Go Betweens Discography Rare

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Sep 20, 2014 - 66 min - Uploaded by Master EddieThe Cricketers Arms Tavern Wellington, New Zealand February 12, 1985 Soundboard 01. The Go-Betweens G Stands for Go-Betweens: Volume. In addition to several excellent essays and a full discography. A collection of the late Grant McLennan's poetry and plenty of rare.

The visit earlier this year to the cinema to enjoy Right Here led to me going on a bit of a Go-Betweens binge immediately afterwards; I even managed to slip Bye Bye Pride into a pre-matCh play list at a Raith Rovers game not too long ago.It also got me looking again at the two previous ICAs in November 2016. I still think they stand amongst the best in the entire series, but it also made me realise just how many superb songs had been left off. This was partly down to me trying really hard to stick by my first principle of an ICA, namely that it shouldn’t necessarily comprise what I think are the ten best songs, nor should it be my ten favourites songs, but instead should hang together as a ‘perfect’ LP with five tracks on each side. Oh, and I also wanted to ensure there were five songs from each of Robert Forster and Grant McLellan.Thus it is that the landmark 200th ICA is my stab at a third volume for possibly the greatest band to ever emerge from Australia.sometimes I do think it is them but on other days I can’t see past The Bad Seeds. This time around there’s a co-composition, which I really should have found room for previously but in looking at both volumes, I’m still struggling to see where it would have fitted in and at what other song’s expense. But there’s five lead vocals from each of them. SIDE A(debut single, 1978)The one which made it all possible.

My thinking behind it not being included on either of the previous volumes is that, by the time I made my own discovery of the band some five years later with the release of Before Hollywood, they had developed a more sophisticated and less jarring sound. Now that The Go-Betweens have been knocked out of the ICA World Cup, I can safely turn my attention to the third in this very occasional series in which I’ll tell the story of the band’s musical history through the pages of the excellent memoir from Robert Forster.The first two parts dealt with the release of singles in Australia and took us to up to November 1979 when the duo decided to take their chances in London.“A few things were immediately clear.

We bought the NME on the day it came out, and that shrinking of time and senses of being at the centre of the action was thrilling. It was also what made one thing spectacularly apparent – The Go-Betweens were going to get nowhere in London. The scene was too big, the walls too high, and we knew no one in the music business. We’d travelled sixteen thousand kilometres to advance the career of the band without bringing one telephone number.”The duo went to a gigs, seeing Gang of Four, The Raincoats and Scritti Politti on one bill, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes and A Certain Ratio together on another, while also on other occasions catching The Cramps, The Fall, The Cure and The Pretenders. As their savings ran out, and after a brief interlude in Paris for Robert and Greece for Grant they picked up menial jobs to get. In due course, via a fellow Australian who worked in the Rough Trade record store, they got to meet Geoff Travis and let him hear Lee Remick but he dismissed it as being too poppy although he was willing to put the single on display in the store.Two months later, E dwyn Collins, David McClymont and Alan Horne turned up at the same shop trying to get the owners to take the first ever Postcard single off their hands.

All three had previously taken notice of Lee Remick when it had been played on the John Peel show and Alan Horne was intrigued enough to ask the Australian working in the shop how a copy had made it way to London from Brisbane. Having heard that Grant and Robert were in London, he put together a package and asked if it could be delivered to them. The package consisted of a single, some promo photos of Orange Juice and a handwritten letter inviting them to come to Glasgow and record a single for Postcard Records.It would be fair to say that neither Grant nor Robert knew what to make of Falling and Laughing as it was unlike anything else they had heard during their time in London. But with nothing else happening, they pursued the offer and on 1 April 1980. They took the train to Glasgow.

Their first impressions was that ‘it immediately felt right.’They would spend six weeks in Scotland, playing gigs at which Steven Daly of Orange Juice would drum for them, on bills alongside that band and Josef K. Grant was put up in a spare room in Edwyn Collins’ flat while Robert was accommodated by two art school friends of David.Watching Orange Juice on stage opened up their eyes to what was possible.“There was a Beatles ’62 thing about them. Own dress style.

