Support was provided by Cian Nugent. It turned out this was not some random pairing, as Wareham and Nugent had encountered each other previously in the United States. I am not fully assimilated into the ways of Mr Nugent, for all that I am a great admirer of the first Aoife Nessa Frances album, which he produced. So I enjoyed his set (him playing guitar and singing a bit) while feeling I need to engage more with his music. I'm sorry that union commitments prevented me from attending the launch of his album some weeks after the concert.
And so to Dean Wareham himself. He was not playing solo but was joined on bass by Britta Phillips (Wareham's long-standing musical and life partner, and also former voice of the title character in 1980s cartoon Jem and the Holograms) and two others on drums and other guitar. He started off with a couple of more recent songs from the Dean & Britta album Quarantine Tapes, which seemed very likeable. And then he unleashed "Blue Thunder", the opener to Galaxie 500's On Fire. After that it was all Galaxie 500 songs (or songs Galaxie 500 covered, which means we also got "Ceremony" and "Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste"). And it wasn't just the songs that Dean Wareham sings on record: room was also found for two tracks originally sung by Galaxie 500's bassist Naomi Yang, "Another Day" and a cover of Yoko Ono's "Listen, the Snow Is Falling". Britta Phillips sang these.
The show's reception was pretty rapturous, with cries of "Dean-o!" from the crowd by the end. That said, it did not reach the levels of near ecstatic devotion that I witnessed last time Wareham was playing Galaxie 500 stuff here, at which concert people were being shushed if they applauded too loudly.
The concert itself and the listening I've been doing since has had me thinking about what exactly was so great about Galaxie 500. When you listen to them the two most striking things are Wareham's guitar lines (alternatively delicate and soaring) and his angsty strangulated vocals. The bassplaying by Naomi Yang (basic but effective) and the drumming by Damon Krukowski (non-standard, jazz-influenced) also impress, but it is Wareham's contributions that stand out. And Kramer's production, obviously, which makes great use of the music's sparseness. And the songs, with their evocation of alienation and isolation, something that will always appeal to sensitive indie kids, and maybe that is where the group X factor comes in. The original songs are all credited to Galaxie 500 rather than to individuals, and there might be some alchemy to them working together here that made the band more than the sum of its parts (I don't think any of its members reached those heights in their post break-up careers). I found myself curious as to how the songwriting actually worked in practice: did Wareham produced the lyrics and melodies on his own, to which the others added rhythm stuff, or were they more of a group effort? From looking at Pitchfork's oral history of the band, it seems like they all contributed elements, with it not being the case that Wareham came up with all the guitar lines. The lyrics seem to have been his though.
So yeah, great gig. At this stage it might be a bit of a pain for Wareham that people are more interested in seeing him perform music from 35 years ago than whatever he is doing now, but such is life. It must also be a bit strange that Galaxie 500's music still inspires such intense fondness, but only from a relatively small group of people (Whelan's is not a big venue; nor was the Workman's, where he last played his Galaxie 500 tunes for us). While I enjoyed the show immensely, I did find myself wondering will we ever be blessed by Dean & Britta performing the music they wrote to accompany Andy Warhol screen tests (appearing on the album 13 Most Beautiful Songs).
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