At risk of stepping on Rigid Digit's toes (if you've not been following his excellent series on car-related songs, you're missing a treat), this week we're looking at the Ford Galaxie 500. It looks like a pretty nice ride, and I'm sure it's no surprise to learn (even if you didn't know already) that there was a band named after it. But what are the chances of two bands picking that exact moniker...?
GALAXIE 500 #1
Dean Wareham, Naomi Yang, and Damon Krukowski formed the original Galaxie 500 in Boston in 1987. They released three fine and well-respected albums on Rough Trade until Dean went off to form Luna, before pairing up with (and eventually marrying) bassist Britta Phillips. They went on to make some fine Dean & Britta records together, with Tony Visconti twiddling the knobs. I've been getting into Dean's 2021 solo album I Have Nothing to Say to the Mayor of L.A. recently, but here's a classic from the Galaxie 500 days...
GALAXIE 500 #2
Completely oblivious to the fact that there had already been a reasonably successful band with this name within the last couple of decades, a bunch of French Canadian Millennials chose to paint the name of their favourite car on their drumkit in 2001. They released two albums as Galaxie 500 before Dean Wareham's record company became aware of them and sent some lawyers round for a chat. Hereafter they scraped the 500 off their drumkit and became known as just Galaxie. They appear to be still around today, making music that is best described as "aux limites de l’électro keys et appuyé par sa souche stoner-rock fondamentale". I love the fact that the French for "stoner rock" is "stoner rock". Like they couldn't be arsed to come up with anything else, man.
Personally, I think it's a pretty easy win for #1 today, but you are, of course, entitled to disagree...
