A Head Full of Wishes is a site for Galaxie 500, Luna, Damon & Naomi, Dean & Britta and Dean Wareham. With news, articles and lists of releases and past and future shows.
My record collection
[201] Galaxie 500 - Copenhagen (LP)
Galaxie 500’s live album Copenhagen was finally released on vinyl for Record Store Day in 2020 - obviously because of Covid there wasn’t really a Record Store Day in 2020 - instead there were a series of “drops” where the scheduled records arrived in the shops. Copenhagen finally hit the stores on the 29th August.
The show was recorded in Copenhagen on the 1st December 1990 - that is 34 years ago today† - at the end of the band’s last European tour and was recorded by Danish National Radio, or at least some of it was. Turns out that from somewhere in the middle of Listen The Snow is Falling you’re no longer listening to the 24 track master!
That’s when I learned the radio hadn’t taped the whole show!
Andrea and Toby looked at me. Where’s the rest? I had no idea what had gone wrong. Because the cassette they had given us that night - for reference of how the show had sounded as it went down to tape - had more. All of Listen the Snow, and these encores.
Well, it seems they only recorded those to cassette! I guess they didn’t want to use any more expensive tape on us, once they had what they wanted for broadcast.
And so - you see what’s coming - from somewhere in Listen the Snow on, this is not from a 24-track mobile studio mastertape, it’s from a cassette that I threw in my stick bag!
Damon Krukowski - Copnehagen listening party (27th August 2020)
I still can’t spot the join!
The show, at just under an hour long, was too long for an LP, and too short for a double LP, so… it’s an LP-and-a-half, with the blank side filled with an etching by tattoo artist Matt Crocker. The fourth side etched art also made it onto a limited edition T-shirt - although there seem to still seem to be some available in the smaller sizes. There was also a “Danish style rye pilsner” to accompany the release.
Also, to promote the album, in the run up to release day a stack of indie/alt luminaries recorded covers of Galaxie 500 songs (or covers of the covers) - there’s a page on 20-20-20.com that collects them all - or a YouTube playlist if you prefer.
Everett True in his 1997 review of Copenhagen said that it contained “at least three moments of genuine magic”, and they were:
- “Naomi’s tentative, child-like reading of Yoko Ono’s ‘Listen The Snow is Falling’ with the guitar permanently set on echo”
- “Dean’s harrowing ‘Fourth of July’”
- “The closing, storming rendition of Jonathan Richman’s lament to childhood lost ‘Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste’”
Two of those moments are on side 3 of the album, and with ‘Here She Comes Now’ in the middle, makes it one of the most astounding sides of a live album (or maybe any album) there is!?
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 12/045
- Artist: Galaxie 500
- Title: Copenhagen
- Notes: Record Store Day 2020
- Format: 1.5 x LP
- Buy ‘Copenhagen’ on Bandcamp
† This was due to be posted in a couple of weeks time but I’ve shuffled things about so that it falls on the anniversary of the show.
Previously in my record collection: