Handwritten set-lists
A whole post of photos of abbreviated song titles scrawled on scraps of paper
This has turned into a very picture heavy post, and perhaps not as interesting as I thought it was going to be, the pictures are, inevitably, a little… same-y - but hopefully it’ll be of some interest to someone!
A band’s handwritten set-lists seem to have become quite the collectors item of late, so much so that Dean reported that at his Bristol show back in April “a couple of fans fought over a paper set-list” … which is a bit sad. I’ve never really been one to jump onto the stage and grab a set-list although I have acquired a few over time and I’ll come onto that a bit later.
I’m not sure I’ve seen too many handwritten Galaxie 500 set-lists, in fact I can only think of a couple. this one was posted on Flickr a few years back… and it has a bit of a mystery to it…
The list is from a show at The Cactus Club in San Jose, CA in spring of 1990 and when I came across it I was rather puzzled by the “(LOVE)” written towards the end of the set? So, I emailed Damon to see if he could shed any light on it. He couldn’t…
That set-list has us stumped, too. It’s in Naomi’s handwriting. My hunch is that might have been a working title for something we were developing -- I see we were playing Summertime already, but nothing else yet from the last album. Or was it to cue some stage business . . .? It’s in parentheses, for some reason.
—Email from Damon (15th April 2008)
… and here’s the set-list from Galaxie 500’s last European show, in Copenhagen in 1990 (written by Naomi, signed by Dean):
Having only seen a couple of Galaxie 500 set-lists, means I’m not sure if it was Naomi’s job to write them out, but, with apologies to Damon and Dean, I’ve seen all of their handwriting over the years and Naomi’s is far and away the most beautiful of the three so I would like to think so!
I do know that while Justin was a member of Luna, that writing the set-list was his job and I do rather love the economy he used when doing that - he rarely needed more than one word per song.
This one was posted to the A Head Full of Wishes Facebook group earlier this year and dates from (probably) 1994:
This is from Luna’s headline show at the Borderline in London in 1993, slipped in while they were touring with The Velvet Underground.
… and sometimes even one word was too much…
It seems that Justin writing out the set-lists pre-dates his time with Luna, a few weeks back he posted a set-list from a show in 1987 by The Chills and even commented on his word economy:
Once Justin left, writing the set-lists became Dean’s job - here’s one from Brazil in 2001:
Meanwhile, Naomi was writing the set-lists for Damon & Naomi shows, here’s one from 2001 in Utrecht, I love how she has given them numbers!
As I said my collection of set-lists is rather puny - the first time I remember getting one was when Dean & Britta played their first London show at The Metro. After the show had finished the list just sat on the stage… no one made a move for it. Hazel nudged me and pointed and I reached over and picked it up. Clearly back then there wasn’t the clamour for them there seems to be now.
Just to show how little demand there used to be for set-lists back in the day, occasionally after a tour, an envelope would arrive from Dean with a collection of handwritten set-lists from their recent dates.
After Dean played his Galaxie 500 set at Indietracks in 2014, Raymond Richards who was playing guitar on the tour, saved the set-list for me fending off the demands of another fan!
When Damon & Naomi played a short gig in Walthamstow Damon handed me both of their set-lists at the end of the show. A young woman asked if she could take a photo so I just gave her one of them instead. Lovely to see that Naomi is still numbering the songs!
Here’s one that I did grab from the stage, in Groningen earlier this year.
I did also get one from the stage at Dean & Britta’s show in North Shields in August, but gave that to a keener collecter of set-lists!
