(TV) The Go-Betweens and CBGBs

["Joe Thornton" <joe.thornton@gmx.net>]

Did anyone notice this article www.furious.com/perfect/grantmclennan.html
about Grant McLennan by Robert Vickers, the Go-Betweens' bassist? Vickers is
the guy who looks about 15 in the great video for "Bachelor Kisses":
www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_nn90p-tIg

Extract:
"I managed to get out of town first, ending up in New York City, in a popular
band managed by the owner of CBGB's and produced by a member of Blondie. It
seemed like a dream. When Grant said he'd like to visit, I was happy to share
that dream with him. For a month, he shared my tiny apartment and got a dose
of the wild, early '80's New York. A bar tab at CB's, free entry into clubs
like Danceteria, the art scene, the birth of hip hop and the kind of bohemian
urban lifestyle we had only had fantasies about in Brisbane."

I find the details of McLennan's creative process particularly fascinating.
"So I spent many days in a dank, London bedroom, with him showing me those
clever, intricate parts. Almost like guitar parts but really more like
orchestration. Melodies suggested by the chord structure but not present in
the vocal."

Much of it is so reminiscent of Tom Verlaine. Fred Smith once remarked on how
Tom wanted him to play his own "melodies" on bass. And you can hear it in many
of the songs, for example, "Penetration" (God, I love that song!). While I
often think of Verlaine songs as being special in the way that the guitar
rather than the voice is the lead instrument, I'm struggling to think of a
song in which the bass is actually the lead melody. But McLennan did that in
the chorus of "Bachelor Kisses", where the voice and guitars stay on two
notes/chords while the bass does the melody, and it's wonderful.

Consider also McLennan's obsession with films. There's much more on this in
Robert Forster's beautifully written tribute to McLennan:
www.themonthly.com.au/excerpts/issue14_excerpt_003.html

It strikes me that, in that particular genre of pop music we all love, there
was an extraordinary burst of creativity in the mid-eighties, with Verlaine,
the Smiths and the Go-Betweens (some of you would add other names). Not that
they weren't creative at other times, but it was a mini golden age.

--JoeT
--------------
To post: Mail tv@obbard.com
To unsubscribe: Mail majordomo@obbard.com with message "unsubscribe tv"