Robert Forster: Streaming Now

The new Robert Forster album, Songs To Play, is streaming over on The Guardian website right now.

Go-Betweens Weekend: Right Here

Blah Blah Blah - an Australian TV programme, it says here - in 1988:



[Part of The Go-Betweens weekend]

Go-Betweens Weekend: The House Jack Kerouac Built

An unidentified Australian TV programme, from a time we can only use Robert Forster's hairline to have a stab at guessing:



[Part of The Go-Betweens weekend]

Go-Betweens Weekend: Cattle And Cane

There would have been more Go-Betweens yesterday, except Sumesh came through the window with a poisoned cut in his tail, and so instead of noodling about in the YouTube archive, the morning was spent trying to get a reluctant cat into a box and up to the vets.

Anyway, he's better, and so where we were we?

Ah, yes. 1983, in Club Manhattan, Bradford. Cattle And Cane:



There is, so far as I can tell, no Club Bradford in Manhattan.

[Part of The Go-Betweens weekend]

Embed and breakfast man: The Go-Betweens

This weekend, let's spend some time delving into the Go-Betweens back catalogue, shall we?

Oh, go on.

Much supported by the Record Mirror and Snipe, the music fanzine which morphed into When Saturday Comes, the Go-Betweens were part of what felt like a very minor Australian invasion at the time. Which would have been early-ish on in the 1980s. (See, young people, it wasn't all outsize phones and Richard Branson launching airlines...)

Built around Robert Forster and Grant McLennan's songwriting partnership, you could argue that they were two bands, or a single band with two hearts. Or a multi-headed single beast. In fact, people spent quite a bit arguing that. Smudge even got a song out of the idea that two men had different approaches and produced a noticeably different style of result:



They've picked up some interesting honours in the years since they split, since they reunited in 2000, and especially since Grant McLennan's way-too-early death from a heart attack back in 2006. Cattle And Cane was voted one of the 30 best songs ever by the Australasian Performing Rights Assocation; there's a bridge named after the band in Brisbane. Oh, and 24 used Forster-McLennan as a company name during series four.

Let's go Go-Betweens, then.

To kick off, here's Lee Remick - a tribute to the much-pecked actress which was the first single in 1978. This version is a later revisiting of the tune:



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Bellavista Terrace: The Best Of
Liberty Belle & The Black Diamond Express

Go-Betweens GOTOs
Lovingly constructed fan site
Last FM
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More to come across the weekend
Cattle And Cane live
The House Jack Kerouac Built
Right Here

Cathal Coughlan Weekend: Dusty In Here

Moving into Cathal Coughlan's solo era, now: here he is, covering the Go Betweens, in Dublin:



[Part of Cathal Coughlan weekend]

In rock and roll seventh heaven

Robert Forster's first post-Go-Betweens solo outing is coming together; called The Evangalist and due at the end of April. CMJ is touting it as Ocean Rain continued, as it shares producer and studio with the last Go Between album. It points out, in the face of Forster's denials, that three tracks were even co-written with the late Grant Mclennan.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet

In The Times this morning, Glenn Thompson, the Go-Betweens drummer, reveals his secret:

“I have been writing sort of in secret for seven years,” admits Thompson, a laid-back, curly-haired, casually handsome chap.

“I started because I was trying to teach myself how to produce. We moved to a house with a spare bedroom, so I built a little studio in there and made some demos. I was still recording with other bands, but they were a closed shop when it came to songwriting. There’s something about being a drummer with ideas that puts other musicians off. Whenever I suggested we try one of my songs, the room would suddenly empty.”

Love Goes On sale: Tribute to McClennan

A quick mention that Love Goes On, the tribute to Grant Mclennan, has gone on sale. It includes covers by Luke Haines, The Orchids, Future Pilot AKA and - as the KTel ads would always have it - many, many more.

Togther, apart

It was planned before his death, but there's something almost heartbreakingly apt at Grant Mclennan sharing his solo best-of album with solo stuff from fellow Go-Betweener Robert Forster.

Intermission is due June 18th.

We need a new word

With the not-at-all-unwelcome news that the Go-Betweens have a tour and a new album all about to spring on us, it's becoming increasingly apparent that we really could do with a word to describe bands who have supposedly called it a day, but get back together again every couple of years or so to knock out something else - like Madness, the Go Betweens, New Order - you know the sort of act. Based on the concept of how Open University students have a couple of weeks get-together each year and struggle on alone for the rest of the time, we're proposing: The Summer School.

And, if you're casting about for a term to describe unwanted piles of pointless merchandise for bands who don't really have much of a shelf-life (think Hear'Say Easter Eggs; One True Voice anything) may we suggest: Memorobulimia?