are normally financial, which isn’t a good reason at all - although it may be a valid one!) But these days bands get back together all the time, maybe they should just not split up? The word hiatus can be quite a useful one.
My record collection [148] Luna - A Place of Greater Safety
… but, I still stand by that!
So… here I am watching it again - but this time with the commentary track, which I probably haven’t listened to since it first arrived…
Matthew: I lived a little bit of a fantasy of being on the road with a rock band. You know, everybody who's never done it kind of dreams about it. And so, it was it was amazing to be able to to have that experience. And I thank you all for that. But having said that, I don't know if I'd ever want to do it again.
Dean: It's like being in Lord of the Flies, isn't it? And someone has to be Piggy.
Matthew: Yeah, I guess I was Piggy.
I’m not sure how enjoyable the commentary is without the accompanying pictures but… I ripped it to an mp3 all the same…
Catalogue Number: AHFOW 13/008
Artist: Luna
Title: Tell Me Do You Miss Me
Notes: Region 1 DVD
Format: DVD
Previously in my record collection:
Quick links
The links this week are a bit Dean heavy since Damon & Naomi have been a bit quite of late.
Next week Dean and band head out for a month long tour around the US, you can see all the dates here (AHFoW).
Dean & Britta head back to the UK in August, this time as a duo - so far just two dates announced at The Trades Club in Hebden Bridge and The Holy GrAle in Durham (AHFoW).
Luna also have a couple of dates in Texas in December - apparently their only shows of 2025 (AHFoW).
Video of Dean’s complete set at The Austin Psych Fest (YouTube).
There are also a few of nice pics from the show (Austin Psych Festival’s Flickr).
Dean & Britta have been playing a loungier version of Luna’s Friendly Advice recently - in this video you can see them playing it in Liverpool last month (YouTube).
Part 2 of Discograffiti’s lengthy analysis of Galaxie 500 albums with Dean Wareham has been published for Patreon supporters (or to buy) with an added 10 minutes (Discograffiti Patreon).
The free version is available on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.Dean is also a guest of the Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions podcast talking with Jason Woodbury about - it seems to be a paywalled podcast but I managed to listen to in on Spotify (and I guess it may be available through other platforms).
Coachella Weekly has a précis of Dean’s career so far and a review of his latest album (CV weekly)
Video of Dean Wareham and band playing Galaxie 500’s Tugboat in Copenhagen last month (YouTube).
Dan from american.nz wrote about seeing Dean in Dunedin at the tail of 2024 (Substack)
