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...

...Everybody Listen! Something Exciting Is About To Happen!

Side 2 of a cassette compilation recorded 22nd January 1997.

 

Ditching the pumpkins and the 21st Century for some banging 90s beats. Across the 14 mixes and two sides of the original cassette, 1993 is heavily represented. I'm not quite sure why this year was resonating quite so much with me in early 1997, but it was clearly a good year for club music.

Not that any of the other selections are sloppy seconds. 

Traci Lords successfully made a career switch from the US porn industry to the UK club scene, teaming up with Juno Reactor for the 1995 album 1000 Fires and getting Paul Oakenfold in to remix her single Fallen Angel. The song was apparently inspired by her childhood journals and Kurt Cobain's suicide the previous year. 

Fluke seemed to be everywhere in 1996, including the video games market. Even to non-gamers like me, the soundtrack to Wipeout 2097 was pretty amazing and Fluke's single Atom Bomb was all over it. There were 8 versions across 2 CD singles, which was enough to push it into the UK Top 20.

The Source aka John Truelove aka John Rush hit the motherlode when he paired a 1986 Candi Station with Frankie Knuckles & Jamie Principle's Your Love to create You Got The Love. Initially a bootleg in 1989, further variations cracked the UK Top 10 in 1991, 1997 and 2006. Unfortunately, it kind of threw everything else into the shade, including 1993 single Sanctuary Of Love.

 

Sanctuary Of Love follows a simple plan, taking an underground club track by US artist Zhana Saunders and transforming into a hard house anthem. Tall Paul's remix ramps up the epic feel, but it remained one for the clubs, making no impact whatsoever on the UK singles chart.

Mark Moore had the unenviable task of following up a smash hit debut album with S'Express. Eschewing the previous rotating cast of vocalists for a single artist, Mark's pairing with Sonia Clarke aka Sonique was inspired, even if it didn't bring the same commercial success. Personally, I think the follow up album Intercourse is hugely underappreciated and lead single Nothing To Lose is as good as anything that had come before. 

Usura was an Italian combo who enjoyed a UK #7 hit in January 1993 with Open Your Mind. I don't think follow up single Tear It Up even dented the charts, which is a shame as it's an equally compelling track, with an earthy, compelling vocal. Tear It Up was a co-write with Rollo, yet to find global fame with Faithless, but renowned for his remixes and he really delivers the goods on this one.

Apollo 440 was birthed in 1990 by brothers Howard Gray and Trevor Gray, along with James Gardner and Noko aka Norman Fisher-Jones. Building a reputation though remixes and singles in the early 1990s, they released Millennium Fever, the first of five albums, in 1994. Noko was previously one half of Luxuria with Howard Devoto, who contributed lyrics to Apollo 440's debut album. The pair were reunited when Noko joined the reformed Magazine in 2009.

Closing side 2 and the mixtape is a remix of Culture Club's Miss Me Blind by Ramp aka Shem McCauley and Simon Rogers. Originally released on the Colour By Numbers album in 1983, and as a single outside of the UK, this remix first appeared on US editions of Boy George's single Everything I Own in 1993. I got my mitts on it via The Devil In Sister George EP, which featured updated versions of 5 old songs, aimed squarely at the dancefloor. This one knocks the Culture Club original out of the park.

 

1) Fallen Angel (Perfecto Mix By Paul Oakenfold) (Single Edit): Traci Lords (1995)

2) Atom Bomb (Atomix 6): Fluke (1996)

3) Sanctuary Of Love (Tall Paul's Jiant Revamp) (Remix By Paul Newman): The Source ft. Zhana Saunders (1993)

4) Nothing To Lose (Original Mix By Mark Moore): S'Express ft. Sonique (1990)

5) Tear It Up (Big, Bold And Sassy Mix By Rollo): Usura (1993)

6) Rumble (12” Version): Apollo 440 (1993)

7) Miss Me Blind (Return To Gender Mix By Ramp): Culture Club (1993)

Side Two (46:19) (KF) (Mega)

Loop Da Loop

Side 2 of a mixtape, cobbled together in 1999, and capturing my love of rolling beats. Darren Emerson has produced a 2021 highlight with his remix of That Time Of Night by GLOK, which got me digging back into his excellent remixes from the late 1990s, presaging his departure from Underworld at the start of the 21st century. This was jumping on point for today's selection.

 

This selection opens with Ben Watkins aka Juno Reactor, with a single that I was surprised to discover actually made it to #45 in the UK singles chart back in February 1997. This song particularly appealed to me at the time as it sampled Watkins' previous band Sunsonic, who I also loved. The song in question, Kind Of Loving, only made it #83 when it was released in May 1990.

I won't pretend that I was a huge fan of Sasha at the time, although I vaguely recall seeing him DJ once at Renaissance at The Conservatory in Derby around 1994. However, I really liked his remix of Talk To Me by Hysterix and his own single Magic featuring Sam Mollison (a #32 UK hit single, no less).

 

By the 1992, Thompson Twins were finally down to the core duo of Tom Bailey & Alannah Currie and had 'gone dance'; the following year, they had teamed up with Keith Fearnley to become Babble. The Saint (#53 in January 1992) isn't bad, but I think I would have bought the single more for the David Morales mixes, which elevate the song considerably.

 

I love Everything But The Girl and Walking Wounded was a revelatory album when it came out in 1996. Before Today must have been the third or fourth single, managing a respectable #25 in March 1997. Darren Emerson did a couple of mixes and this is the best of the two, even at nearly 10 minutes, feeling too short. 

 

Go was Moby's global Twin Peaks-sampling smash, hitting #10 in the UK in July 1991. This remix, under his Barracuda alias, appeared in 1992 on The Ultimate Go EP, which I got a few years later on a German import CD single.

 

Age Of Love by Age Of Love first came out in 1990 but I don't think I would have become aware of it until I heard the Jam & Spoon remix around 1992. It eventually became a hit single in the UK in July 1997, peaking at #17, and has been remixed and re-released numerous times since. This version dates back to the original Belgian release and, at only a smidge over 5 minutes, feels like it should go on for at least twice as long.

1) Jungle High (Original Mix): Juno Reactor (1997)

2) Magic (Sasha's Voodoo Dub): Sasha ft. Sam Mollison (1994)

3) The Saint (8th Street Dub) (Remix By David Morales): Thompson Twins (1992)

4) Before Today (Darren Emerson Underwater Remix 1): Everything But The Girl (1997)

5) Go (Barracuda Mix): Moby (1992)

6) The Age Of Love (Boeing Mix By Roger Samijn): The Age Of Love (1990)

Side Two (45:52) (Box) (Mega)