Galaxie 500 - Today

half of Galaxie's charm owns itself to Kramer's unique production sound.

I should be more adventurous I guess by their cover of 'Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste' is one of the best cover versions ever in my opinion.

Aside of that I have a soft spot of 'It's Getting Late'.

. . . and yeah, Kramer's production makes the Galaxie 500 LP's something special. By contrast Luna sound to shiny to my ears.

"By contrast Luna sound to shiny to my ears"

exactly

about Go To Waste: when the original version is only vocals, it's not suck a hard task to make a better cover, though regardless: they did a great job of course

great choice for a cover

this is tugboat tho, let's b real.

otm

Flowers vs Waste vs Tugboat

King of Spain

no bonus tracks,outsmart

great album. what impresses me is how the naivete of the lyrics/music never sounds faux or cutesy -- and the band is made up of Harvard grads! Maybe Kramer's production has something to do with it, not sure. Could probably vote for at least half of these songs.

tangentially related - damon krukowski has a new blog here: http://internationalsadhits.tumblr.com/
basically picking up where that int'l sad hits comp they did a few years back left off. fun stuff! ok, mabe "fun" isn't the word.

Temperature's Rising folks

instrumental, or pictures

kramer's production is overrated

Is this album really 24 years old? So much moping about in the first year at university to this thing.

Bought, I should say, cos Thurston Moore was raving about it somewhere or other.

This on one side of a tape, New Wave Hot Dogs on the other.

good tape! very 1988.

It was a very good year!

Temperature's Rising has always been the standout to me

Flowers

"kramer's production is overrated"

not true, especially after watching the live footage, which is much less effective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6o2mc-xKa8

haaa, love those clips of them on the basketball court. i think kramer's production is great, perfect for the band -- if you hear other indie-type albums from 1988, a lot of 'em have dated quite a bit. don't feel that way about G-500.

I've read interviews with Dean where he talks about them being "barely able to play" when they recorded Today; the two guitar solos on "Flowers" are amongst a very few which I get an emotional charge off whenever I hear them, so I hope that one day I am able to make such a rudimentary sound!

Are those Conan O'Brien's drums?

I've seen that video before, but never noticed the extent to which Naomi had mastered "sexy bass player pose" at such an early date. Maybe that's what lead to Dean's ultimate direction...

this is soooo "tugboat". as much as i love the album back to front...

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

alllmost voted "it's getting late" because it probably won't get any other votes, but ended up going w/ "don't let our youth go to waste."

"Tugboat."

btw these videos are pretty fun. YOU ARE THERE AT GLASTONBURY WATCHING GALAXIE 500. lotsa shoegaze haircuts.
www.fullofwishes.co.uk/2012/05/18/video-galaxie-500-at-glastonbury

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I voted "Tugboat" but it could have been any of them.

The thing about "Tugboat" is that you're lulled into this slow shimmer and then 3/4 through you notice you're in the middle of a hurricane.

I feel completely at peace with the results of this poll.

flowers and waste are probably my two least favourite galaxie songs. tugboat is just overplayed but i can remember a time it still felt powerful

I missed this poll, but would have voted for "Temperature's Rising". "Pictures" and "Parking Lot" are so great, nobody voted for those but "Instrumental" got a vote?

i voted for instrumental but probably should have gone for pictures

was instrumental in a car commercial some years back or did i dream that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naPtNSN5r-o

haha, there you go. the internet.

"Pictures" and "Parking Lot" are so great, nobody voted for those but "Instrumental" got a vote?"

otm

"Instrumental" is amazing too, truly channeling the reverbed rhythm guitar workouts on <i>Velvet Underground Live 1969</i> - probably the single most important direct influence on <i>Today</i>'s amazing sound.

http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/8993-the-cloud/

Galaxie 500's "Tugboat", for example, was played 7,800 times on Pandora that quarter, for which its three songwriters were paid a collective total of 21 cents, or seven cents each. Spotify pays better: For the 5,960 times "Tugboat" was played there, Galaxie 500's songwriters went collectively into triple digits: $1.05 (35 cents each).

To put this into perspective: Since we own our own recordings, by my calculation it would take songwriting royalties for roughly 312,000 plays on Pandora to earn us the profit of one-- one-- LP sale. (On Spotify, one LP is equivalent to 47,680 plays.)

"king of spain" - best bonus track ever

x-post-- interesting

I missed this poll, but for me it would have been a toss-up b/w Flowers & Temperature's Rising - tho I too would def had voted for King of Spain, had it been included.

Excellent article from Damon, there - thanks for the link. I use Spotify all the time, but tend to buy the CD/LP/whatever if I want the self-righteous glow that goes with actually supporting a musician. Hardly Borgias level arts patronage, but still better than 7 cents I hope.

http://open.spotify.com/track/6ElLZf5e78E1YDlss0dz1O

Found a $2 thrift-store copy of this today, perfect shape. (The Ryko reissue, not as rare as I'd hoped, but still pricey online.) I downloaded it years ago, didn't make a big impression, shelved it. Sounded much, much better today. They always had this weird fascination for me, how they got a moderate amount of critical attention at a moment when what they do felt like a dead horse, when hip-hop was so much more interesting--that window between Husker Du/Replacements and Nirvana, say. I did go on to love a few Luna songs.