The Go-Betweens - poets from down under, or so bad they make me chunder? Discuss.

you can listen to that and not be moved? then sir, you are a buffoon.

I dunno. I've always found it hard to articulate why they affect me so much. I think people do them a disservice when they go about how they should have been chart condenders. They really aren't to everyone's taste (believe me, I've tried them out on enough people). I think a lot of their lyrics can seem either gauche (the early stuff), overblown, self-consciously 'arty' or irritatingly arch if you're in the wrong mood. All I can add is that I bought the 1978-1990 compilation when I was 17 on the strength of 'Streets of your town' and it took a few listens before I really liked anything else on the album. So maybe it takes time. I still don't like most of 'Tallulah' very much, and they were prone to frequent lapses of taste (eg. River of Money). Several people I know have played the Deacon Blue card when they hear '16 Lovers Lane', their most accessible album. But one of them meant it as a compliment.

Err.. speaking of the Go-Betweens, if anyone can provide me with tapes or mp3s of any of the following tracks, I'd be dead pleased: 'Newton Told Me', 'A Little Romance' , 'Time In The Desert', 'Doo Wop In A'.

Don't forgot that anything Australian is really terribly awful at best.....

It's true, Nick, the G-Bs remind me of Deacon Blue too. Whoever said that to you knew what they were on about.

Ally C talked about the time factor - which I take it is also the repetition factor. Familiarity breeds contentment? It's possible. I mean, could it be that the G-Bs are not that great, but we all gradually convince ourselves that they are, just by listening to them over and over again until we reach a point where we can't remember not having heard them?

That had better not sound slighting of Go-Betweens fans. Most G-Bs fans I know are people with seriously good, interesting, informed or passionate taste in pop. They are not people to be slighted in a hurry, and nor is their enthusiasm for the G-Bs.

I can't decide about this band. I think their detractors are right - partly, perhaps, because I believe that first impressions can be telling, and my first several impressions of this band chimed with what the (few) detractors say. Plodding; musically uninspired; vocally inept; tuneless (that's surely one of the worst crimes); and lyrically incomprehensible or pretentious.

But I don't think that's the whole story. There must be a good reason why the fans feel how they do. Is it the passion? The 'literacy'? The sense, perhaps, of a world projected by this band (for great bands, like great writers, do, perhaps, project worlds)?

There are at least a few G-B moments that have won me over.

- I think 'Bachelor Kisses' is romantic and outstanding

- I always thought 'Cattle & Cane' a terrible title, but the track itself is fairly remarkable: an unfindable rhythm; a memorable riff they must have just hit on and kept; a lyric of reverie; distant swooning non-verbal vocals; watery guitar like the unmentionable Cure; a silly set of non-melodic pronouncements.

- 'Right Here' does its job well: a sort of stonkalong which nonetheless has 'grace', thanks to the strings.

- 'Love Is A Sign' has some swell moments too. And a harmonica, I think.

I am probably coming over to them slowly; but as I've said, it's a process I somewhat distrust.

I still don't really understand why the Go Betweens, in particular, have this effect on you. Because you don't like them and your friends or people whose taste you respect do like them? There surely must be hundreds of bands and artistes who fall into this category? Why worry at the Go Betweens so? It'll only get worse if you pick it.

Incidentally, when the Go Betweens hit the spot, I think the noise they make is their strongest point: "Cattle and Cane" is a beautifully jittery sound; "Part Company" sounds all wrong, off- balance and gloriously so; "Bow Down", too, just sounds fabulous to me, without (conscious) analysis of melody or lyric or technique.

Tim

>>> I still don't really understand why the Go Betweens, in particular, have this effect on you.

Oh, I blame you, Tim. You you you you you.

I remembered being intrigued by the Go-Betweens by a magazine article I read some time ago. The description of the music and the writing styles of Robert Forster and Grant McLennan appealed to me, so I checked them out and was pleasantly surprised. I even remembered a couple of songs from years before, mainly Bachelor Kisses and Streets Of Your Town (which I always credited to Prefab Spout!).

I like music that will move me, stir my thoughts and senses, and I like it when I can relate to a song. I like the feeling of being touched, moved, choked by a lyric or a note. I found all that and more in the Go-Betweens' music.

