We are working on final mixes for a CD and vinyl edition of the songs we recorded for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, which will be released this summer. Meanwhile you can download a special re-mix/re-arrangement that Anthony LaMarca did of our “International Velvet Theme.”  All proceeds go to Target Cancer, an organization dedicated to researching and promoting new treatments for rare forms of cancer. Click here to listen and download the track:

www.righttracktunes.org

We are opening for Charlotte Gainsbourg next Tuesday at the Bell House, but it is already sold out, I’m afraid. http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2009/12/charlotte_gains.html

Interview with Dean in Perth Now: http://www.perthnow.com.au/entertainment/famous-faces/story-e6frg3gl-1225817425111

Interview with Dean for Womadelaide Festival: http://www.departmentforsound.com/2010/01/11/womadelaide-2010-dean-and-britta-interview/

Interview with Dino Stamatopoulos about new Adult Swim show: “Mary Shelley’s Frankenhole”

Nice little blurb about My Robot Friends song, “By Your Side,” which Dean plays on.

Source: The Sunday Times

Happy New Year!

Here are some nice reviews of our NY’s Eve show at Southpaw (with photos/videos), and some favorite year-end stuff…. - D&B

BOMB Magazine (w/photos & video): http://bombsite.powweb.com/?p=6835

Pixelhorse: http://pixelhorse.blogspot.com/2010/01/dean-and-britta-at-southpaw-on-new.html

Microphone Memory Emotion: http://microphonememoryemotion.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/dean-and-britta-on-nye/

The Sound Of Indie (Best of the Decade): http://www.thesoundofindie.com/?p=3801

Time Out NYC: Best & Worst Music of 2009: http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/music/81522/best-and-worst-music-of-2009

Vintage Vinyl: Galaxie 500 / Luna: http://bolachas.org/vintage-vinyl-galaxie-500luna-1989-2006

Flavorwire: How Galaxie 500 Stopped Me from Being Stabbed: http://flavorwire.com/9381/unpopular-opinions-how-galaxie-500-stopped-me-from-being-stabbed

photo by Britta Phillips (taken at our new Brooklyn digs - December 2009)

photo by Ryan Spencer (Bomb Magazine)

Check it out on TicketWeb - Dean & Britta at Southpaw on 12/31/09.

I thought I would share some photographs from our recent tour. Here are a couple from Barajas-Madrid’s recently-completed Terminal 4.

And here’s a poster that was hanging outside St. Giles-in-the-Field church in London’s West End, and the view from our Travelodge hotel window – of a new complex designed by Renzo Piano.

After London’s show we traveled by plane and van to Chalons-en-Champagne, a real picturesque French town in the heart of Champagne. This was the view from our hotel window in the center of town. After the show, the promoters generously poured fine bubbly for us.

On to Gijon, all the way north on the Atlantic coast of Spain, where they drink a different kind of bubbly – Sidra (a dry apple cider), poured in small shots from on high, the bartenders holding the bottle above their heads with one hand. It is imperative to drink the cider quickly, while it is cold and fizzy. We were lucky enough to have two days off here, and we ate well – baby squid, octopus, lamb chops, and a local stew called Fabada, made with white beans and pork shoulder and sausage. And we walked, down to the beach, past the Roman baths, up the hill to look out at the sea.

Our 13 Most Beautiful show took place at the Teatro Laboral, a beautiful new theater housed inside the Universidad Laboral, a truly enormous arts and educational building, that looks like it has been there for centuries, but was built during the 1950s, initially as an orphanage for the children of the city’s miners. Franco probably needed lots of orphanages, you can still see fascist symbols like the “shield of the eagle” and the yoke and arrows adorning the buildings.

We left Gijon at 6 a.m. the next morning, and saw a beautiful sunrise over Asturias. It was the day before thanksgiving, and we had a five-hour layover at Charles De Gaulle’s Terminal 2E (the shiny new one that collapsed in 2004). It sure is pretty though, and we explored every shop and restaurant from one end of the terminal to the other.

You see some odd juxtapositions at the Relay newsagent. When we came here in June I saw Michael Jackson with Friedrich Nietzsche. This time it was Albert Camus sitting next to French rock star Johnny Hallyday. Hallyday is currently in a medically-induced coma in a hospital in Los Angeles, this after a failed operation (in France) for a herniated disk. Apparently a couple of his fans were so angry about the initial operation that they donned black masks and attacked the doctor who performed it outside his home in Paris.

Home at last – baggage claim at JFK International Airport.

