Galaxie 500

Galaxie 500, first promo photo, summer 1987.

Naomi Yang: "Summer '87 was after Damon and Dean graduated college in '85; I graduated in '86, so this was after my first year in architecture school. Damon and I had come back to New York for the summer and we started the band. This must have been late in the summer and since we had a band, we needed a promo picture. And so I had a camera and we went to visit our friend in East Hampton. We went into that house, and that's why it's these crazy lines, and he took this promo photo. This was on our first reviews for that first cassette; this was the photo that we used."

Naomi Yang: "This was where we had our first show [in Boston]. That was at this great crazy place called Chet's Last Call. Basically anyone could get a gig there. You just called up at a certain time, they just give you a date. A lot of punk rock bands played there -- everyone played there. It had this great crazy metallic wallpaper."

"I had always been doing graphic design. It's something I had done before I started playing music. In high school, I did posters for the school band productions. And between high school and architecture school, I worked for this graphic designer named Milton Glaser. He is a wonderful graphic designer and was my hero, and I was lucky to get this apprenticeship to his office where basically I did everything. I learned all the basics of graphic design which was all pre-computer and it was all about paste-up."

"The idea of trying to find a graphic image somehow was enticing and evocative...it was something that I was thinking a lot about. So doing a poster was very natural thing for me; it wasn't like a burden or a big deal. In fact, I really liked doing all that."

Naomi Yang: "We couldn't believe it. It was sort of the furthest that we could imagine of the extent of our vision was to actually have a real 7-inch single. It was fun. We were kind of surprised. It was a moment when the music business actually all of a sudden became very real to us. It was like, 'Wow, look it's really here,' but then all of a sudden, it was like this commercial object that means something else."

Naomi Yang: "The photograph is by Eugene Atget, who was a French photographer from the late 19th-early 20th century. My father was a landscape photographer. I grew up around classic black-and-white photography and cameras and images and Atget was one of my father's favorite photographers."

"I guess there was something about defining the title being 'today,' the moment the flowers are in bloom is so much of that very moment -- it's the day before it's buds, the day after or a week later it's all the petals have fallen off. I think there's was something about these sort of this height of this bloom having this emotional association with the word 'today' or being in the present. I think that's sort of how I chose it as an illustration of the title or the feeling, just kind of an elliptical emotional association for me."

Naomi Yang: "I didn't want it to look like I was taking [this photo]. I made this crazy elaborate setup because I had to rent a motor for my camera and I had to tape a bulb release -- a shutter bulb release onto the camera so I could press it and then it would advance the film without me having to get up each time. This was in Dean [Wareham's] apartment at the time in Jamaica Plain [in Boston]. I just put them on the outside when I got up to adjust things. I would make sure I had it framed, and then I would keep sitting back down, and then I would press it and then we would move around a little. It's one that gets used all the time."

Mike McGonigal: "Galaxie's music is completely original, but only subtly so. You could write some kind of rock and roll equation for their sound quite easily -- whatever, [the third] Velvet Underground album + K Records divided by Young Marble Giants plus the hazy gauze of Clay Allison. They were perfect for their time, and no one else sounded like them. Their lyrics were ridiculously simple, and Dean would play the same guitar line for every song. It was a total breath of fresh air."

Mike McGonigal: "I saw the group at the next possible show I could, for the New Music Seminar. It was a revelation. They were always a riveting live band, and were far louder for sections of each show than you'd ever get a sense of on their recordings. They weren't silly, fey emo kids; they'd tap into a whirling frenzy when they wished to."

From the photo sessions for Galaxie 500's third and final album, "This Is Our Music," 1990.

Naomi Yang: Damon [Krukowski] and I were estranged from Dean [Wareham] a bit at the point. And it was a really sad time. The photo session was really fun. They were all taken by my friend Norman von Holtzendorff at the time. This was all Norman's idea, He did all the styling in this. So some of these are our clothes but most of them are Norman's props, like Dean is wearing a leather jacket that belonged to Norman, but Norman turned it inside out. He ended up showing up with all these props and clothes and crazy ideas, like 'wrap yourself up in this black cloth, take off your shirt, hold this umbrella.' We just went with it. It's like very different from standing over the photographer and being like 'No, no, no, it has to look this way.'"

Galaxie 500, Paris, 1989.

Mike McGonigal: "I love that Galaxie 500 broke up when they did, because I doubt their fourth record would have been as good as the first three. There's only so much most bands have in them. And personally, as a fan, I'm happy that they aren't friends today, because there 'have' to be a few bands left who won't get back together to do these awful reunion shows where the groups are humiliatingly asked to perform their best album, in order, front to back, for spoiled brats holding phones the entire time."

Cover of the book "Temperature's Rising"

Mike McGonigal: "This book is fans-only, for sure. I want a fan to be super happy with this. We've made a special, limited version with a signed photo and very small run 7" for the super fans. But the regular edition of the book -- I love how well it was printed, and designed, and just the amount of ephemera we got from Naomi is staggering. There's her receipt for her first bass guitar in here!"