So Robert Forster can't sing nor write, huh? I'm listening to one of his albums right now and I think it's strange how people's conceptions of what is good singing and writing differ. I could say that RF's way of "talking through" lots of his songs is a bit unsettling, but I would like to mention that his lyrics, as well as GM's, are among the ones I enjoy the most.

Before I go: What do people think about the latest Go-Betweens album? And, will you think I'm mad if I say that my nickname for Robert Forster was "the Australian Bryan Ferry"? My sister thought it was hilarious.

I quite like the phrase "poets from down under". If I ever write a record review, can I borrow it? Bye bye.

ANYWAY welcome to ILM Cecilia. And Robert Forster is the Australian Bryan Ferry, as anyone who's seen him do "Danger In The Past" onstage will know.

The new album? It's nice. It's a tea-cosy of a record. That makes it sound bad but I mean the word "nice" in this case as a total compliment. It ended up being one of my favourite records last year. It took about 5 listens before it sounded like the Go-Betweens, though.

I'm afraid I cannot remember what that might sound like.

(sp?)

And I don't get the idea (expressed above) that you listen to them until you convince yourself that they're good. Well, I get the concept, but it didn't happen for me with the Go-Betweens: I called a friend of mine who had them cranked when she picked up the phone. I don't even know what song it was, or even what album, but in the 10 seconds between when she picked up the phone and when she turned down the volume, I fell in love with the Go-Betweens. I got Liberty Belle the next day, Tallulah (not as good overall, but some great stuff) the next week.

Liberty Belle seems a little colorless with some pretty bland progressions and some melodic rewrites. Spring Rain is pretty undeniable however.

Also, I got less interested the more records of theirs I purchased, Liberty Belle being the last one.

Excelent 80's bass playing on these records too.

i have plenty of love for Tallulah and Springhill Fair. Liberty Belle is my second least favourite after Lullabye. i also have much much love for the two reformation albums, the first substantially over the second though. in fact Rachel Worth is probably my second favourite after Before Hollywood.

I love that whole song, but for me those lines were really the key that popped open the whole box of treasure.

the old stuff can be way too poncey for my tastes

I've got 'Man O'Sand To Girl O'Sea' playing in my head and I have got no idea what the hell you're talking about.

he can write lyrics OK; he can sing OK, at least sometimes. He just falls down on melody.

really? i don't agree with this at all. i was listening to '78-'79: the lost album a few days ago, and i was struck by how strong the hooks (I HATE THAT WORD) were in comparison with the (relatively weak) lyrics and musicianship.

-- lauren (jaguarrid...) (webmail), May 18th, 2004 4:55 PM. (laurenp) (later) (link)

it's so weird how much that early stuff differs from the remainderof the go-betweens' recordings.

i really wish i liked them more, but there are only a few songs of theirs where the music really captures me. the rest of it feels pleasant and workmanlike. "cattle and cane" is great of course.

And while Grant has some great pop songs to his credit, I more often find that the Forster songs stay with me longer. (See "Warm Nights" for more examples of unexplained love for wretched pop songs.)

It's sunny outside, the sky's cyan. Perhaps that's inapt. No matter. 'When you play with crooks'. It will always be their best, whatever else they do, whatever else they will have done.

Hands like hooks?

Yet I like the sound of this track 2 that follows 'BK'. What's it called?

That line about the travelling clock in "River Of Money" still drives me crazy though.

Yes, trundling, aimless and clumsy are some of the attributes I like about their early records. I can't explain why. "Slow Slow Music", "Eight Pictures" and "Ride" being other prime examples..

I've always thought there was something I was missing about Cattle & Cane, Lauren - you're not alone in being bemused at the adulation. I kind of appreciate it in a bloodless emotional way, and the rhythm is kind of haunting.

Part Company is pretty much perfect, my favourite song of theirs, yes. To Reach Me is maybe next in line.

Tim is right way upthread about the irrationality and pointlessness of the pinefox's angst over this particular group.

And I liked what Bags said about the Australianness. I think that, indirectly, this a big part of their appeal to me. It springing from a different landscape to the overrepresented UK and USA.

i like that one, and lee remick, and the sound of rain would be close to perfect if it didn't have such godawful lyrics.

