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

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.