Youth Is Wasted On The Young

Youth aka Martin Glover could never be accused of slacking off. Since picking up a bass and co-founding Killing Joke, he's been a constant in my musical consciousness since the 1980s and shows no sign of slowing down in 2026.

Youth's CV includes production, collaboration, "supervision" and remix credits for artists ranging from Tom Jones to The Irresistible Force, Transglobal Underground to Cast, Du Blonde to Crowded House, The Orb to Shack and back again.

This ten-track, hour-long selection is rooted in the early 1990s, occasionally branches out into the 21st century and features some of my favourite reworks.

There's the Led Zeppelin-sampling cavernous boom of Björk's old band The Sugarcubes, with late period classic VItamin. 

This is preceded by a mighty dub of Killing Joke circa 1994, when the original line-up not only reformed but dove even deeper into the dub oceans they had previously explored a decade and a half before.

The remixes of Walking On Air by Frazier Chorus were a game changer, and I would have loved to have heard what Youth would have done if let loose on the entire album Ray, not just a couple of songs.

And Natacha Atlas' breathtaking ululations find a perfect complement in Youth's remix of Yalla Chant, which cropped up on a disproportionate number of my mixtapes in the mid-late 1990s.

Not that the remainder are any less of an experience, whether it's teaching old Goths new tricks (Peter Murphy, The Mission), flirting with pop (The Art Of Noise, P.M. Dawn) or going toe-to-toe with legends (Bim Sherman, Jah Wobble). Youth takes it all in his pace, weighted down with plenty of bass.

1) The Art Of Slow Love (Remix By Youth): The Art Of Noise (1991)

2) A Watcher's Point Of View (Don't 'Cha Think) (Youth Extended Mix): P.M. Dawn (1991)

3) Freaks Of Nature (Natural Dub Mix By Youth & Ott): Dub Trees ft. Bim Sherman (2000)

4) I Am My Own Name (Youth Remix): Peter Murphy (2015)

5) Another Cult Goes Down (Portobello Mix By Youth & Greg Hunter): Killing Joke (1994)

6) Vitamin (Babylon's Burnin) (Remix By Youth): The Sugarcubes (1992)

7) Tower Of Strength (Lysergic Dub) (Remix By Youth): The Mission (1994)

8) Walking On Air (Dub Instrumental) (Remixed By Youth): Frazier Chorus (1990)

9) Inspector Out Of Space: Youth Meets Jah Wobble ft. Rhiannon Sharkey (2020)

10) Yalla Chant (The Lesson Four Remix By Youth): Natacha Atlas (1995)

1990: Ray/The Baby Album (ltd 2x CD): 8

1991: A Watcher's Point Of View (Don't 'Cha Think) EP: 2

1991: The FON Mixes: 1

1992: Vitamin EP: 6

1994: Exorcism EP: 5

1994: Tower Of Strength EP: 7

1995: Yalla Chant EP: 10

2000: Nature Never Did Betray the Heart That Loved Her: 3

2015: Remixes From Lion: 4

2020: Acid Punk Dub Apocalypse: 9

Youth Is Wasted On The Young (1:00:07) (GD) (M)

Magnetic Island, Thirty Four Years Ago

A return to 1991, and my (very) occasional dips into my Australian tour diary. Twenty years old, travelling solo, and a couple of nights on the wonderful Magnetic Island, 8km out from Townsville on the northeastern coast. 

I've cut out the "touristy" bits - this isn't a travel brochure - and the minutiae of meal times, my musings on sardine sandwiches as dry on the page as they were in the mouth. 

Happy memories of BlogCon25 still fresh in my mind, I was delighted to rediscover that I'd met one of my current community's namesakes thirty four years ago, on my travels. Or was it in fact one and the same, travelling incognito with a false Canadian passport (and accent)? 

Sadly, there is no photographic evidence for me to determine one way or another...

Today's soundtrack has neatly avoided the obvious pick of The Magnetic Fields and instead I've gone for songs with 'magnetic' in the title. 

Luckily enough, Sydney-based artist Zankee Gulati had the common decency to release a song called Magnetic Island last October. The other three picks - by Juno Reactor, Sasha and Dub Trees (Youth, Greg Hunter & Simon Posford with Mark Manning aka Zodiac Mindwarp) follow a similarly electronic route. 

