Luna - Tell Me Do You Miss Me

The 1st Anniversary, but we have been together longer and only went through with the legal proceedings because she wanted to.
Three weeks later, we had our daughter.
I started our weekend by forcing her to watch Tell Me Do You Miss Me, the documentary about Luna’s final tour, or the “farewell” tour that they didn’t tell anyone until about half way through it.
She lasted an hour, which is a record of some sort.
I miss Luna, that always dependable and always reliable link to hipster N.Y.C. via the Velvet Underground’s third album through Galaxie 500 as channeled through Tom Verlaine’s clean guitar tone. Sure, I get the notion that Dean and Britta have carried the torch somewhat, but I miss Sean Eden’s guitar heroics and the documentary catches the creative tension between Dean Wareham and Sean Eden quite wonderfully.
Wareham’s kind of an asshole, and his autobiography that I’m reading (Black Postcards) rather reflects that too. I don’t mean “asshole” as in barking orders at everyone, I mean asshole in the sense of a very quiet, sometimes selfish, mindfuck-ready asshole. Obviously, someone I can relate to, with the exception of the “very quiet” part.
I have the very first Galaxie 500 single somewhere in my parent’s attic, “Tugboat,” the one on Aurora Records before they signed to Rough Trade. I didn’t think too much of it first, and it wasn’t until the second album, On Fire, that I really understood what was going on.
When the album came out, I brought it home and about four or five of us huddled in the living room of our big college house, loaded a humungous bowl of pot and smoked it while playing the album for the very first time.
“Who is this?” somebody asked.
“It’s the new Galaxie 500 record”
“It’s really good.”
It is really good, and the follow up This Is Our Music is even better. And just at the point where they released a kick ass single of “Blue Thunder” with Joy Division’s “Ceremony” as the b-side, the fuckers broke up. I just was done reading where Wareham addresses this, and as much as it pains me to say this, I kind of understand why he did it.
I still don’t understand why he broke up Luna, even after watching the documentary. Sure, there’s some tension between he and Eden, but no more than any other band and, apparently, not enough to destroy the creativity that the two shared together. The underlying reason seems to center around the band’s lack of success and inability to go beyond the “we have to sell t-shirts and other merch just to make a profit on tour” reality that is most bands contend with starting out. Luna, however, wasn’t a band that was just “starting out,” and after a decade of sharing the same Econoline, enduring the same jokes, and dealing with the same bullshit, it must have been enough to Wareham.
My reasons for wanting them to stick around were just as selfish as Wareham’s reason for disbanding them.
I met him once, got his autograph (and the rest of Luna’s) when they played an off-night gig at Gabe’s Oasis in the mid-90’s. By “off-night”, I mean mid-week, because we don’t get those kinds of cool gigs on the weekends. I dragged Brad Company with me, but he spent more time hitting on this chick in the crowd than listening. Too bad, because they fucking ruled. When they came back for an encore, I yelled out for “Indian Summer,” their version of the Beat Happening song. The guy standing next to me yelled out for “Ride Into The Sun,” their version of the Velvet Underground song. When Sean heard the other dude screaming for “Ride,” he shook his head and said “Nope!”
They played “Indian Summer.” I was stoked.
I brought my sleeve to the Slide e.p. up to the stage afterwards and thanked Dean for coming to Iowa.
“Yeah….I don’t think we ever played here with Galaxie 500…Thanks for coming out tonight.”
I noticed a dialect, assumed it was Northeastern, but the documentary hints at a New Zealand accent, which I never knew about until reading his book that he moved to the states from there as a child.
Check out the documentary (the book is good too), I recommend it and I recommended that my wife get a schoolgirl outfit like Britta’s in the movie.
Maybe that’s the 2nd anniversary.
Sidenote: as part of the N.Y.C. chicdom that Luna emanates, we spent the night at the Hotel Vetro in I.C., and discovered a bunch of young fucks carrying cases of Coors Light to their room. Apparently, the high-end feel of the Vetro doesn’t prevent them from checking out rooms for high school prom goers and, indeed, we noticed a few drunken squeals throughout the night during our stay. The fucks also started filling up Formosa while we were there for dinner, which, by the way, may be my new favorite place for sushi here in EIA.
Check the clip of the doc.