(TV) Verlaine Mention in The Go-Betweens' Article

["Leo Casey" <LeoCasey@comcast.net>]

...The high point for melodious McLennan is a sweet, satisfied nothin',
"Going Blind," where Janet gets tom-tom giddy, Corin chirps kindly, and the
tune itself is just damn glad to ride the jangle. Forster's best is moodier,
the kind of thing you write in a German farmhouse. It's about rock and roll,
that thing Jonathan Richman used to play that changed little Robert's life
forever. It's a simple tune about Patti Smith, about how he went to see her
sing one night. It was corny--she was corny, all epic chutzpah bullshit
gesturing that only she can get away with 'cause she's still the queen of
all his dreams: "When she sang about angels/She looked at the sky/Anybody
else, anybody else/But I let it go by." 

 

What punctures the moment is that mix of dread and acceptance that always
looms even in the earliest Go-Betweens music--the specter of age. They
seemed to anticipate the gravity of passing years all along, even back when
they started playing together as callow school chums. Forster sings of
Smith, "When she sang 'About a Boy'/Kurt Cobain/I thought, 'What a shame/It
wasn't about Tom Verlaine.'" The message is quite simple: Patti, Kurt Cobain
wasn't for us. Ours is Tom Verlaine. Sing about angels, look at the sky,
lift up your arms ("like she was pushing back cotton on some Midwestern
farm"). But when you sing about rock and roll, sing about our rock and roll.
The less contemporary context the better. 

      

      http://www.citypages.com/databank/21/1033/article8998.asp
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