I’ve been a committed Luna fan for about 30 years now, starting from the day I bought a copy of Bewitched during university at the Kitchener location of The Beat Goes On when I probably should have been studying instead of cruising the used CD bins of the Kitchener-Waterloo region. And, from those very first chords of “California (All The Way)” I was hooked and a fan for life. And what fans did in those early days of the internet was join mailing lists, and so before long I was part of Andy Aldridge’s A Head Full Of Wishes email listserv, which would eventually also become and archival website dedicated to Luna, Galaxie 500, and adjacent solo projects, and is now also a Substack newsletter.

I was always much more of a lurker than a participant thereabouts, but do remember the excitement when a mailing list exclusive 7″ for a song called “Dear Paulina” was released in 1999. I didn’t buy a copy because I didn’t have either a record player or much money to spend on unplayable collectibles, but I certainly did clock that there was now a Luna song out there that I had never heard and, given the state of things at the turn of the century, probably never would. And for a physical media completist, that stung. But I was able to move on with my life.

So a small deluge of memories were triggered when I saw Andy had posted his recollections of how the single came about – the original post came out last September but for whatever reason the Algorithm decided to put it in front of my eyes last month or so – and it’s a really fascinating read and a reminder that oh my god there was a Luna song that I hadn’t heard yet!

The making of Luna’s Dear Paulina single @ A Head Full Of Wishes

And so I rushed over and turned on the internet and after it had warmed up I went looking and found it on YouTubes and you know what? I heard it before. As it turns out it was the final song on the final record – Rarities – in the Long Players 92-99 vinyl box set from 2016. Even though I’ve probably only spun that disc a half dozen times in the past decade, if even that, I recognized the opening lyrics and yeah – it’s in my collection. So, simultaneously impressed and disgusted with my powers of recall.

The b-side to that original single though, “Seven Eleven”, that still doesn’t exist anywhere else and I know I’ve never heard it. It’s important to have life goals.