Looking at the UK Top 10 for this week in 1991, I can only say that I am glad I was on the other side of the world, and largely spared the horror.

Anyway, enough of the preamble, it's diary time!

Saturday 15th June

I boarded the awaiting minibus and travelled from Picnic Bay to Horseshoe Bay, on the opposite end of Magnetic Island, 10km north. Geoff's Place, as the hostel was called, turned out not to be a hostel at all, but a widespread group of detached log cabins, each having four beds...and nothing else. I took the only bed that wasn't on ground level then set off for the beach.

As it was mid-afternoon, the sea had all but vanished from the bay, leaving dirty-looking sand and anchored boats behind. I explored in one direction for a little while, then settled against a half-submerged log and ate a packet of crisps, my first meal of the day. Exhaustion overtook me and I fell asleep, waking just in time to catch the sunset. The sky was beautiful that night.

Sunday 16th June

My bed was reminiscent of the one in Coolangatta: you could sleep all night long in it, but you would feel like shit as soon as you awoke. The shower and washroom were distinctly undesirable, so I did what I had to do in as little time as possible.

In a strange quirk of fate, rinsing my face after a shave, I looked into the mirror and saw The Swede from Melbourne staring back at me; he had just returned from a week's diving in Cairns. It was good to see him again.

After a brief conversation, we went to the beach, miraculously transformed by the incoming tide into a paradisal retreat, and a had a swim (twice). We were rewarded with unbelievably warm water. I love this place!

We stayed long enough to see a group of horse riders galloping along the beach and into the sea, and witness a beautiful sunset a short time later. 

On our return to Geoff's Place, I met two of my three new room-mates, all women. One is from Bristol and used to work in the clothes shop in front of Tony's Records in the city centre. Her absent friend apparently lives in Frampton Cottrell. It's such a small world, isn't it?

There were two frogs in the washroom, one big, one small, both bright green. I touched the big one. It's skin felt weird.

Monday 17th June

I slept reasonably well, woken occasionally by the sound of wandering possums, one stopping to scratch at the cabin door for a while. My room-mates had a worse night, complaining of the cold. I was quietly relieved that it wasn't my snoring...!

A large number of us were leaving Magnetic Island, so the minibus was dangerously overcrowded with people and packages, but we made it to the harbour unscathed. 

I had been walking around with The Swede, and we had just stopped to have a drink and write postcards when I spotted Chris, one half of the Canadian duo that I'd befriended in Byron Bay. Chris was also leaving the island and heading back to Townsville, albeit on a different ferry, so I made arrangements to meet up for a drink on the mainland.

Arriving in Townsville, I said farewell to The Swede, who was travelling on, and checked in at the Transit Centre Hostel, a very new building with ultra-clean white sheets and nice looking rooms, a complete contrast to what I'd left behind on Magnetic Island. 

After a short walk around town, I popped into The Shamrock Hotel bar and found Chris, with a chap called Rod from Lancashire. Chris' companion Clark had carried on to Cairns and I learned that our mutual friend John had already passed through Townsville on his way home. 

The three of us spent a couple of hours in the pub, drinking Guinness, until their (delayed) coach to Cairns arrived. All too soon, it was time to say goodbye once more.

I returned to the hostel for a much needed shower - imagine having an ice-cold shower in the midst of an English winter!!

Boy, do my boots stink, though...

The World Is Waitin' Just For You

Side 1 of a tape compilation featuring The Boo Radleys, recorded 22nd February 1997.

 

In 1994, I upped sticks and moved to Derby. Not a completely random choice as I ended up crashing with my friend Stuart and his then-girlfriend, who had moved up there a few months previously to study at the city's university. It didn't take much hindsight to realise how very selfish that was, particularly as I took far too long to find a job and my own place and give them the space that they deserved. At the time, it was all me, me, me but it was also another example of why, time and again, Stuart has been the best friend that anyone could wish for. 

