#the go-betweens

[guessimdumb]

The Go-Betweens - The Sound of Rain (1979)

The Go-Betweens first LP Send Me A Lullaby was pretty underwhelming, sounding very little like their charming earlier singles, or the band they later became. But they'd actually made some home recordings, which were combined with the early singles and released as 78 til 79 the Lost Album. This lovely though a bit grim tune was intended to be their first single released on Beserkley records in the UK. Peter Milton Walsh, later of the Apartments, is playing the raindrop guitar.

Then over the bridge to her door She opens it with a sigh He pulls out the gun that he brought along And shoots her right between the eyes

[bandcampsnoop]

3/1/25.

Dumb Things are a Brisbane, Australia band who call their music "hangover pop". I found out about them due to an alert from James Southey (guitar), who is also in Soft Covers, a band I was listening to incessantly in late 2023.

"Time Again" is Dumb Things' LP from 2019, but they have a new album, Self Help, coming out in about a month. It continues in the same vein as this album. I automatically think of Go Get Mum ("Moving Day" is still one of my favorites), but I'll turn it over to the band themselves for the rest of the RIYL. They describe themselves as, "Another chapter in the long lineage of not just Queensland forebears like The Go-Betweens and The Apartments but also the next wave of Aussie bands who also mined that same fertile ground for inspiration like Dick Diver, Twerps and The Ocean Party."

"Time Again" was released by Coolin' By Sounds (also based in Brisbane). The last time this label was mentioned was for The Gametes in 2019.

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

The Go-Betweens - The Gatekeeper To Your Soul

A fan-made double-disc compilation of live Go-Betweens stretching from 1980 to 2005? Yes, please. The Gatekeeper To Your Soul isn't chronologically organized, so it bounces the listener from the twitched-out early days to the magisterial reunion era. But it's well-sequenced nonetheless, showing how great (and how downright weird) the Go-Betweens could be onstage. Thank you to whoever put it all lovingly together!

Plenty of the Go-Betweens' "hits" are here but also a lot of rarities — such as the long/wild rendition of "River of Money" from 1985 that kicks the comp off. Not sure how many times they played that abstract / experimental number, but it's a rough-cut gem, always teetering on the brink of complete chaos, Grant McLennan raving up a storm.

"There was always something off in a Go-Betweens single that kept it from crossing over to an ’80s radio audience," Chris O'Leary writes. "An abstruse lyric, a tinny mix, an oddly phrased refrain, a hook that came 10 seconds too late. Their songs sounded strange upon first listen, then took root in the head a day later. They came at you from an angle."

[musickickztoo]

Lindy Morrison *November 2, 1951

[guerrilla-operator]

THE GO-BETWEENS AND TOM WAITS

[rastronomicals]

11:23 PM EDT October 17, 2024:

The Go-Betweens - "Lee Remick" Single, Able AB001 7" (b/w Karen) (May 1978)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

File under: People Songs

[curseofcloverswine]

Left Tumblr for so long that now I have to remember my password! The reason is that in late November I caught a new form of Covid or other ailment of that sort, and then worked a lot to compensate for the time lost. Three last drawings still not scanned, but here are some WIPs: 'The Terror'/the Go-Betweens mashup and 'The Power of the Dog' fan art no. 2.

[soundgrammar]

Listen/purchase: It's Only Poison by Robert Forster

[dougwallen]

Amanda Brown feature for The Big Issue Australia

[guessimdumb]

The Go-Betweens - Clouds (1988)

Visions of blue, I'm angry, I'm wise, and you You're under cloudy skies

[bandcampsnoop]

11/18/24.

I was introduced to the Mekons (Leeds, England) years ago and my first listen (Rock n' Roll) didn't take. My second listen was several years ago when I heard one of the best punk rock songs ever - "Where Were You?".

So, I wasn't sure if I would like mid-1980s Mekons when I listened to "Fear and Whiskey" (originally released in 1985 and reissued in 2019). Put simply, this is one of the best distillations of punk energy with pub rock. It belongs next to some of the best albums by The Pogues. It has the energy of The Replacements, but some songs are catchy like The Go-Betweens.

The reissue was handled by Quarterstick Records.

[ideas-ideasideasideas]

Batman gives each of his Robins a different code to use when they’re in trouble and need immediate extraction. He promises that when they call, he’ll drop everything just to get to them, come hell or high water.

Jason, during his time with the League, shares his code with Damian, to be used “only in the direst of circumstances, when you have exhausted all other options.” He doesn’t know if Bruce will answer, given how fractured their relationship was before he died, but it is better than nothing. Every tool counts when they live such dangerous lives.

Damian uses it exactly once, and Bruce, who still feels the loss of his son like a yawning chasm in his chest, responds to it even though he knows it can’t be Jason because Jason’s dead. What he finds, instead of Jason, is a boy in League garbs, drenched in blood from the tips of his midnight-black hair to his too-small feet, with a face that Bruce sees himself and Talia in, requesting asylum from a grandfather who wishes to possess his body. Bruce doesn’t question how this boy who is so clearly his son knew the code. Talia al Ghul is resourceful and places family above all; the code is not beyond her abilities to discover, and she is not above using Bruce’s desperate love for his dead son to ensure that hers does not meet the same fate.

Bruce takes Damian in, because of course he does, and since Jason is dead he allows Damian to keep using the code. After all, it’s not like Jason is alive to use it, right? If someone uses the code, there’s no one it could be but Damian, right?

The next time the code is used, Bruce traces the location to Gotham even though Damian was supposed to be in Bludhaven visiting Dick. But whatever happened that resulted in Damian being in Gotham can wait, because he has already failed one son and he will not fail another, his son is in trouble and he needs to get to him, he needs to—

What he finds, instead of Damian, is a boy (just eighteen, too young, but also too old, but also he will always be a boy to him) in League garbs, drenched in blood from the tips of his midnight-black hair to his too-large feet (when had he gotten so big), wearing the face of his dead son.

(Who, maybe, just maybe, may no longer be so dead.)

[musickickztoo]

Amanda Brown *November 17, 1965

[cowboysmp3]

there’s something sooo sickening about how dunmeshis whole energy is like sometimes something terrible and awful happens to you and it changes you forever and nothing can make you the person you were before but there’s still love and there’s still sharing a meal together and there’s still living

[rastronomicals]

7:44 AM EDT October 17, 2024:

The Go-Betweens - "Lee Remick" Single, Able AB001 7" (b/w Karen) (May 1978)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

File under: People Songs