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

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)
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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.