Black Postcards: A Musical Romance

by Dean Wareham (Goodreads author!)

published	2008 by Penguin Press HC, The
binding	Hardcover
isbn	1594201552 (isbn13: 9781594201554)
pages	352
description	A bewitching account of the lures, torments, and rewards of making and performing some of the most interesting music in some of the most iconic indie bands (Galaxie 500, Luna) in recent memory...more [close] A bewitching account of the lures, torments, and rewards of making and performing some of the most interesting music in some of the most iconic indie bands (Galaxie 500, Luna) in recent memory What do you do if you're an outsider with a funny accent coming of age in alien bastions of privilege in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts? If you're a certain sort of kid, you front a rock band. And if you're Dean Wareham, you end up founding a rock band, Galaxie 500, that continues to enjoy what can be called notable postmortem cult success. And then you start a new band, Luna, which enjoys even more spectacular, albeit still "cult" success (which means they don't play your songs on mainstream radio and you never crack MTV), until, some fifteen years after it began, that band reaches its natural end too. And then you write a book about it all: an unsentimental journey through the great, world-wide indiemusic landscape. A wickedly honest and unsparing account of a journey through the music world-the artistry and the hustle, the effortless success and the high living as well as the bitter pills and self-inflicted wounds-by a brilliant and fearless participant-observer, Black Postcards is absurdly rich in rewards for anyone who was ever in a band or just took an interest in indie music over the past twenty years-a sort of Kitchen Confidential written by a different species of front man. Black Postcards also captures what has happened, for good and ill, to the entire ecosystem of popular music over this time of radical change, a time when categories like "indie" and "alternative" started to morph beyond all recognition. Rolling Stone called Dean Wareham's band Luna "the greatest band you've never heard of " and named its album Penthouse one of its 100 greatest rock albums of our time. Black Postcards is also about what it's like to have to pretend to be civil as you answer the same helpful question over and over again, "Why aren't you guys more famous?" Why indeed?
date added	10-01-07 edit book

find at: Amazon | Half.com | Barnes & Noble | Abebooks | more...

discuss this book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

friend reviews (0)

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 195)

Tim rated it:

03/18/08

Read in March, 2008

recommends it for: galaxie 500 fans, indie music fans.

Dean Wareham, former lead singer of the bands Galaxie 500 and Luna toured multiple countries over the course of the last two-plus decades. Now he's committed to paper a compelling set of his own recollections in Black Postcards.

I grew up on Galaxie 500. they were ‘the’ band for me, in many respects. They gave voice to all that teenage loneliness and angst; But the non-gothic, non-emo, variety. Less dramatic.
The kind you mostly kept to yourself.
The kind where you just quietly en...more
Dean Wareham, former lead singer of the bands Galaxie 500 and Luna toured multiple countries over the course of the last two-plus decades. Now he's committed to paper a compelling set of his own recollections in Black Postcards.

I grew up on Galaxie 500. they were ‘the’ band for me, in many respects. They gave voice to all that teenage loneliness and angst; But the non-gothic, non-emo, variety. Less dramatic.
The kind you mostly kept to yourself.
The kind where you just quietly envisioned another life not too far off from your own, but a little happier, or at least with more distractions in it.

A few Years ago Wareham contributed some liner notes to the Galaxie 500 box set, and while his bandmates, Damon and Naomi, both seemed to make reference to the band’s bitter breakup, Dean just focused on the tiny moments: on the makes of cars he drove, on seeing a pair of shoes on a telephone line, on a funny thing that happened outside of a club somewhere.

Black Postcards is an entire book of that. Emotions rarely rise to the surface, and even when they do, there’s a feeling an awful lot is still being held back. And all of it awash in this endless stampede of details. this is one dense sensory time capsule. Wareham is not quite an “unreliable narrator”, but there’s a bit of that in the mix, especially with regards to his romantic life.

By the end, I found myself feeling a bit sad for Wareham, for Luna, and for Damon and Naomi (who don’t get mentioned much past the first third of the narrative). Since Galaxie 500 formed, the sound-scape, scene, and industry has changed a mammoth amount. And guys like Wareham are falling through the cracks left and right. There’s always this feeling that they were ‘this’ close to the brass ring, that the life they were living, while a bit paler than expected or dreamed, was almost the life they deserved. It didn’t, or couldn’t last, but there was a lot to recall at the end of the road. And I guess that’s the feeling Galaxie 500 first imparted to me.

My brother got me Black Postcards for Christmas 2007, four months earlier than the books release date: an advance uncorrected manuscript.
It's one of the best christmas gifts i've ever gotten, and having this 'special' edition was just too perfect, like having someone score you the demos of the album before anyone else got to hear it. (But I’m talking about back in the days, before these things got leaked on the Internet every other week, back when you’d hold that tape in your hands, and meet up with friends in a dorm room somewhere and all listen to it in the dark).
And then when the tape clicked off, you’d call your brother to thank him for scoring the find, and argue about your favorite songs, and which would get played live when we drove up to the Middle East café, and when the seven inch was coming out, and what color the vinyl would be, etc.

My brother's the best!

...less

Like this review? yes

title link
avg rating
small image
med image
large image

Black Postcards: A Musical Romance

discuss this book

friend reviews (0)

other reviews (showing 1-20 of 195)

book data (includes all editions)

blog this book

popular shelves

other editions