FOLLOW FRIDAY 10: The Go-Betweens

'That's her handwriting/ That's the way she writes' 
The Go-Betweens 'Headfull of Steam'

IN May 2005, I was backstage in Liverpool venue the L2 at The Go-Betweens with Coleraine lad Andy Kelly of the Liverpool Daily Post and his soon-to-be missus Rachael - and we were actually talking to the actual Robert Forster and Grant McLennan of The Go-Betweens.
I really couldn't have been happier because the band had been my big love for much of the 1980s.
Based around the friendship and song writing partnership of McLennan (above, right) and Forster (left) they were the greatest cult band of their era. Albums like 16 Lovers Lane, Tallulah and Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express were classically literate pop music made by very intelligent people.
They wrote a clutch of remarkable songs on three or four brilliant albums. They may not have troubled the top reaches of the charts, but NO band meant more to me.
They were loved by great looking intelligent women in short Paisley skirts, black tights and DM shoes and wrote magnificent songs and that was enough for me.
As I got older and they broke up to pursue solo projects, McLennan's music meant even more to me. His four solo albums and various side projects were treasured thanks in no small part to the memory of the Gobies. Even Forster's solo albums, although not as treasured, meant something to me.
In this era of free music on demand, I still treasure McLennan's solo albums Watershed, Fireboy, In Your Bright Ray and Horsebreaker Star. They are real high water marks of the era and whether anyone else feels the same way, I couldn't care less.
Then, around the turn of the century, they got back together and made The Friends of Rachel Worth and then in 2005 the glorious Oceans Apart.
After the release of the latter, I interviewed Grant on the phone from his Brisbane home before they played Liverpool, it was a dream come true. He was witty, intelligent and gracious in the way I had imagined he would be when I pretended to do interviews with him as a teenage fanzine writer and wannabe journalist in the 1980s.
As a result of the following piece in the Daily Post I was dubbed 'the wonderful Paddy Hoey' by the band's website, it's still my most treasured achievement in journalism.
Then Grant died and it all stopped. Just after their best album and when they were writing the best music of their lives to the biggest audience the ever had.
Just like Lloyd Cole, The Go-Betweens never let me down, always surrounded me with love and we are all better people for their body of work.
There, didn't mention 'jangly' or 'arch' once.
FOLLOW FRIDAY 10 Spotify collaborative playlist here.

What are your favourite 'bits' or 'segments' of songs?

THERE are great albums, great songs and great opening lyrics (‘Bless my cotton socks, I’m in the news’ The Teardrop Explodes), but what are the great ‘bits’ of songs?
By that I mean, what are the wee parts of songs you love?
The grunts, the oohs, the two note guitar solos and the spoken intros which make you want to join in.
The saxophone solos, the count ins, improvised skatting or unusual pronunciations of words you cherish and make you reach up to the headphones and press them that bit closer to the ear drum.

My starter for 10 (in no particular order and to be added to)

“Have you forgotten, that once we were brought here, we were robbed of our name, robbed of our language, we lost our religion, our culture, our gods... and many of us by the way we act, we even lost our minds...”
Farrakhan sample at the start of Night of the Living Baseheads by Public Enemy. Hip hop’s finest moment quickly followed by the almost as brilliant sample ‘We goin’ to get on down now’ soon after. Pure Bomb Squad alchemy. Perfect in every way, just as the album It Takes Million... is. I honestly believe this is pop music’s highest moment. Period.

The ‘1,2,3,4’ preceding the final verse of Springsteen’s Born to Run, usually accompanied by a delirious punch of the fist followed by a deep tinge of regret that you are bladdered at 1am in your Merseyside front room and not in a bar on the Jersey Shore circa 1978.

Strummer's lupine 'Ow Ow Ow Ow' in London Calling by The Clash

'Fuckin' long, ain't it' Magnificent Seven by The Clash

The ropey saxophone solo in This Old Heart of Mine by the Isley Brothers

Everything in either the four minute or near nine minute versions of Movin' On Up by Curtis Mayfield, especially the bongos

The opening John Byrne-penned riff to - and the very final G chord of - There She Goes by The La’s

All the horns on the later segments of Otis Redding’s Try a Little Tenderness

‘Let’s hear it now for Otis Redding’ and all the subsequent ‘fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa’s’ on Arthur Conley’s Sweet Soul Music

How Weller’s voice raises up on the word society in the line before the chorus in the Jam’s Going Underground. ‘And I want nothing of what soc-IERTY wants, I’m goin...’

The ‘Put Yer Fur boots on’ exclamation by Van Morrison on the intro of the Bang Sessions version of Madame George

The guitar lick on The Needle and Damage Done by Neil Young

The opening to Where the Streets Have No Name by U2

The opening riff to Streets of Your Town by the Go-Betweens

the 'la la la' bit of Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks