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

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

On this video of “Head Full of Steam” looks like Amanda is playing a violin through an effect to make it sound like an oboe or something:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuuqJGLgjXw

The official video for “Head Full of Steam” is, um, interesting.

Enjoyed recently discovering the cover of “Bachelor Kisses” by The Radio Dept.

Okay, got the book and have been reading over the weekend and have to say Alfred, as is the case more often than not, is right: it is one of the better rock memoirs. It hits the sweet spot of telling you stuff you wanted to know along with things you didn't think to ask about and seems to avoid, as far as I can tell as far as I have read, some of the obvious traps- score settling, evasion, meaningless digression or page-filling, embarrassing defensiveness, reinterpretation or misinterpretation regarding the author's own work. He is careful and cagey in describing Grant, playing one card at a time, interested to see what will be revealed as I get further along in the story.

Yes, Forster is a writer: he doesn't insist on proving a thesis. What he has to share about his best friend he will do in a leisurely manner after he has limned scenarios.

He seems to be one of the few people besides myself who likes the Bryan Ferry record Dylanesque. I will have to reread his piece on that and reflect.

Read through to end this weekend. Did not disappoint

second box set is definitely happening -Robert mentioned it at a London book launch/concert thing late last year

Thanks Jamie!

I'd been meaning to read the book for a while, so I just bought it. No library in our multi-library system had a copy!

Listening to Oceans Apart a lot, and to the '78-'90 comp. "Born to a Family" and "Second Hand Furniture." Oceans, with all its interesting feints and digressions, is the realization of their super-MOR Glen Campbell- John Phillips-Jimmy Webb concept. Only comparable fairly recent album I can think of is Freedy Johnston's similarly Webb-ian Neon Repairman.

Hmm, never really thought of that album as particular MOR in style. Anyway, "Finding You" is a beaut. That and "The Clock" are total late-era Grant keepers, though all three comeback albums are strong in their own ways, with the former two charmingly tentative (in a sense) and the last one totally assertive in its swing-for-the-fences confidence.

super-MOR Glen Campbell- John Phillips-Jimmy Webb

OTM

Oceans Apart is their great record, after several excellent ones.

Oceans Apart is excellent but it's also a disappointingly bad master. This was the album that led me to learn more about the "loudness wars". I remembering reading that Yep Roc were considering a remaster but saw nothing further. Did this ever happen?

It did. I bought the remastered version (after trading in the original) and it does indeed sound better.

Lomax also made replacement discs but I never got around to requesting one.

Downy Mildew: Classic or Mold Spore

Hi! We're from Downy Mildew! And we've got a new album out called Mincing Steps!
This is all I know of them. Hilarious, nonetheless.

― Ally C, Wednesday, February 20, 2002 8:00 PM (fifteen years ago)

The above being a quote from Live On Snap, which I prefer somewhat to That Striped Sunlight Sound.

Have to see it took me ages to get into this band originally because I was put off by the post-punk yelping on the first album. Now I have changed my tune and am in completely in awe of the, um, fecundity and longevity of their creative partnership.

The Go-Betweens, that is, not Downy Mildew

The first album works in its way. The bass playing is enthusiastic and amazingly good for someone who apparently hadn't done it before. Just listened to it the other day and it's actually full of great ideas that are executed with a certain flair. In the post-Beefheart sweepstakes that record and all their stuff is a pretty amazing thing to contemplate, altho I also listened to "Just a King in Mirrors" the other day, and that's one of their best Velvets rips. The guitar obbligato in "Second Hand Furniture" is very Beefheart. Not that it may have been intentional. The non-idiomatic idioms are so fucking elusive somehow even when they play funk in the song that goes "they're taking heaven away" it's not quite like Pylon or Gang of Four at the same time, or even Pavement later, though lots of similarities.

All well and good but what about the first album, Send Me A Lullaby?

not very good

But yeah, the Beefheart similarity you point out is useful to contemplate.

It's not as good as Before Hollywood etc but I also don't think it's a bad record. I suppose technically I would agree it's not very good, it's just good.

Mind you I absolutely love the Lost Album stuff, so maybe the early stuff is just more to my tastes. I don't think Send Me A Lullaby is as good as the Lost Album though.

Me neither

As a piece of music the first album is quite good and as a collection of songs it's just not done with enough skill, so I don't think it's bad at all. Get a little band together with a good bassist and do that stuff now with a couple of singers who enunciate a bit more and can put those words across, that record would come alive like a Pylon dance party or something.

The singing is pretty bad on Send Me A Lullaby. Plus the songs are trying too hard to be all angular and post-punk, something they didn't completely shake off till 16 Lovers Lane.

... I like them angular and awkward but they weren't very good at it that stage, apart from Lindy, who was easily the best musician in the band.

I'm not keen on their pre-Before Hollywood stuff. I agree with Tom D; they were aiming for an angularity that they weren't proficient enough to pull off

I think the tension between the sprung-rhythm aspect of their style (and their fairly amazingly unobtrusive use of the 3/4-/4/4 tension thruout) and the Guy Van Zandt-Towne Clark Parsons aspect of their songwriting is what makes Spring Hill Fair unique and probably their best album overall if Tallulah isn't. Esp. on the versions of the material from around then that ended up on the box, "Part Company" and "Heaven Says" and "Rare Breed." I think they moving toward straight rock or singer-songwriter rock on all their early records, actually, apart from the first one, certainly by Liberty Belle it's just more straightforward and more attuned to normal rock dynamics, I guess.

For me the best of the original run are Tallulah and Liberty Belle. Do you still dislike the bridge of “Bachelor Kisses,” Alfred? The Radio Dept. cover I recently mentioned seems to dispense with it.

Oceans, um, flows so nicely, and seems to have no clunkers or clunky moments and still has some of their best songs so I am leaning towards agreeing with Alfred that it is the best overall.