When guitarist Sterling Morrison left the Velvet Underground in 1971, he completed a degree in Medieval Literature at the University of Texas... but as degrees in Medieval Literature don't offer much hope in the job market, he then began working as a deckhand on a tugboat in Houston. By the 1980s, he had ascended to the position of Master Mariner, and spent most of that decade working as a tugboat captain, with music as an occasional hobby.
In 1988, Dean Wareham's dreamy indie band Galaxie 500 released a single in tribute to Morrison's post-Velvets career path... and this is it.
I don't wanna stay at your party I don't wanna talk with your friends I don't wanna vote for your president I just wanna be your tugboat captain
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...
This is my last week off with Sam (after a few days back in purgatory last week) before the hard slog through till November (when I finally start my new job). So a few more days out have been planned... and a few more middle-aged King Cnut mumbles have been expressed.
Last week I spoke (at length) about how They are slowly trying to phase out real money in favour of digital / card spending, something that C agreed with greatly (pointing us all towards this article which shows that it isn't just middle-aged Cnuts fearing the end of money). Well, here's the latest chapter in that tale of woe... car parks.
A number of city centre car parks I've encnutered over the past few weeks have refused to let me pay for my parking with coins. The machines are taped up with bin bags, forcing us instead to use their parking apps. Occasional signs describe this as a covid measure, while others say nothing, which implies this is the future.
Like a true King Cnut, I refuse to use parking apps. I've tried and the hoops to jump through are just too many. I want to put a few coins in a slot, grab my ticket for the dashboard, and go. If I have to put my registration number into the machine (to stop me sharing a ticket with another driver... remember how nice it was in the good old days when someone offered you their unused parking ticket?), that's about as far as I'll go. But I'm not logging into one of the three dozen possible parking apps and giving them my life story (not to mention bank details) just to leave my car for a couple of hours on a piece of scraggy wasteland. I'll drive on and find another car park, thanks.
But I know my days of doing that are numbered. The faceless oligarchs who own our car parks don't want to pay attendants any more, and they certainly don't want the hassle of sending someone round to empty the ticket machine, count up all the coins, and take them to the bank... not when they can get us to shoot our digital cash straight into their veins. And I'll tell you who I feel sorry for the most. This guy...
Here's ten songs about parking and parking lots. Because song writers prefer to use the Americanism (I couldn't find any car park songs)... probably because most of these guys are Americans (apart from the ones who sing about valet parking - Brits with too much money, obviously!).
