Going back to another idea I’ve toyed with here in past Postcards From Page Side columns, today I want to dig into the my past, and the world of now defunct bands that I grew up loving, and want to introduce to you. Instead of my typical “jamband,” I instead turn to the first “indie” or “alternative” band, besides the mainstream acts of the early nineties, that caught my ear: Luna.
Having heard a friend play a tune in a bar last week on the internet jukebox, I was inspired to re-buy 12 albums of the group’s from iTunes this weekend, and have been spinning their entire catalogue on a heavy rotation non-stop ever since. Coming from the Latin word for the Moon, the name Luna itself represents a natural satellite that not only rotates the earth, but also the insides of my mind and my visions and late-night memories of New York City.
Described by Rolling Stone as “the best band you’ve never heard of,” that certainly is how I feel a few times a year when I tear through the band’s catalogue and have a renaissance of mid-’90s Velvet Underground-esque sounds, before their final show in 2005. I’ve always associated Luna with a slightly cleaner and more romanticized lyrical version of the Velvet Underground, and that now makes sense after I learned they opened for them on their 1993 European summer tour. As their Wikipedia page also states (and I feel NAILS their sound to a ): “Luna combined intricate guitar work, traditional rock rhythms and poetic lyrics to elegantly capture the romance of the late night.”