I skipped, because I'm a Gemini, because the Irn-Bru kicked, because any number of things, straight to the heart of 'Bachelor Kisses', stuff the intro. Convinced, on listening to the first song, that they sound like a band who take a while to hit stride I thought it best to cut to the stride. (No relying on momentum for me.) This is almost better, though, yes, the tincture of NYC remains (some aspirational geography.)

I can see what the PF says about melody, though so many sensible people above have said they 'take time.' There are a hundred other things I could be doing, more worth to me I think, than listen to this song: 'you have three minutes to amaze me.'

How much is a pop song, talking about melody here, supposed to be a mnemonic for its own remembrance? (I know I've used this line before, referring to another subject. Yes, I know I stole the idea.) If the answer is: lots then I think the GB's, so far, by which I mean (I've only just started listening!) 'so near', score quite low.

O who knows?

I'm listening to vinyl, N..

Ah. Well, I didn't know, I've never heard her.

However, "Cattle & Cane" is officially The Best Song, Like, Ever. The Australianness theory probably has some merit, I'll concede.

Lee Remick is the partner to Karen.

Love Amanda's multi-instrumental contributions,her violin in Was There Anything I Could Do? for instance. And Lindy's drumming, luverly.

I wouldn't see Robert as Australia's Brian Ferry. For one, Brian Ferry has probably never worn a dress on stage. They both have a similar loucheness maybe. But I imagine Brian takes himself more seriously than does Robert.

As for Grant's solo work, I loved Watershed, particularly Haven't I Been a Fool, but the otheer albums haven't stuck.

-- cozen (coze...) (webmail), May 19th, 2004 4:07 PM. (Cozen) (later) (link)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

i know a milder variety of this feeling, more of a disappointment when someone i like doesn't like something i like (or love). sometimes my opinion of the person is even...shaded a bit. i don't feel personally offended.

Maybe one of their best.

Pointlessness I can take. All things are pointless, perhaps.

Irrationality sounds to me a red herring. My doubts about the band are founded. No-one has ever convinced me otherwise.

From the Circus Records website...
the go-betweens
before hollywood: a film retrospective

Sunday 27th June: The Barbican Cinema One
4pm – 6pm
Tickets: £7 / £5.50 concessions

To celebrate their special London concert, The Barbican is proud to host a retrospective of Go-Betweens films from the start of the group’s career to the present day.

This unmissable programme will feature documentary films, concert footage and all the group’s promotional videos assembled in a marathon visual cornucopia. This retrospective will capture the group at every stage of their career and offers the first ever time all this visual material has ever been assembled in one place.

The band are playing a "unique and unmissable" show at the Barbican that evening too:

On Sunday the 27th June the Barbican will host a concert that will encompass highlights from this astonishing group's entire back catalogue. The band will be accompanied by a string section and other guest musicians. There will be no support act for this performance which will be in two parts with an intermission.

"before hollywood" was named after an expo on american film production in...new jersey!!! i have the book from the expo.

and some others i've forgotten but hopefully will remember soon

"liberty belle..." is a film reference too i believe.

I posted its title because it was playing, at the time.

I have made it clear, in the past, often, that I like the song. I just posted it today to signal that, today, I was listening to the G-Bs, again.

(For those of you who stopped the thread taking a turn which I may have found embarrassing a litle way upthread: thanks very much.)

Awesome feedback at the end of 'Apology Accepted' on the live bonus disc.. It was accidental, but I've grown to absolutely love it..

Any version of the Clarke Sisters is a good one.

If you run across the live boot of "Mosman Hotel" 4/22/82- fantastic early recording ...

If I were to write down my thoughts about the G-Bs now, without having consulted that post (which is no longer, quite, possible), I'd end up at roughly the same conclusion.

Possibly there is a message here about the pinefox's endless saminess.

Tim H's puzzlement was that I was bothered about it. He says upthread:

Fox, if it troubled you when you didn't like the Go Betweens, and it troubled you when you listened to them in an attempt to try to like them, and it troubles you now you are actually beginning to enjoy the music, then I fear you are onto a loser this time.

I still don't really understand why the Go Betweens, in particular, have this effect on you. Because you don't like them and your friends or people whose taste you respect do like them? There surely must be hundreds of bands and artistes who fall into this category? Why worry at the Go Betweens so? It'll only get worse if you pick it.