Own songs and sound in the heart of a city. Immediately obvious was their superiority to the bands we’d seen in London, drowning as many of them were in reverb and effects. Orange Juice had clarity, which made their stinging songs and each member’s contribution all the more powerful. ‘Falling and Laughing’ sounded much better live – like a classic, in fact, but they had at least half a dozen of them. Grant and I, five metres back from the stage, were counting.”They ended up in a studio just outside of Edinburgh where they cut the two sides of the 45 for Postcard.

They were team-tagged in the studio with Orange Juice and looked on as they recorded Blue Boy and Lovesick.“It was clear that something special was happening. It was whiplash pop, miles removed from the doom of the Joy Division imitators or the rumble of The Fall. Orange Juice had cut a major record that, give any kind of chance, would break the band and all those who sailed in it along with them.Which makes our decision to leave in late May all the harder to explain.

Discography

Why go when we had a single recorded for a fast-rising label and were living in a city we dug? I was missing Lindy – that was the nub of it. First love had bitten hard.

It was six months since I’d seen her, and six months seemed to be the length of time I could endure without her.”Robert therefore put his personal life before that of the band. It wasn’t easy – he was left to make his way back to Australia alone, with his air fare paid by his parents. Grant went to New York but agreed to talk about things when he himself eventually got back home. Neither of them hung around long enough for the Postcard single to be pressed up and copies taken back to Brisbane, although Robert did have a cassette copy, along with a battered Nu-sonic guitar that had been gifted to him by James Kirk.mp3: Go-Betweens – I Need Two Headsmp3: Go-Betweens – Stop Before You Say ItJC.

For a reminder of the first post.It may have been limited to just 500 copies, but the release of Lee Remick/Karen in the late summer of 1978 had generated a bit of a buzz around Go-Betweens.“We mailed our record to the Australian and overseas press, where it was widely and positively reviewed, and to a select group of people who were important to us. We also targeted a list of record companies, one of which, Beserkley UK, the London-based home of Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, overwhelmed us by offering a worldwide multi-album deal.”The label had also suggested it would be willing to release each of Lee Remick and Karen as singles and encouraged Robert and Grant to come up with b-sides. They went about this with some gusto, walking around Brisbane with a huge swagger and self-belief. Only to find that when they asked the label that the costs of the studio time be repaid that all communication suddenly stopped.“The deal was off, as was our fast track to stardom; we were getting a crash course in the music business and the cruel, cruel world outside the environs of Brisbane.”By now, Robert had finally, at the age of 21, left the comfort of his parental home and moved into the house in which Grant had been living for a number of years, in what is described as a bohemian lifestyle with a group of friends. The house, on Golding Street in the Toowong district of Brisbane, was now the recognised centre of all Go-Betweens activity and it was there that many of the next batch of songs were composed.In another arty part of the New Farm district in late 78/early 79, a band called Zero ruled the roost. Robert’s book records that Zero had started out as a fierce, feminist group, whose core members Irena Luckus (vocals/keyboards) and Lindy Morrison (drums), had added a new male bass player in John Willsteed who had helped the band move towards a post-punk direction with their live set including covers of songs by Gang Of Four, Wire and XTC.

Robert was so besotted with the drummer that he changed some of the lyrics of one of his new songs, People Say from “So pack your bags your saxophone/I’m gonna take you to Rome” to “So pack your bags your drums/I’m gonna take you till the kingdom comes”.It may have been corny, but it did help. Robert was now in the first serious relationship of his life, with a woman six years older than him and one who had a huge, dynamic personality with confirmed views on politics and life in general. It was a seriously steep learning curve for him.The next few months were frantic.

A new drummer, Tim Mustafa had been recruited into Go-Betweens, and with the addition of Malcolm Kelly on keyboards, they went into the studio in May 1979 to cut a second single for Able Records.mp3: Go-Betweens – People Saymp3: Go-Betweens – Don’t Let Him Come BackThe latter was the first Forster/McLellan joint composition. If you have one of the copies of this single, expect to get around £500 if you put it up for sale.The single would be released in September 1979. The success of the debut meant the label pushed the boat out this time and pressed up 750 copies. But before it hit the shops, Tim took his leave of the band. A stand-in drummer, Bruce Ashton, enabled some supporting gigs, all in Brisbane.“There was no organisation in place to play Sydney or Melbourne: you had to move there.