One of the things that all three of us could agree on during that time was that Giant Steps by The Boo Radleys was one of the greatest albums we'd ever heard. Stuart had the vinyl LP and we would play it constantly, so when we found out The Boo Radleys were playing live at The Wherehouse, it was a no-brainer. If you've heard the album, you won't be at all surprised to hear that, try as they might, The Boo Radleys just couldn't capture the sprawling, squalling psychedelic genius of the album on stage. Even so, we still loved them.

When I eventually got my own place, a cold, damp bedsit with a grotty shared kitchen in the attic conversion and shared bathroom with a bath that relied on feeding 50p coins into a separate meter to get the boiler fired up for hot water. My immediate neighbour was a lovely guy, but with a taste for heavy metal and rock, played loud, and a sole concession to Kate Bush's greatest hits. We went out for a drink a couple of times though he was constantly on at me to go to his favourite late night joint - I think it was called the Blue Pineapple or something similarly awful - to "pick up" older women. I declined his kind offer and thankfully soon after met a lovely woman of similar age and taste in music, so nights out with him were off the (grubby kitchen) table at that point.

I worked night shifts at a local paint factory, 2.00pm to 10.00pm, Monday to Friday. The pay wasn't great but my unsociable working hours essentially meant that I had money let over from rent and bills to buy records and go out a lot. Anything better than returning to that cold, damp bedsit! I got my own copy of Giant Steps (on CD) and picked up The Boo Radleys' singles back catalogue on various jaunts to secondhand shops in Derby and Nottingham.

I was back living in the centre of Bristol by the time The Boo Radleys' follow-up Wake Up (and their big hit single) was released. I didn't buy it or any of the remaining albums until some years later. I couldn't resist getting the singles though as they were usually cheap to begin with or very quickly in the bargain bins, following their brief brush with the charts on the week of release. To be fair, The Boo Radleys were firmly committed to putting quality songs on their B-sides and EPs, so it was always worth a punt, even if the A-side was at times underwhelming.

So this selection largely draws on EPs, remixes and exclusive (at the time) compilation tracks. On the original mixtape, Blues For George Michael was an early version taken from the NME cover-mounted cassette, The Mutha Of Creation, which ran to under three minutes. Unfortunately, I can't put my hands on the cassette (or online equivalent) and the single version from the Wake Up Boo! EP runs to early nine minutes, so I've dropped an early fade in to keep the overall running time in line with the original compilation. 

[Update, 31st August 2025] in finally getting around to posting Side 2, I also obtained a decent MP3 of the Blues From George Michael demo, so I have recreated Side 1 as originally recorded.

And yes, Wake Up Boo! is included. Worse, you might say, it's the 12" version with the breakbeat muckabout Music For Astronauts appended. This remains my favourite version of Wake Up Boo! though as even the band themselves seem to have realised what a silly song it is and thrown everything they can at it including the kitchen sink by the sound of things. Or it's all Martin Carr's fault. Possibly. I love it, either way.

Coming full circle with my point, this post is dedicated to my friend Stuart for putting up with my nonsense for nearly five decades, sharing some fantastic, unforgettable experiences (and music) along the way and for being a really, really good mate. 

More tomorrow.

 

1) What's In The Box? (See Whatcha Got) (Album Version) (1996)

2) Hi Falutin (1995)

3) Blues For George Michael (Demo Version) (1994)

4) A Part I Know So Well (1997)

5) Petroleum (1992)

6) Leaves And Sand (1993)

7) From The Bench At Belvidere (Single Version) (1995)

8) Reaching Out From Here (The High Llamas Mix By Sean O'Hagan) (1995)

9) Spion Kop (1996)

10) Wake Up Boo! : Music For Astronauts (12" Version) (1995)

11) At The Sound Of Speed (1992)

12) Fortunate Sons (Greg Hunter Remix) (1996)

1992: Lazarus EP: 5. 11

1993: Giant Steps: 6

1994: The Mutha Of Creation EP (NME promo cassette): 3

1995: From The Bench At Belvidere EP: 2, 7

1995: It's Lulu EP: 8

1995: Wake Up Boo! EP: 10

1996: C'mon Kids: 1

1996: C'mon Kids EP: 9, 12

1997: Ride The Tiger EP: 4

Side One (45:57) (GD) (M)