Dean and Britta are doing a show-a-month residency at the Zipper Factory in New York. To my surprise, the August installment featured a rare Galaxy 500 set. Over the past 15+ years, Dean Wareham has been the New York rocker laureate with his longest running band, Luna, acting as New York City’s resident house band – who played just regular enough to be criminally taken for granted. I have seen Dean Wareham, whether solo, in Luna, or most recently with Dean and Britta 20 times or so. Of all of those shows, I can think of only three Galaxy 500 songs that have surfaced in live sets. I recall Luna performing “Tugboat” and Dean and Britta recently performing “Ceremony” and “Strange”.

This show featured ten (!!!) Galaxy 500 tunes. Needless to say, the show was sublime. Imagine sitting is a small theater listening to this set performed perfectly. The set: “Temperature’s Rising”, “Tugboat”, “Blue Thunder”, “Snowstorm”, “Hearing Voices”, “Strange”, “Fourth of July”, Joy Division’s “Ceremony”, Jonathon Richman’s “Don’t Let Your Youth Go to Waste” and Red Crayola’s “Victory Garden”. It was good enough to make a grown man cry. I am sure many did. The second part of the set featured an equally killer Dean and Britta set which was just icing. Dean and Britta might be, and this is saying a lot, my favorite Dean Wareham vehicle yet.

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Download: Dean And Britta – Victory Garden (Live Red Crayola Cover)