The Go-Betweens - what's it all about?

Yeah, the intro to "Part Company" is like Seals and Crofts play Television.

I'm definitely looking forward to reading that!

Review of Forster's memoir:

The heart of the book, though, is about a close friendship with someone who remained unknowable: a “naive boy” who kept a close watch on his inner life, only to pour it out in songs such as the revered Cattle and Cane and its companion, Dusty in Here. Both songs reference McLennan’s father, who died when he was six. Yet as Grant & I (and the band’s career) unfurls, McLennan recedes; as his friendship with Forster is attenuated to a few words or glances, it’s easy to lose sight of him.

And in this, there is an omission. The shadow of heroin hangs over this book, but we don’t know of it until Forster drops the bombshell of his own diagnosis with hepatitis C, a likely consequence of his own dabbling with the drug. It’s well known in rock circles that McLennan was a long-term user; Steve Kilbey’s book Something Quite Peculiar speaks bitterly of McLennan introducing him to opiates, and the journalist Clinton Walker has also written of his habit.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/australia-books-blog/2016/aug/29/grant-i-review-the-go-betweens-robert-forster-grant-mclennan-moving-definitive-portrait

ha, Lindy pops up the comments there ... knew of mclennan's heroin habits, didn't know of forster's ... seems it was really a big part of the aussie music scene in the 80s.

Thanks for a reminder that this book is coming out.

That photo there sure captures a divide -- the 'regular' McLennan, Forster going for the alien sculpted beauty look.

love goes on anyway

Lindy's comment is definitely the clearest I've seen regarding that whole legal tangle.

love how she wouldn't name them, just used "the songwriters"

yeah it's a bummer they still haven't really buried the hatchet (though maybe there's not outright animosity). though it was obviously mclennan/forster focused, it is impossible to imagine the bulk of the GB's best stuff w/o morrison.

Yeah, harsh, but she says no ill will.

still think "twin layers of lightning" (which i think is about forster/morrison's relationship) is one of the best/weirdest love songs.

On how many GBs tracks was Lindy replaced by a drum machine? "Bachelor Kisses"?

That early?

And what other pop star has written as well as Forster? Caetano Veloso? Scott Miller?

Johnny Mercer

xpost Do you mean prose?

In that case, Chico Buarque.

And what's-his-name, our own Chachi Loves Aerosmith, apparently, although I personally have not read yet

Prose, yeah. I haven't read Buarque...

Chuck Berry
Dean Wareham

Keen to get the book, curious if the second and third box sets are still happening/progressing.

anyone seen the film?

https://vimeo.com/243460646

I liked it a lot.
A genuinely odd cast of characters they were. Not odd like Klaus Nomi or GG Allin, but subtly off. That def comes across.
Lots of genuine warmth (particularly in the direction of GM from RF) and a real awareness of what they actually were.

I found it kinda beautiful.

i wish it was twice as long.

the Forster book is among the best rock memoirs I've read.

Been reading some of Robert's stuff in The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll and finding it pretty well written so based on that and positive reviews by the likes of Alfie and a writer in the Grauniad I think I am going to have to buy it.

Second “it” meaning the memoir

Don't call me Alfie, please.

So sorry. I thought I saw someone else do it, but perhaps they were referring to another poster who actually went by that name.

Might also have been subconscious effect of watching Jeopardy! with the Redd family and seeing a question about Maurice Micklewhite.

it's all good!

Was wondering if albums had even been polled and found that this was the relevant thread Best Go-Betweens Album, which contains as a bonus a link to your piece about Spring Hill Fair

Thanks! And here's yet another good Go-Bets thread. For instance, you might (and well you might) scroll down to May 2015, where the links that I posted back then and just now checked still work, though haven't yet tried 'em all; quite a few are on that doomandgloomfromthetomb page I started with (thanks for those, tyler):
The Go-Betweens - POX or CDR

Thanks. Been randomly listening to the catalog today, both group and solo. Right now totally digging The Evangelist.

What is weird electro-noise which arrives with first chorus of Part Company that sounds like a cross between a theremin and a hissing radiator?

That's the instrumental element which most haunted me; it sounded like a tea kettle.

And RF doesn’t give the secret away in Grant & I?

He gives away too many secrets about McLennan.

What is weird electro-noise which arrives with first chorus of Part Company that sounds like a cross between a theremin and a hissing radiator?

I think that's Jacques Loussier on a Prophet 5.

Has anyone heard anything as to whether the second box set is still happening?

the door is open wide!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBDe9BGNBnM

Best use of oboe in pop music?

Yep! I've said so.

only Roxy comes close ("Out of the Blue," "Nightingale").

but what about "Crazy For You"!???
(just kidding, "bye bye pride" is the best use of oboe in pop music)

Nightswimming is pretty great but this makes me want to dance in the street with strangers.

amanda brown guested with R.E.M. a couple times right? Maybe she was playing violin there ...

does the cor anglais in "life in a northern town" count as as an oboe? judges?

what a song