I was conflicted about leaving, the dream of escaping Australia with Grant, two drifters off to see the world – and there was a lot of world to see – severely shaken by my relationship with Lindy. Things became further complicated when I joined Zero as a stand-in guitarist.”Robert and Grant made up their mind to go to London which they eventually did in November 1979.

Discography

That chapter in their story, which includes a spell in Glasgow, will be told next time round. JCPS. In later years, the original lyric would be re-adopted, as per this live performance in August 2005:-mp3: Go-Betweens – People Say (live at The Tivoli, Brisbane). A short time ago, I went along to a cultural gathering in my home city.Robert Forster was appearing at Mono, a location that is part music-venue, part vegetarian cafe and part record-store that is owned and run by Stephen Pastel. Robert was going to take part in an interview to promote his recently issued book Grant & I: Inside and Outside The Go-Betweens and in the process sing a few songs.

It was an event that I’d have more than willingly paid a fair bit of money to get to and yet the tickets were free.It was, as you’d expect, packed full of folk who had been Go-Betweens devotees at one time or another. I knew a lot of people in the room,many of who have become close friends in the near eleven years since I began this blog. It was always going to be a special and emotional evening, not least as the Australian band were indirectly responsible for me getting my finger out and launching TVV and I’ve still never quite gotten used to the fact that Grant McLennan is no longer with us.It turned out to be everything I could have wished for and more, thanks to the opportunity to meet Robert at the end of the night, have a photo taken with him and have him sign a copy of the book, with the dedication to The Vinyl Villain. I’ve only one other book with such a dedication and it came from Grace Maxwell and Edwyn Collins; I tend to shy away from having my records and books ‘defaced’ with signatures.The following day I started reading the book and soon found it all-consuming.

Robert is an extremely talented and entertaining writer and of course the story he gets to tell is rather extraordinary. The blurb on the back nails it perfectly:-Beautifully written – like lyrics, like prose – Grant & I is a rock memoir akin to no other, Part ‘making of’, part music industry expose, part buddy-book, this is a delicate and perceptive celebration of creative endeavour. With wit and candour, Robert Forster pays tribute to a band who found huge success in the margins, having friendship at its heart.It’s easy to forget that this was a band who never enjoyed the success in the 80s that their collective talents and output deserved.

The albums were well received but their singles all flopped despite most of subsequently proving to be timeless classics (unlike many others from the same decade). They recorded for numerous labels, finding themselves dropped all sorts of strange and unrelated reasons looking on as so many of their contemporaries hit payola.

But not once does the author feel the need to settle any old scores or cast aspersions on those who did get rich and famous – indeed I think there was just one swear word within its 330 pages and the profanity was followed by an immediate apology in brackets!Instead, it is a celebration of the fact the band had a lengthy career, initially from 1977 -1989 and then again when they reformed in 2000 through to Grant’s sudden death from heart failure in May 2006. The book has a strong supporting cast including long-standing band members Lindy Morrison, Robert Vickers and Amanda Brown, various friends, family and band associates. There’s also many wonderful cameo appearances dotted throughout from other leading Australian musicians, the Postcard Records cognoscenti and all sorts of producers and artists.Much of the book is set in Australia, and at different times paints wonderfully evocative pictures of the cities of Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, It certainly made me want to get on a plane and go see these places for myself.

It is rich in its description of life in London in the 80s, getting across the bizarre notion of musicians who were hugely respected and appreciated by just about everyone in the industry and yet rarely had more than £50 a week per person to live on. There is a lot of self-deprecating wit on display throughout, punctured occasionally by a sentence or two that is genuinely shocking with revelations about personal circumstances that a sharp reminder that rock stars are human beings and suffer from the same type of frailties that impinge on the rest of us mere mortals.But here’s the thing. Having devoured the first 80-90% of the book in a matter of days, it took me weeks to pick it up again and finish it. It was all down to knowing that the hero dies in the end and I just didn’t want to face up to that. I had to be in the right frame of mind for finishing it offbut despite my best efforts I did find myself upset and crying.I am delighted that Robert Forster has produced a masterpiece, as fine a music memoir as I’ve ever read, and given I have about 200 such books lying around the house I’m in a reasonable position to make such a judgement. Even if you know little or nothing about the band, there is much to enjoy from the writing and the telling of what is a wonderfully played out story of two soul mates who perfectly complemented one another.The book has given me an idea for a new, occasional (at best monthly) series and that is to look at the music and offer up some of Robert’s words as an accompaniment. Staring right back with the debut single, released originally in 1978 on the Australian indie Able Label and restricted to just 700 copies.

