![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Practice sessions took place in the basement of the freshman dining hall. Wareham and Krukowski were members of a band dubbed Speedy and the Castanets. The trio started playing together during their days at Harvard University. It was drone, it was dream pop, it was proto-shoegaze-it was always extraordinary. Galaxie 500 was a band that was greater than the sum of its parts: Wareham sang in an upper-register monotone, his guitar playing essentially limited to G, D, and C chords bassist/vocalist Naomi Yang admitted to often using just the top two strings of her instrument and drummer Damon Krukowski didn’t adhere to any traditional style but instead, “splashed around the kit.” But collectively, they created songs that-to quote Wareham once more-were “beauty and sadness and ecstasy all together.” The music was heavy on reverb, glacially slow in tempo lyrically, it focused on subject matter that fell somewhere between frivolous and mundane. Galaxie 500 was a band that took original ideas and let them spin out of control, understanding that wholly original music is sometimes about chance rather than choice. “Our basic formula was to play the verse and the chorus for a couple of minutes and then let the song wander where it pleased, not bothering to go to a bridge or come back for another chorus.” ![]() “We didn’t have the foggiest idea how to record a song,” Galaxie 500 vocalist/guitarist Dean Wareham wrote in his memoir, Black Postcards. ![]()
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