Damon Krukowski: We had a fight about songwriting credits just after finishing the first album. Naomi and I quit the band right then. Today wasn't even out yet. I mean, what was there to fight over? Naomi was preparing the album art, when Dean said he wanted to divide up credits for the songs. That's certainly not weird in the context of the music business. But you know, up to that point I think neither Naomi nor I had ever thought about the music as anything other than something we just did together. It wasn't about business, property, yours-and-mine. It was different from all that-- which was exactly why we were doing it! What followed was a farce. We said, well how are you going to decide whose songs are whose? And it turned out he didn't mean that any weren't his, just that some weren't ours! He said anything he had brought the guitar chords in for, was his. And we said OK, well then anything we brought the guitar chords in for, was ours. And he said but he wrote the lyrics for those, so they were his too. And we said, OK, so those will say music by us, lyrics by you. And now that's settled, we quit.

Dean Wareham: It was a challenge being in a trio with a couple. I thought that when we came to decide which songs would go on the first album, that they had decided together already, and that was that. I'm sure that's pretty hard to avoid if you're a couple, and they maybe didn't even realize it was going on, but it was problematic in a three-piece band.

Damon Krukowski: What happened next is what allowed the band to continue, but it also set the pattern for everything that was wrong with it. We drew up a list of whose music was whose, according to the cockamamie rules we'd worked out, and "Tugboat" ended up as ours, because I had brought in the guitar chords for that. And then Dean said he'd changed his mind. He wanted to go back to where we'd started-- we'd share everything after all. And would we consider at least playing some shows when the album came out, since we'd all worked so hard on it?

So we did, and we ended up writing and rehearsing and playing just like before, which is how and why we kept going. But I could never know for sure whether we were a band again because Dean had decided that the original spirit we started with was a good thing, or because I happened to have brought in the chords-- both of them!-- for our first single. I think I convinced myself over and over that we were back where we'd started, only to find out again and again that we weren't. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that we'd never really been there in the first place.

Dean Wareham: Kramer got me to sing some high backing vocals on the first album; on "Oblivious" he slowed the tape down so I could hit the note. I sound like a chipmunk. But it was on the second album that I got it going. There's that part at the end of "Blue Thunder" where I'm singing "I'll drive so far away," but I didn't know beforehand that I was going to sing it so high and loud-- it just came out of my mouth that way and I think we were all surprised.

Kramer: On Fire, it's a masterpiece. I love the way they captured this sense of like a longing, a desperation for love and joy, it was a search-- the way the music really matched the lyrics.

Dean Wareham: "Strange" is about waiting in line to buy Twinkies at a convenience store on Massachusetts Avenue. I ate Twinkies for dessert (at lunchtime) almost every day when I lived in Boston (at least when I was on a temp job).

Michael Azerrad (Writer): The first time I saw Galaxie 500 was at the first Knitting Factory on Houston Street in New York, somewhere around On Fire. The thing that struck me right away was Dean's very intense stage presence. He glared out at the audience like that angry teenaged kid in the original Star Trek who would make people disappear by grimacing with his eyes rolling back in his head. Then this elegant throb from Naomi, who was the picture of Zen-like poise in a slo-mo maelstrom. Damon worked up a constant oceanic wash of cymbals; he barely seemed to hit the drums and yet clearly drove the music, it was just extraordinary. I knew they were influenced by the Velvet Underground but to me it sounded like Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons doing heavy trank.

Naomi Yang: Making On Fire was a very happy experience. I think we were at a point where we were accomplished enough musicians that were able to play what we had in our head. There was a generally optimistic feeling about the direction of the band and we were getting very positive attention from the critics. It was a lot of fun and the possibilities seemed endless.

A lot of heads were turned last night when Annie Lennox showed up on “Idol Gives Back” wearing a t-shirt with the words “HIV POSITIVE” emblazoned on the front (she also wore the shirt to events last year, including the 2009 Edinburgh Festival of Politics and the 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame concert in New York last October). The good news is she herself is not HIV positive, but simply showing solidarity with the millions of people who are.

In the video below, which was actually created last November, Lennox explains that she first saw someone wearing a bold “HIV POSITIVE” t-shirt in South Africa in 2004, and she thought it was such a “clever, brilliant” idea, she decided to run with it herself. “In a country like South Africa, where HIV is so prevalent, and yet you have stigma where people are afraid to openly come out and say that they’re HIV positive,” she says, ”this t-shirt, whoever wears it, is making a statement of solidarity, and they’re saying, ‘We’re coming out from behind the shadows. We’re trying to normalize what is a preventable thing. It doesn’t need to have the stigma.’”

The “hot” modifier seems especially mean and gratuitous. Mann spent her next few Tweets backpedaling,concluding with, “He’s out there doing his job. He doesn’t need any heckling from the peanut gallery. So, I am sorry, Mr. T! You get out there and DO IT!” In the original Tweet, Mann was likely referring to a late-night episode of Law and Order: SVU, since it’s on TV at any given hour, on one network or another. Ice-T’s been on the show since 2000, but he also put in pretty good performances in New Jack City and (especially) Tank Girl.