This is ancient history. But not much has changed.

I think that the G-Bs have been miscatalogued as great songwriters, or a band with great songs. I think that in all the intensive or extensive listening to them that I have done (but I must admit: I have still *not* heard the whole lot: there is more to hear), I have been hoping that the quality of the songs would eventually out.

(I mean a quality that has something to do with melody; flow; sweetness; wholeness; form; cuteness; style; wit. But maybe the word that most gets at what I want is grace.)

And in all this time, it never has - save in those few moments that I have always gone on about. I think that if that golden seam of songwriting quality was present in the G-Bs, I would have heard it by now - would have pricked up my ears and sighed, and known that it was all worthwhile.

So what is it that the G-Bs really have, that spurred so much affection and excitement? Maybe things like:

- a sound: clanging and clunking: maybe that excited people, maybe because it sounded different.

- a voice, or voices: Australian, harsh, hard. Not my kind of pop voices, but distinctive.

- an attitude - whatever that was: reflected, no doubt, in titles, sleeves, looks.

- lyrics: these cannot be written off: I believe that they have some degree of lyrical distinction.

It seems to me that a lot of people got excited by these qualities - and somewhere, in the popular discourse about the G-Bs, all this got translated into 'great songwriting'. But those things didn't add up to great songwriting, but to something else - to a *rock intervention*, certainly. Someone made a category mistake, somewhere; the wrong label got put on the right thing.

Someone took the wrong road down.

And perhaps my puzzlement is that of standing in front of a rack of cheeses and wondering why they are called 'Granny Smiths', 'Golden Delicious', 'Coxes', and so on. One could spend years before that rack.

The one problem with this view is those very few great, graceful pieces that they did seem to be able to produce. But the years have been long, and those kisses are far and few between.

crosspost

N: I think I used the word 'quality' twice to mean 'good quality' - which always does have an inadequate look - and twice to mean 'aspect', 'feature', 'tendency'.

You may have noticed, over the years, that it is hard, especially when writing relatively fast, eg. on a www messageboard, to find all the right words, let alone the right variety of words, to express, or explain, things that are anyway always elusive, maybe impossibly so.

If you would like to tell us the way things really are then I am ready and waiting, quite keenly, for your high-quality views, as I always have been.

That is a very good one.

Ewing agreexs with me.

Thinking about this, I increasingly see the GBs as a band of incredibly great moments rather than incredibly great LPs. This is mostly a good thins.

I was singing "Part Company" to myself just now and in the verses it's almost like the guitar is picking out them melody and the voice is taking the accompanying part.

Whatever their other achievements, is this pointless lumpen slab the worst thing that the G-Bs ever recorded?

'Cattle and Cane' now playing (it's that blue compilation: really does mix up the fine and the dire). So I should redress the balance and note how fine this song is, 'musically' at least. It reminds me of the Cure, in a good way. I have said all this before, of course.

I do like that line a lot. Other people seem to love the song. I don't like the tune very much.

I have just listened to the song again and I have decided that I have no real idea what the phrase, or the song as a whole, is about. Can anyone help?

I, too, am opposed to that practice.

Come to think of it, so is everyone else I know, when it comes to mine.

Mime, I'm saying that the song is against 'wild oats', that it [or a character in it] seems to be advocating saving ones romantic / sexual attention for the Real Thing. The world of men don't mean a thing if all they give you's a diamond ring, after all...

Side 1 ends with the OK 'Streets of Your Town'.

Turn it over, and what begins? The relatively lush acoustics of the good 'Love is a Sign'! One of their best by far!

So is the overall mandolin winding.

I can hear the attempt elsewhere, but am not so keen on it as in that song.

The 78-90 compilation sleevenotes mention that Robert met a couple who said it sounded like a Blood On The Tracks outtake, I think.

But it reminds me of how there's too much TALKING on G-Bs tracks. A real giveaway.

A good moment: when he says (I mean: sings), voice straining a little, that stuff re. 'If you'd just write / But you don't write' (or whatever it is exactly).

If that were delivered in the usual talk-not-sing G-Bs way, it would not work as it does.

They talk sometimes.

Their singing is quite close to talking. That's their main weakness, I guess.