Three quick notes:

1. We are giving away “He’s Coming Home” and “Old Toy Trains” — last year’s Christmas 7″ single. “He’s Coming Home” was written as “She’s Coming Home” by the Wailers (from the Pacific Northwest, not Jamaica). “Old Toy Trains” was written by Roger Miller (”King of the Road,” not Mission of Burma) and our version is a collaboration with Sonic Boom. Just click on the link below and enter the code!

http://promo.11spot.com/deanandbritta/holiday_bonus

code: oldtoytrains

2. We now have Galaxie 500 T-shirts available at our online store — original 1988 design by Naomi Yang, black American Apparel 100% cotton shirts. And of course the usual assortment of CDs, T-shirts, “13 Most Beautiful… songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests (DVD) and signed copies of “Black Postcards.” The links have been updated so you might have to refresh your browser page for the new ones to load.

3. We are performing an early New Year’s Eve show at Southpaw in Brooklyn — doors are at 7:30p.m. and the show will be over by 10p.m. The opening band is Undersea Poem

Click here for tix

view all Dean & Britta Tour dates here

November 17, 2009

We have arrived in a windy London, after shows at the Tanned Tin Festival  –  in Barcelona on Friday night (at the Apolo, where Luna played our last show in Barcelona), and at the Neu Club in Madrid on Saturday night. We shared the bill with Cheval Sombre, who sounded great with both Sonic Boom and Britta sitting in on keyboards. We discovered an interesting Norwegian band on the bill Saturday night too – Rocket to the Sky.

Upon arrival here we went out for a meal which I shall not describe, and then went over to the Borderline and caught some of the set by L.A.’s Darker My Love. In the audience was one Mark E. Smith – an incongruous and surprising sighting, but apparently some members of Darker My Love have also played with the Fall.

We are at the Travelodge on Drury Lane, which I thought would be a step up from the Columbia Hotel, but it is not. Still, our room has a nice view of a new complex by Renzo Piano, and we are only steps from tomorrow night’s venue – the lovely St Giles Church. Anthony and Britta and I popped our heads in there today, on our way to Foyles bookshop, and saw a choral group rehearsing. This is going to be an intimate show, and you will be sitting in wooden pews if you show up Wednesday night. Cheval Sombre (with Sonic Boom) goes on at 8:15, we will start at 9:30.

- Dean

November 10, 2009

Tuesday morning here in New York, we are rehearsing today for a couple of weeks’ shows in Europe, Britta and I and Matt and our pal Anthony Lamarca, who is back with us for a bit after a couple of tours drumming for St. Vincent. Last night I deejayed at a fundraiser for Words Without Borders, an organization that promotes translation of foreign literature. Apparently only 3% of literature published in the U.S. has been translated from another language. The fundraiser took place at the Bohemian National Hall on the Upper East Side, and my DJ set started right after Paul Auster finished reading a poem to the audience. I should have started with “Moon Palace” but instead I led with Jarvis Cocker’s “Running the World.”

Friday night we’ll be in Barcelona, Saturday night in Madrid, both shows part of the Tanned Tin Festival – a small festival featuring just a handful of bands, including our friends Cheval Sombre and Spectrum. Then it’s on to London for a show at the Sonic Cathedral (also with Cheval Sombre) November 18, our first London gig in quite some time. We’ll play a mix of Galaxie 500, Luna and Dean & Britta songs. Then back to the Continent for shows in two towns we’ve never been to – Chalons (France) and Gijon (Spain). We have a few days off in Gijon; I’m not sure what we’ll do those days but apparently the International Bagpipe Museum is located there.

We had a great time in Melbourne in October, playing the Warhol show three nights in a row at the Malthouse Theatre, and a memorable in-store at Pure Pop Records in St. Kilda, where they sell records and CDs and have a little bar out back where bands play live. The in-store gig was organized by the Sand Pebbles (formerly penpals, but now real flesh-and-blood friends). I apologize to those of you who stood in a long queue (line) outside the shop but couldn’t get in, on account of the Irish folk band who were on before us running a bit late, and their fans preferring to stay and drink and hear the Sand Pebbles play great versions of “23 Minutes in Brussels” and their own “Speed and Intensity” and “The Day Summer Fell.” The whole afternoon was subsquently immortalized by underground comic Fred Negro.

Thanks again to Chris Hollow and Ben Michael X and Andrew Tanner and the rest of the group for showing us around Melbourne, showing us where to buy jeans and where to drink beer.

One other note - we are playing an early New Year’s Eve show at Southpaw in Brooklyn — onstage at 8:30, done by 10:00 p.m., giving you time to reach another destination by midnight. . .