A Head Full of Wishes

A Head Full of Wishes is a site for Galaxie 500, Luna, Damon & Naomi, Dean & Britta and Dean Wareham. With news, articles and lists of releases and past and future shows.

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Originals: Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste by Jonathan Richman (covered by Galaxie 500)

And Jojo makes his third appearance in this series (and he's not done yet!) with a song that Galaxie 500 took form a bleak, 90 second song, sung unaccompanied, and made it their own stretching it out to almost seven minutes.

Here's The Modern Lovers recorded in the Kim Fowley sessions (probably not from 1972) - Jonathan was not happy with this version

I wrote it when I was 19 like everything else on this record... but would close our shows with it sometimes and I'd cry in the middle of it. I'd start into it as the last chord of "Roadrunner" was still ringing. But this heavy-handed artsy-sounding rendition only makes me cry from embarrassment, not from feeling. I don't know why I did it this contrived.

There are also a couple of live versions that I suspect Jojo is more happy with, here (for Spotify users) is the heartbreaking rendition that closes the live at Longbranch set.

And here's a selection of Galaxie 500's versions:

The song became such a part of Galaxie 500 that the title was chosen for their 2004 DVD collection of videos

Don 't Let Our Youth Go to Waste DVD

And here's Dean & Britta performing it in Taipei in 2011

See all posts in the Originals series