Tomorrow in Taipei, audience members at The Wall will find themselves bathed in the glow of two seasoned performers straight out of New York’s lo-fi psychedelic indie scene. Dean & Britta, a husband and wife duo that formed prior to the dissolution of their former band Luna in 2005, will take to the stage for a night of songs by Galaxie 500, the dream-pop band that Dean Wareham fronted in the late 1980s and which produced three albums and developed a strong underground following before breaking up in 1991. The Taipei Times interviewed Wareham and Britta Phillips by e-mail earlier this week.
Taipei Times: Why Galaxie 500 songs, and what’s the difference between performing them and original Dean & Britta songs?
Dean Wareham: We just saw the film Deliverance. “Why do you want to go down that river?” someone asks Burt Reynolds. “Because it’s there!” he answers. Well I am playing the Galaxie 500 songs because they are there and people want to hear them. The fan base varies from one country to another — Galaxie 500 was popular in England, Luna was more popular in the USA. It may be that Dean & Britta are better known in Taiwan because we have actually been there.
Photo courtesy of Dean & Britta
Britta Phillips: I love playing the G500 songs. There is a strong feeling of nostalgia and raw, youthful innocence and excitement playing these songs on stage and in the audience. It’s always fun to play something you haven’t been playing for a while, so I think we’ll be looking forward to playing some new songs after we finish this tour.
TT: How has the tour been so far? How do you feel the audiences respond to your music in different countries?
Wareham: We were amazed when we played Taipei in 2007 that anyone knew who we were at all, but we discovered we had lots of fans.
Photo courtesy of Dean & Britta
Phillips: Audiences are different. Not only country to country but also city to city. NYC is always great for us, but I think the most excited (and exciting) crowd we have played for so far was in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The audiences in Asia are quieter but very intense. I never jump up and down and yell no matter how much I love a band I’m watching, so I understand. France and England audiences are a bit “cooler.” Spain and Ireland are “warmer.”
TT: Now that the Galaxie 500 tour is wrapping up, what can fans expect from Dean & Britta? What’s on the agenda? Will you take a break?
Phillips: We just finished a film score, but we are both looking forward to writing new songs. I think we might both make solo albums next, but we’ll still play on each other’s songs.
TT: What can the audience in Taipei expect to hear, see and experience at the performance tomorrow?
Phillips: We are playing Galaxie 500 songs and recreating them as closely as possible to how they were played back in 1989. The songs sound bigger played live than on the records, but so did the original Galaxie 500 shows. It is a very moving, trippy, dreamy performance.
Wareham: A whole lot of Galaxie 500, but we’ll play a couple by Dean & Britta too.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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