Jack Frost, Grant from the G-Bs and Steve Kilbey from the Church, released a couple of albums and an EP a while back. I remember liking it, but would have to dust off the vinyl to be sure.

And then there was Cleopatra Wong who released an EP called Egg. They being Amanda and Lindy from the G-Bs

Trying to prise the two GBs CDs that I *won* on ebay from the prize nitwit who was selling them is proving v.difficult. What is wrong with people?

It is sad about that tape. Yes, it was the ... tape recorder thing that done it.

It is the one that you like.

Summer rain, out of the window.

I have always loved the rain in June.

The GoBees are like, us innit? I mean they cut to what it was all about being an Australian teen esp in the 70s and 80s I think. I dont know a huge amount of their stuff but they have a very very specific place in my memory not worth going into, theres bootleg tapes and summers driving down Beach road involved. Yeah. Good good shit.

Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express
Disc One: The original album
Disc Two: The bonus tracks
The Life At Hand (b-side)
Don't Let Him Come Back (b-side)
Apology Accepted (radio session)
I Work In A Health Spa (radio session)
Bow Down (demo)
Casanova's Last Words (demo)
Head Full Of Steam (single remix)
Little Joe (b-side)
The Wrong Road (demo) (b-side)
Reunion Dinner (demo)
I'm Gonna Knock On Your Door (live)
Spring Rain (video clip)
Head Full Of Steam (video clip)

Tallulah
Disc One: The original album
Disc Two: The bonus tracks
Time In The Desert (b-side)
I Just Get Caught Out (demo)
Don't Call Me Gone (b-side)
Right Here (demo)
If I Was A Rich Man (live)
The House Jack Kerouac Built (radio session)
When People Are Dead (b-side)
The Clarke Sisters (demo)
A Little Romance (demo)
Bye Bye Pride (radio session)
Doo Wop In 'A' (Bam Boom) (b-side)
Right Here (video clip)
Bye Bye Pride (video clip)

16 Lovers Lane
Disc One: The original album
Disc Two: The bonus tracks
Love Goes On! (single remix)
Wait Until June (b-side)
Mexican Postcard (b-side)
Rock And Roll Friend (b-side)
Casanova's Last Words (b-side)
You Won't Find It Again (demo)
Running The Risk Of Losing You (live)
Apples In Bed (demo)
Head Over Heels (demo)
You're A Big Girl Now (live)
Was There Anything I Could Do? (video clip)
Streets Of Your Town (video clip)

I've been listening to Spring Hill Fair extensively for the first time in around 15 years and it's better than I remembered. Is SHF well-like amonst GB's fans? I seem to remember that it was seen as a disappointment at the time...or am i wrong? Bachelor Kisses is rather magnificent, if a little polished. Five Words unfortunately sums up all that is bad about them - a self conscious cleverness and a sort of lumbering repetition rather than a flow. Best track on the first half of the recd is You've Never Lived, which must be RF's best work - some genuine power here, for once the music and the words pull in the same direction and the guitar break is unexpectedly fierce. Slow Slow Music is on verge of something quite special, but never quite gets there and Draining The Pool and Man O'Sand are..... good.

The real surprises are in the bonus tracks - Emperor's Courtesan, Rare Breed, Newton Told Me, Just Right For Him, Attraction and Sweet Tasting Hours are all fantastic and would have great on the album proper. On Emperor's Courtesan GM actually lets rip with a short vocal bridge that, by virtue of a simple melody and a straight backbeat, lifts the song sky high. Just Right For Him and Attraction have a more convincing Talking Heads-ish syncopation than they've done elsewhere - Lindy using the hi-hat more fluidly - and while melodically spare they're straight to the point enough to hit home. Good stuff. On Sweet Tasting Hours Lindy's voice is a good thing and should be used more often.

I haven't spent as much time with Before Hollywood, mainly because I know it better - it was the GBs album that I kept the longest when I had them originally. I reckon they really benefit from Bernie Clarke's organ throughout - filling in the holes and pushing the songs around. He sounds great on As Long As That and That Way in particular. These are both excellent songs.

