Luna DVD & Best Of CD | Jackson Free Press | Jackson, MS

Luna DVD & Best Of CD

"Tell Me Do You Miss Me" A Documentary Of Luna's Final Tour, Coming on DVD and BEST OF LUNA Features 17 Indie-Rock Classics From All Seven of The New York Quartet's Acclaimed Studio Albums, CD June 20 on Rhino, DVD July 11 on Rhino. Before the band's bittersweet farewell tour last year, New York-based indie-rock quartet Luna recorded seven studio albums of critically acclaimed somnambulate space rock. Rhino relives all the of the band's superfreaky memories with Luna's first-ever career spanning collection, THE BEST OF LUNA. Two weeks following, Rhino Video will release TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME, a loving documentary of Luna's final tour that just saw its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Directed by Matthew Buzzell, the documentary TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME follows the four members of the celebrated band – Wareham, Eden, Wall and Phillips – as they confront the ceiling of their ambition, the harsh realities of their modest success, and their conflicted feelings about each other as they embark on their final world tour and uncertain futures.

Taking its title from a line in the fan favorite "23 Minutes in Brussels" – TELL ME DO MISS ME is laced with moments of both humor and melancholia as the film earnestly exposes the underbelly of a touring rock band in their final days together.

Supported sonically with Luna's dreamy catalog of indie-pop and visually with lush travelogue footage with adventurous stops in England, Japan, and Spain, TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME is an elegy for an era.

Produced by the band's founder, lead singer, guitarist and lyricist Dean Wareham, THE BEST OF LUNA contains 17 selections from Luna's seven studio albums recorded between 1992 and 2004. The compilation features music by all of the different Luna incarnations that have come and gone over the years, including Wareham; bassist and keyboardist, Justin Harwood; drummer, Stanley Demeski; guitarist, Sean Eden; drummer, Lee Wall and bassist, vocalist and keyboardist Britta Phillips.

THE BEST OF LUNA draws heavily from the band's third album Penthouse, which was named one of the "Best Albums of the '90s" by Rolling Stone magazine. Songs from the 1995 Elektra release include the dreamy sonic gossamer of "Sideshow By The Seashore," "Chinatown," and "Lost In Space." "Moon Palace" and "23 Minutes in Brussels" – also from Penthouse – sever as the compilation's respective bookends and feature guitarist and vocalist Tom Verlaine. As a member of the seminal punk band Television, Verlaine helped shaped Luna's sound.

Music from 1994's Bewitched – the band's second album and the first to feature longtime guitarist Sean Eden – is also featured prominently on THE BEST OF LUNA, including the title track, "California (All the Way)" and "Tiger Lily." Also from Bewitched, "Friendly Advice," features guitarist Sterling Morrison, whose former band, the Velvet Underground, profoundly influenced Wareham's songwriting.

The remaining eight tracks on THE BEST OF LUNA – "Anesthesia," "Pup Tent," "Slide," "Tracy I Love You," "Superfreaky Memories," "Astronaut," "Lovedust" and "I Want Everything" – represent music from the band's 1992 debut, Lunapark, Pup Tent (1995), The Days of Our Nights (1999), Romantica (2002) and the band's 2004 farewell, Rendezvous.

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During its 12-year reign as indie-rock's dream-pop champions, Luna recorded a wealth of cover songs and scattered them on rare singles, EPs, tribute and soundtrack releases. Rhino Records gathers these extraordinary gems together for a special digital-only covers collection. LUNAFIED will be available June 20 at all digital retail outlets for a suggested price of $9.99. This digital-only album coincides with Rhino's release of TELL ME DO YOU MISS ME, the documentary DVD of Luna's farewell tour, and THE BEST OF LUNA, the definitive CD overview of the band's career.

Featuring 15 cover songs released between 1993 and 1999, LUNAFIED spotlights an array of artists that influenced Luna's one-of-a-kind "fuzzy wuzzy" groove. The album also includes an unreleased version of "Fly Into The Mystery," a song originally penned by Jonathan Richman and recorded by The Modern Lovers.

The collection opens and closes with distinctly different versions of Serge Gainsbourg's French-pop classic "Bonnie & Clyde." Originally packaged together on the band's 1995 Bonnie and Clyde EP, both versions feature Luna frontman Dean Wareham's duet with Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier. The "Clyde Barrow" version appeared as a hidden track on Luna's 1995 album Penthouse, while the "Bonnie Parker" version was an EP-only release.

LUNAFIED also includes a trio of songs from 1993's Slide EP – "Indian Summer" by Beat Happening; VU's "Ride Into The Sun" and The Dream Syndicate's "That's What You Always Say." The digital album also features "Dream Baby Dream," from a tribute to synth-pop pioneers Suicide, along with two tracks from the band's 1996 self-titled EP – Talking Heads' "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel" and "No Regrets" by folk singer Tom Rush. The collection is rounded out by Luna's unmistakable takes on songs by Donovan, Wire, Eugene Chadbourne, Fred Neil and Michel Polnareff's "La Poupee Qui Fait Non."

LUNAFIED
Track Listing

1. "Bonnie & Clyde" [Clyde Barrow version] (Serge Gainsbourg)
2. "Indian Summer" (Beat Happening)
3. "Ride Into The Sun" (The Velvet Underground)
4. "That's What You Always Say" (The Dream Syndicate)
5. "In The Flesh" (Blondie)
6. "Dream Baby Dream" (Suicide)
7. "Seasons Of The Witch" (Donovan)
8. "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel" (Talking Heads)
9. "No Regrets" (Tom Rush)
10. "Outdoor Miner" (Wire)
11. "Happy New Year" (Eugene Chadbourne)
12. "Everybody's Talkin'" (Fred Neil/Nilsson)
13. "Fly Into The Mystery"* (Jonathan Richman/Modern Lovers)
14. "La Poupee Qui Fait Non" (Michel Polnareff)
15. "Bonnie & Clyde" [Bonnie Parker version] (Serge Gainsbourg)

* Previously unreleased

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