Galaxie 500

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This article is about the US alternative rock band. For other uses, see Galaxie.
Album cover for On Fire
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Album cover for On Fire

Galaxie 500 was a seminal slowcore guitar band from the late 1980s.

Contents

[edit] History

Guitarist Dean Wareham, drummer Damon Krukowski and bassist Naomi Yang began playing together during their time as students at Harvard University. In their early years, Krukowski didn't own a drum kit, so he borrowed one from his Harvard classmate Conan O'Brien, who'd bought a kit but had recently given up playing it. This drum kit can be heard on many of Galaxie 500's early recordings.. In interviews on the Galaxie 500 DVD "Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste", Wareham cites the Spacemen 3 as another key inspiration. The band's name comes from a Ford car of the 1960s, the Ford Galaxie 500.

Galaxie 500 leveraged fairly minimal instrumental technique with intense atmospherics, provided by producer Mark Kramer, and their distinctive sound bore an influence beyond the small audience for their independently released albums. With Kramer's live sound production at the mixing board at the band's every gig, the sound and the increasingly loyal audience grew with each release until Wareham quit the band in 1991 to form Luna.

Krukowski and Yang, devastated by Wareham's departure, remained inactive for two years until Kramer convinced them to return to his Noise New Jersey recording studio. They continued to record under the moniker Damon and Naomi (whose first two releases were also produced by Kramer), and additionally began the avant-garde press Exact Change.

Galaxie 500's records were released in the US and UK on the independent Rough Trade label. When Rough Trade went bankrupt in 1991, the group purchased the masters at auction, reissuing them on Ryko in 1997.

[edit] Cover Material

The group's oeuvre included a fair amount of cover songs, often with arrangements that were drastically different from their original counterparts. These include:

[edit] Trivia

  • In Liz Phair's song "Stratford-on-Guy", she sings, "And I was pretending that I was in a Galaxie 500 video". [1]
  • In Xiu Xiu's song "Dr. Troll", he sings, "Listen to On Fire and pretend someone could love you."
  • The Brian Jonestown Massacre have an album titled ...And This Is Our Music, a reference to Galaxie 500's 1990 album This Is Our Music.
  • The album title This Is Our Music was lifted from the 1960 album of the same name by jazz legend Ornette Coleman [2]
  • The band submarine did a cover of "Tugboat" on their "Jodie Foster" single for Ultimate Recording Company.


[edit] Discography

[edit] Albums

  • Today (1988)
  • On Fire (1989)
  • This Is Our Music (1990)
  • Copenhagen [Live] (1997)
  • The Portable Galaxie 500 [Best of] (1998)
  • Uncollected [Rarities] (2004)
  • Galaxie 500 Peel Sessions [Radio Broadcasts from 1989 and 1990 on the BBC's John Peel Show] (2005)

[edit] Singles

  • "Tugboat" (1988)
  • "Blue Thunder" (1989)
  • "Fourth of July" (1990)

[edit] DVD

  • Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste (2004)

[edit] External links

  • A Head Full of Wishes – comprehensive site that includes a discography, lyrics, tablature, and a tour and setlist archive.
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