I've got the Send Me A Lullabye 2CD edition on the way to me. I always liked this one the best - on stuff like Ride they really let the melodies go and on e.g Arrow from a Bow - they chop it back to a nice percussive off-beatiness. Both work. I think they've tried to combine the two extremes later on and ended up somewhere awkward and unsatisfactory in the middle e.g The Old Way Out.

I think I'll get Tallulah when the next wave of reissues comes out (Anyone know when that is?) From what I remember this had a few great songs on it (Bye Bye Pride, Tell Me, I Just Get Caught Out) and a few failed experiments. I know that Liberty Belle is the one that everyones goes for, but I want to hear the flaws too.

Doc, I like your post. But it's an oddly mized bag, the way you start with heavy criticism then dispense lots of praise.

I don't think of their LPs as LPs, with titles etc. I mean, I don't own them that way.

Good point re. lack of harmonies: maybe that makes a big difference.

Downloading music cds onto my new computer, I've been listening to old (and new stuff). I think the first album I put on was Before Hollywood, and it still sounds pretty great. I'd forgotten how much I loved 'Ask'.

For a limited time, the Barbican show from last week is posted here:
http://www.sharingthegroove.org/msgboard/showthread.php?s=&threadid=78043

(You need to install Bit Torrent and convert from FLAC.)

Update from Robert Vickers himself:

"the expanded Liberty Belle, Talullah and 16LL will be released on Jetset in the US Nov 5th"

Not because I didn't like it. I probably recorded upthread that it snagged in my tape player, about 5 months ago. I always vaguely thought I would ravel it back together. But today I realized there was no point. I threw it away.

Playing now.

The solo is the worst thing in it!

The words were not written by Forster or McLennnan, but by an Irish girl Robert took a shine to called 'Marian Stout'. She is now a published novelist, apparently, under a different name. But perhaps you are talking about the music.

the next reissue on my list is send me a lullabye. did you finally get it? i'd like to know what you think of it. i remember it as quite untypical for them. with a hint of guitar noise. slightly experimental in a way. it was their first album. where they where still searching for their sound.

you forgot to mention part company from shf which is a very lovely addictive pop tune. with great harmonies.

Oh that's right. Because that song was by the dBs.

Silly me.

How do folks like the new album #3 of the re-formed G-Bs?

oceans apart is pretty nice. sentimental, full of pop hooks, occasionally with the odd rhythm like born to a family. they do their own thing, that's what i like about them. and they are faithful to themselves, they never sell out. they just keep on making their unspectacular guitar songwriter music. one of the most loveable bands in the world.

The US label/version has not been replaced. It hasn't really bothered me yet though...

Not sure where to place this, but this is a superb recent interview/reminiscence, published last week.

Very good stuff. (Though there seems to be a strange editing goof at the start?)

Or maybe it's the reporter's attempt to get Didion-esque?

Poignant:

McLennan didn't drive, so, as always, Forster drove to Highgate Hill to work through new songs on their acoustic guitars on a deck at the back of the house. It was a fun, four-hour session with lots of breaks for gossip and frivolous chat. In the afternoon, Forster left to pick Louis up from school.

"Grant was on his verandah waving goodbye," says Forster. "His mailbox was at the end of this concrete driveway. I could see he had The New York Review of Books sent to him. I said, 'I didn't know you were getting this'. He said, 'Yeah, I've got tonnes of copies here. You can borrow them anytime you want. I said, 'Great, I'll do that. Thanks'."

The sky was blue, the sun was shining on the front stairs of the house. McLennan waved and Forster hopped in the Volvo and drove away smiling, wondering how many rock stars in the world subscribed to The New York Review of Books.

nice article, thanks for linking to it. anyone out there going to these retrospective shows? they sound like a good time -- wonder if there are plans to release it on CD or DVD?

I bought Tallulah in 1986, and finally "got" the Go-Betweens in 2006, so I think I can say something that might be helpful to those who don't get it but think they might like it if they got it. (If you don't get it and don't care, then why are you reading this thread?)

Several things make the Go-Betweens real rock and roll weirdos. They had the spirit of 40-year olds when they were 20, the reverse of what rock and roll attitude is supposed to be. Unlike most boho bands -- and they were bohos -- they never crack jokes. They aren't really in it for fun ("German Farmhouse," on "The Friends of Rachel Worth," is their idea of fun) and -- this is the real kicker for those of us who came up on punk -- they aren't angry, even though they sound like they could/should be.

