GoINDEEpMusic presents Flashback Friday featuring Galaxie 500.
Galaxie 500 are a well-regarded indie band from Boston, Ma. that formed in 1987. The band consisted of frontman Dean Wareham (vocals/guitar), Naomi Yang (bass), and Damon Krukowski (drums). The three met at high school in New York in 1981, but it wasn’t until college that the they started playing together while attending Harvard University. Interestingly, early on Damon didn’t own a drum kit and needed to borrow fellow Harvard classmate Conan O’Brien’s kit who recently had given up on the drums. Conan would later go on
to a lucrative late night television career and appear regularly in the GoINDEEpMusic Indie On TV section.
Galaxie 500’s music is described as atmospheric with a reverb heavy sound that have influences from Velvet Underground and Spacemen 3. Their sound has assisted in paving the way for the nineties shoegazer and slowcore movements, as well as low-fi indie bands of today. At the band’s first ever gig the crowd condemned them as a bunch of wimps and heckled them accordingly. However, the band caught a break when a college radio station picked up a three song demo and included the single “Tugboat” in rotation.
The band that is named after a mid-sixties Ford automobile, went on to release three studio albums
in their brief career.
Today (1987)
On Fire (1989)
This Is Our Music (1990)
As with most well-regarded American indie bands Galaxie 500 enjoyed much more success in the U.K. and spent most of their time touring Europe heavily. It wasn’t until 1991 that the band went on its first North American tour, opening for Cocteau Twins.
After a bitter break up in 1991, Dean went on to form the indie dream-pop outfit Luna with Stanley Demeski (The Feelies) and Justin Harwood (The Chills)…..those are all Flashback Friday’s for another day. Another musical project of Wareham is Dean and Britta that he formed with Britta Phillips who replaced Justin Harwood in Luna in 2000. Damon and Naomi continued together when Dean quit the band in 1991 under the moniker Pierre Etoile and sometimes as simply as Damon and Naomi.
The topic of reunion will always be prevalent among bands of this era, however in this case the two parties (Dean and Damon/Naomi) remain on not speaking terms. Dean has cashed in on Galaxie 500 nostalgia since 2010 by touring under the moniker “Dean Wareham plays Galaxie 500” and also including G500 tunes in his Dean and Britta sets. Naomi sums up a Galaxie 500 reunion like this, “If anyone wants to understand what it’s like to be asked to constantly reform your old band, think of it this way, imagine being asked to just remain the person you were when you were 20 for the rest of your life.”
Check out the video for “Tugboat”
Check out the video for “Blue Thunder”
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