The Go-Betweens: The Friends of Rachel Worth

The Go-Betweens gig I most wanted to go to was at De Balie on the first night of the Crossing Border festival in 2000, just a few months after they'd reformed. We were in town; we had tickets for the festival; Tim was keen. But Martyn and Jim were regulars in Amsterdam. There was a Friday night comedy evening that they thought was unmissable, and they'd booked us tickets — for which we had to pay. We wished we'd missed it, and seen The Go-Betweens instead. I recommended to Mimi Hui, whom I'd 'met' via stephinsongs, that she go, and when I met her properly at The Magnetic Fields' performance the following night, she said they had been great.

I think it was the disproportionate frustration and sense of being cheated from that performance that triggered buying this CD a few months later. That was about a year after Andy T had lent me a Robert Forster solo album, Warm Nights. I'd had a blindspot for The Go-Between up to then; didn't even know who Robert Forster was when Andy first gave me the CD. But by this point — though Wikipedia was still a few years away — the web was becoming pretty reliable for answering those "where might I have heard of… before?" questions.

In one of those ubiquitous moments of synchronicity, Stuart Maconie mentioned Robert Forster's guide to hair care on the radio around the same time. I tracked that down online, too — the original 1987 piece, though I see now there's also a 2001 update and 2008 piece as well. I took that advice to heart, and, to this day, I still alternate between Redken and another shampoo (though I never managed to track down a tortoise shell comb). People who see my hair don't usually imagine that I take its care seriously, but then they don't know that Bob Geldof got me at an impressionable age.

As you may know, all The Go-Between's albums had two 'l's in the title (Lullaby, Hollywood, Belle, Tallulah, Lovers Lane), until this one. Then the pattern resumed with the next album, Bright Yellow, Bright Orange. As for how it sounds, well, ten songs of relatively even lengths, 40 minutes in total: very old school. Whatever, I like it. And its the only album I've ever seen on Circus records apart from 69 Love Songs.

I finally got to see The Go-Betweens at the Barbican in the summer of 2004, a concert that was recorded and released, at least in part, officially. I don't know whether it felt like a valedictory evening — to me — at the time, or whether that comes with hindsight since Grant McLennan died less than two years later. The Barbican kind of swallowed them up in its warm embrace, as it often can: give a band a pretext to add a string section, plus an audience more than ten times the size of De Balie, and they stretch out and do a career retrospective. I found it got a bit blurry and remote. Part of my problem was that I recognised so few of the songs. Had I caught on earlier in life, I'm sure this is a band that I could have grown to love (and that gig would have been more fun too).

But the moment had passed. Sometimes catching up with what you've missed is even more overwhelming than keeping up with the new stuff. However, don't let that stop you recommending the Go-Betweens album I should listen to next.

MusicBrainz entry for this album Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Listen to this album in full at Last.fm

Comments

[Andy]

I, too, was late to The Go-Betweens. They split up within weeks of my frined Ken introducing me to them. I saw both Robert and Grant solo that year - and Robert joined Grant for a couple of numbers. And then saw quite a few shows where they were billed as a duo, rather than the Go-Betweens.

In 1999 Brian (Ken's band) supported The Go-Betweens at the Jazz Cafe, that might have been the first time I saw them billed as such. I went to the soundcheck and we sat with Robert while Grant struggled with his sound. Very special. I haven't really listened to the post-reunion albums as much as the older ones and when I went to listen to Rachel Worth today I discovered that I hadn't even ripped it as yet - so ended up listening to Lovers Lane. If pushed I tend to pick Liberty Belle but I guess I felt a little brighter this morning.

[Andy]

OK... just checked the rather great Go-betweens web site and it looks like that Jazz Cafe show was a Forster/McLennan show I may have never seen The Go-Betweens

[David]

Thanks, Andy (n.b. not the same Andy that lent me Warm Nights); evidently not as late as me! Glad to see that We7 have both Liberty Belle and Lovers Lane so I'll give those a listen later today.