Their real theme, expressed as much in the moderation and sustenance of the music as in the lyrics, is surviving alienation with calm and grace and without doing (too much) damage to the people around you. Ironically enough, given that children have nothing to do with it in the Go-Betweens' world, all this started to really make sense to me only after the birth of my daughter. As a graduate student and then a political organizer, I wanted something more intense, not just from my political music but from my soul music (the Go-Betweens are as far from Otis Redding as they are from the Clash). They just sounded too relaxed, like an Australian Steely Dan but without the cynicism. Now I'm delighted that they are so uncynical, that what once sounded like lack of follow-through now sounds like compassion.

My iTunes tells me I've listened to them more then any other band in the last 18 months (when I got the iPod) except Sleater-Kinney, who more directly represent my overall tastes, and who also split up during this period, leading me to mourn them. I never thought of myself as a particularly "youthful" person, but I guess I've finally gotten as old as McLellan and Forster were when they were 25.

Eric Weisbard once remarked that one's Go-Betweens love truly becomes obsessive when you hit a certain age, and he's right. "Uncynical" is a good adjective. And honesty! So many bands are revered for this, but in all their best songs the Go-Be's have that quality of having passed through the fire, transforming experience through thought and imagination. What makes them so endearing is that their instrumental chops and voices often didn't match their sophisticated songs (which, of course, takes them far, far away from Becker-Fagenland).

Erm, didn't Robert write that reminiscence about a year ago?

I too bought their records as a teenager, as they were released, but love them far more now, when approaching middle age. They are one of the very few bands for whom I thank my younger self for his taste and perception.

Go-betweens Bridge opening from last summer!
http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/247460_10150267952906138_684931137_9459662_2834590_n.jpg

Check out Vickers' swinging London 'do!

ha, he's still got the look. everyone looking pretty good actually. forster should get all these dudes to play on his next solo record.

this looks like its going to be pretty frothy for a Mike Leigh film - I'm excited

from wikipedia

A naming competition for the bridge was held through the website www.NameThatBridge.com, with eleven shortlisted suggestions put to a "popular vote", attracting less than 6000 votes. The winning name was announced on 29 September 2009. The Courier Mail newspaper held an online poll on the same day, asking the question "Is the Go Between Bridge a good name for Brisbane's newest river crossing?", to which 81% of the 3,400 voters answered "No"

Only a few thousand people saw the Go-Betweens, but all of them voted on NameThatBridge.com

oh goddamnit, a bridge-naming website was my big idea! i was going to make millions!

Well from a purely name POV 'Go-betweens Bridge' isn't that great of a name. But this is Brisbane and so I can assure you those 81% have voted no because they've read the article about "an australian 80's indie band" they've never heard of. After voting no each of those 81% then said "they shoulda named it the Acca Dacca bridge!"

Robert Forster brings the songs!

Rob is the man.

A plaint of Forster’s is your only man

Ask! <3

Bobby doesn't have 24 songs (#3 and #16 are doubled up) better than Part Company though

"Clouds" is one of the prettiest songs ever. I love when they do/did it as a duo.

and a lovely lyric

Nice to see that you ranked "I’m All Right" so highly, Alfred. I've always loved that one. "Clouds" as well.

knew I met the right person for me when early on I found out three of her favorite bands were the Blue Nile, Prefab Sprout, and the Go-Betweens.

I'm interested in opinions. I've had a Go-Betweens poll in the artist poll queue for some time and feel I should poll solo/side-projects as well when the time comes. Firstly, can I assume there's likely to be sufficient interest in such material to sustain a separate side-poll?

There are actually slightly more commercially-available solo/side-project tracks (at least 200) than Go-Betweens tracks. More than enough to warrant it, in theory. I'm inclined to poll "everything else" separately, as I fear that the main attraction would crowd out solo material on a consolidated ballot.

Combining all the LPs for the album ballot seems less problematic, perhaps even ideal, if one is allowed to select up to, say, 10 albums.

Any thoughts appreciated...

"everything else" side-poll and "whatever you like" albums poll seems entirely tidy and sensible.

Okay, cheers.

Now... seems like a good time to listen to Cleopatra Wong.