Before POLLywood - The Go-Betweens - Artist Poll #98 - VOTING THREAD

all of them, really

During the first decade, did McLennan play lead guitar after 1983? It's hard to tell.

Absolutely, he was the lead guitarist!

Distant xpost but we've already discussed how Robert buries or generally avoids talking in any real detail about Grant's drug use (as well as his own). But there are lots of to my ears drugs/heroin/withdrawal references in Riddle in the Rain, many couched in the common rock song metaphor of a romantic relationship. "well way back in crete and you've got the chills," "i guess there are some holes you don't fill ," "yeah i know this is final and pipes can break and milk can go sour but i'm still waking up with aches at early morning hours," "invaded by pictures of a hospital bed, drips, cuts and stitches and your shaking head, a necessary performance, maybe an exorcism." Coincidence or no, these are exactly *not* the lines that Robert quotes in his book.

Anyway. Worth seeking out duo recordings of "Clouds."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smfT5NvmmWU

Reminds me also of one of my favorite Grant moments, his spellbinding, gorgeous cover of Springsteen's "If I Should Fall Behind:"

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

Robert Vickers commented on the lead guitar situation in the band on the Go-Betweens forum:

"Virtually all the lead guitar you hear on GBs albums is Grant. A lot of his bass playing on the early records are almost lead guitar parts as well. One of the reasons they wanted a fourth member after BH was to free Grant up to play lead giutar. Which he did for until the breakup. Robert occasionally dabbled but seemed happier playing chords and working on a stage persona. A division of labour that I thought worked very well.

Grant almost always played electric and developed a simple, melodic and somewhat emotional style that really worked with the songs. Man O' Sand is my favourite. I'll be interested to see what he does with Darlinghurst Nights live. I like the horns on that track but a nice long Grant solo on the end would have been interesting. I understand Grant likes playing acoustic now and that's the direction of the band, but the more electric he plays the more ideas he comes up, with particularly on Robert's songs. the intro to Spring Rain etc etc. "

The faintly frustrating thing about the lesser songs on the '80s albums is that there was no lack of interesting McLennan tracks amongst B-sides ("This Girl, Black Girl", "Casanova's Last Words", "Newton Told Me") and BBC sessions ("Secondhand Furniture") or completely unreleased at the time ("Emperor's Courtesan", "Apples in Bed", "You Won't Find It Again")

Good to hear xpost. He rarely played lead on his solo albums (the electric part on "Horsebreaker Star" an exception).

Oh man, reminds me how much I like that title track. great album closer.

No-one's mentioned Watershed by name yet. The politeness (?!) of the singles didn't excite me as a silly schoolkid but, while some of the production now sounds very 1991, this one has an awful lot of deep cuts I keep returning to. "Broadway Bride", "Just Get That Straight", "Haunted House", "Stones for You", etc. (Most of which, IIRC, had been destined for the seventh GBs LP that never was.)

TS: Dave Dobbyn vs Mick Harvey. LOL.

"Stones for You" became one of their standards, and I'm fond of "Sally's Revolution."

(I take there is not a decent sounding version of Oceans Apart I can illegally download somewhere? Like a vinyl rip?)

Is there a reason that you want to do so illegally? Because otherwise, the CD is $10, the download is $9, and the 128k stream is free at https://thego-betweens.bandcamp.com/album/oceans-apart

Luke Haines totally ran with 'Broadway Bride' for The Auteurs 'Showgirl'

xpost It is because the CD mastering is the worst I've ever heard on a profession release. I normally don't care too much about these things but it's an absolute abomination. It's probably my least listened to album overall and that has nothing to do with the quality of the music. Single version of Finding You, sounds much less distorted on Spotify.

I'm not merely talking 'brickwalled', it's basically ruined.

Ah - in that case I’d doubt that any vinyl edition in 2005 was mastered separately. Try the stream and see, though?

This ten-year-old fansite thread says the UK label did a second pressing at the time & would replace yr CDs, but it was only able to get the situation down to “distorted” from “horribly distorted”

So, weirdly, the Locust Girls song posted upthread is available on Spotify (UK) but titled Ashes on the Lawn, from the Worlds Apart EP:

https://open.spotify.com/track/6OhZNKHWswXlFpUPjty9Ub?si=mf4B8JROTJKqRMKf2cC9RA

I wonder if that's a fuck-up or whether that's an alternative name for the track.

Well that's interesting. Those EP tracks are the only officially-released GBs tracks I've never heard. Maybe that's effectively only two unheard tracks rather three then! :)

With the lead guitar, it said on the 16 Lovers Lane documentary that John Willsteed overdubbed a lot of guitar parts onto 16 Lovers Lane.