Go Betweens Discography Rare Songs

If you want one nowadays, be prepared to shell out almost £1,500.mp3: The Go-Betweens – Lee Remickmp3: The Go-Betweens – KarenThe latter was just about the first song the university student Robert Forster wrote. By this time, one of his best friends was fellow student Grant McLennan; Robert had been rebuffed by Grant in an effort to form a band as Grant was far more interested in and occupied by cinema.Robert had instead formed a three piece called The Godots who were down to play in a Battle of the Bands competition in Brisbane. I said most of what I had to say yesterday. Here’s some more great songs.

Side OneThat Way from Before Hollywood (1983): lead vocal by Grant McLennanUntil now, I don’t think I, or indeed anyone, has ever opened up an ICA with the closing track of an LP. It just goes to show how many great songs there were back in the day that they could put this gem at the end. It certainly would make you want to get up and turn the record back over immediately.The House That Jack Kerouac Built from Tallulah (1987): lead vocal by Robert ForsterHaving failed to crack open the markets with the first four albums, everyone involved threw the kitchen sink and the rest into the recording of Tallulah including the addition of a fifth member on violin and oboe.

It was a record greeted with some scepticism on its release as a result of to its lush production and move away from indie-guitar pop, but which is now regarded as a bona-fide classic.The Wrong Road from Liberty Belle and The Black Diamond Express (1986): lead vocals by Grant McLennanThe thing is, the path that would lead to Tallulah had in some ways been set by this track from the album released the previous year. The addition of violin, cellos, viola and organ take this to places the band hadn’t explored before and the result was one of their finest ever songs. Epic.Was There Anything I Could Do? From 16 Lovers Lane (1988): lead vocals by Grant McLennanFFS. How did this single not get any airplay?Surfing Magazines from The Friends of Rachel Worth (2000): lead vocal by Robert ForsterHere’s a band that came out with some of the best lyrics of their generation falling back on a variation of la-la-la-la-la for the chorus and pulling it off with some style.

Go Betweens Discography Rare Books

Side TwoBye Bye Pride from Talullah (1987): lead vocal by Grant McLennanIn which the decision to bring in a new member who plays oboe is totally justified in four minutes flat.Rock and Roll Friend b-side to Was There Anything I Could Do? (1988): lead vocal by Robert ForsterA song that became synonymous with Robert’s efforts to get back in the saddle after Grant’s shock death in 2006. It must have been very tempting just to pack it all in.

Go Betweens Discography Rare Guitar

Instead, he went into the studio and recorded The Evangelist, his first solo LP in 12 years and hit the road and in every show he played this (a song he had re-recorded himself in 1996) and dedicated to his late band mate. It’s worthy of a place on this ICA for that alone notwithstanding it is such a fine number.I Just Get Caught Out from Tallulah (1987): lead vocal by Robert ForsterAnother great little failure of a pop single. I defy you to listen and not dance.Dusty In Here from Before Hollywood (1983): lead vocal by Grant McLennanA ballad just to mix things up a bit and because it fits in well at this point on this ICA.Dive For Your Memory from 16 Lovers Lane (1988): lead vocal by Robert ForsterCouldn’t think of a more fitting way to end this ICA. The other song that Robert often dedicates nowadays to Grant; there’s something poignant that he once wrote a line ‘I miss my friend.’Don’t we all?Bonus 45: The debut single from 1978.mp3: The Go-Betweens: Lee Remickmp3: The Go-Betweens: KarenTune in tomorrow for ICA #100 as it features a tale and a half from Badger. Posts navigation.