Fellow BGBer, Shaft, commisioned me with an intriguing task. He asked me to assemble a CD that would be my estimation of Luna’s greatest hits. Luna is one of my all time favorite bands. Perhaps, the favorite. As I set to work, I was blown away by just how amazing the band’s body of work truly is. Many bands claim to be influenced by the Velvet Underground; Luna included VU guitarist Sterling Morrison on one of their albums. Each song is better than the last. How do you pare this down to 80 minutes? Basically, all of Penthouse and Bewitched are included in this hypothetical “best of”. I might even have to put 23 Minutes in Brussels on twice - just because. 23MiB is the best 6:40 you’ll ever spend. Live, that song would easily go 10+ minutes. All of it awesome.

Luna Penthouse cover

But then it hit me. This is totally illegal. For some reason when I owned all of the CDs and a tape deck, this was a non-issue. I could make Shaft a tape without worrying about the jack-booted thugs from the RIAA kicking in my door. I still own every single one of their CDs, but burning a small fraction to CD (eliminating the tape deck) is totally illegal. WTF?

Sorry, Shaft. You’ll need to go buy your own. You’ll need to definitely buy Penthouse and Bewitched, in that order. Then buy Pup Tent. Then start filling in the holes in your collection. Note that with Luna, the holes in your collection will also include buying all of Galaxie 500’s albums. Then, you will need to buy Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips post-Luna albums, because Dean is the band. Then, you can buy the DVD of the band’s swan song tour, Tell Me Do You Miss Me. Of course, this has nothing to do with books. It’s just what I’m up to on a Saturday night. I leave you with Dean and Britta’s song Night Nurse. We return to our regularly scheduled programing on Monday.
[youtube]u5U8nZ-4oQ8[/youtube]