Yeah, the nylon-string solo on "Streets..." is famously Willsteed's. And the various stacked "mandolin-like" [his words, IIRC] concoctions, etc. He gets quite emotional about how much he was allowed to contribute and his enduring fondness for the record in the Right Here documentary. Which was interesting given his fabled abrasiveness during that period.

I knew the fancier guitar parts weren't McLennan, couldn't remember who played them though. Love his lead work though.

The leisurely deadline is another two weeks away but here's a BUMP for anyone who might have overlooked it.

Working on it.

On the matter of non-virtuosic guitar parts, I always liked the repeated two-note licks on this b-side I already mentioned. (And McLennan's talk-y singing, for that matter.)

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

Love that track, it's on my long list.

I think it's virtually the first thing they did they did with Vickers on bass, so I guess that's the birth of McLennan as official lead guitarist right there. :)

He plays lead guitar on the first album!

Not as "official lead guitarist" though. :) Guitar on three tracks by the look of it. Interesting.

Other thing I can't believe I only just noticed: Stewart Lee wrote sleeve notes for the 2002 issue.

Not sure how I failed to realise it was Amanda Brown playing violin on this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2R-dV6uwYk

I think I have my top 30 Go-Betweens songs and my albums list ready. Just need to work on the solo/side projects part now.

These guys really are the best.

Didn't realise that Westlake played a BBC Janice Long session in 1987 backed by Brown, Forster & Vickers. (xpost)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSwA4zCZXVk

starting to worry that these songs are all Too Good and therefore impossible to rank

Go Betweens done in by choice paralysis.

More like Can’t-Choose-Betweens amirite

These Servants/Westlake revelations perhaps shouldn't be surprising. I seem to recall the 1990 Servants LP sounding like possibly the only record ever modelled on Send Me a Lullaby.

I just listened to Send Me A Lullaby for the first time, and did not have a good time. Any tips on what's good about it?

Er, Lindy's drumming?

It's a fascinating disaster.

Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the world who likes Send Me A Lullaby. I'm biased; it's an album that changed my life in lots of little ways. I wrote an article about it at 16 for a site with loose connections to this one, and that led to a few fun years writing about music. Years later, I named my dating profile after a track off the album thinking no one would recognise it. I met one guy who did and we ended up living together. I associate the album with romantic folly and sadness; it's a really teenage record, all fumbles and mistakes.

To me it sounds wonderful and trembly and vulnerable, if a little overlong. Grant's songs are gorgeous and sad, and Eight Pictures is one of Robert's best lyrics. It's just post-punk weirdly worn by traditional songwriters who didn't suit it - a necessary growth spasm to get to Before Hollywood. I still like it better than great swathes of 16 Lovers Lane.

I quite like it. Though a couple of tracks are downright ugly and it may have been better as an eight-track mini album like the original Aus issue. (A slightly different selection of eight tracks. eg. 'Eight Pictures' wasn't on that, insanely.)

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if they'd gone to John Brand an album earlier and captured some prettier vocal takes.

Agree with that - though I find it hard to forgive them for that one track with the worst sax playing I've ever heard in my life.

You could argue that The Wave Pictures based their entire career on Eight Pictures

yes! their cover of it is so good.

The weird thing about that saxophone is that it was played by this bloke, who was, unsurprisingly, rarely (ever?) credited as a saxophonist anywhere else. There's at least one interview where the GBs giggled about having a proper pop star guesting on their record.

Ride is my main keeper on Send Me A Lullaby. I've always found it so odd that it's such a weak and confused sounding record as they'd already put out some great singles before it (Hammer The Hammer, Karen, I need Two Heads). It's not like they hadn't learnt to write good songs by then, it's just they didn't pick their best material.
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BUMP! Just over a week until the arbitrary and not particularly rigid end-of-the-month voting deadline.

So I downloaded what purports to be the "Worlds Apart" EP and "Ashes On The Lawn" sounds just like "The Locust Girls".

Also discovered some other heretofor unknown Go-B's b-sides:
https://www.discogs.com/The-Go-Betweens-Here-Comes-A-City/release/11021483

1 Here Comes A City 3:22
2 Erotic Sunshine 3:11
3 Stone 4:23

Anyone heard the latter two?

Just going through some of their solo works. I honestly could vote for every song on The Evangelist. It's such a special album.

And it's getting a vinyl reissue in a couple of weeks. Will definitely be picking that up.

I have to think some more about solo stuff. Just got around to entering my (GB) tracks. Every album but one is represented. And I just realised I included 5 consecutive tracks from one of them!

Have received just a handful of others so far, so any given ballot may well have the power to seriously skew the distribution!