The Underground of Happiness

I went to see Robert Forster a couple of weeks ago. It was the fifth time I’d seen him in the flesh. There was the first time in The Mean Fiddler in Dublin in late 1996 around the time of the Warm nights album. I love that album and the gig was a great upbeat joyous occasion. The next time was in the same venue about 9 months later, in June 1997. It was the same rhythm section from the 1996 solo gig (Adele Pickvance and Glenn Thompson) with Grant McLennan added, The Go Betweens reunion tour. There was a kind of gospel service atmosphere in the packed room. A palpable air of expectation. When they came on stage the emotion was hard to take. By the time they finished the first song (I can’t remember what it was now), I was in tears. In fact, I felt like I could leave satisfied at that point. Something in me had been fulfilled, already, within the space of a few minutes. You see, I became a fan of The Go Betweens after they broke up so I’d never seen them play live before. B...

As you know, Robert Forster was a founder member of The Go Betweens with Grant McLennan in Brisbane . Together they released 6 albums of literate off kilter pop music in the 1980s. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) they did not make the commercial breakthrough achieved by other indie bands of the time like The Smiths and REM. The prevailing consensus goes that McLennan had the better melodies and singing voice but that Forster had the spikier lyrical talent. (McLennan’s style had a more poetic, and often nostalgic, quality.) The band broke up in 1989 and the two songwriters embarked on solo careers. They reformed in 1997, initially to tour, and subsequently recorded three further albums together until Grant McLennan’s untimely death in 2006. Robert Forster then released The Evangelist in 2008, a solo album but which included three songs of Grant’s, so it’s thought of as a de facto Go Betweens album by many. Not surprisingly, most of the reviews so far have painted this first re...

Back in the days when Comet Records existed in Cork , I got into The Go-Betweens (Comet later became Plugd , which has now moved around the corner from Washington Street to the Triskel Arts Centre building). In those days, Comet used to sell Beggars Banquet releases on cassette for a fiver - and in those Walkman days, cassettes were my medium of choice. And so I found The Go-Betweens: 1978-1990 . I was vaguely aware of the band - I think I had heard Bachelor kisses on Dave Fanning's radio show a few times during the 80's. But I didn't own anything by the band. Of course, typical me, to become interested in the band after they'd broken up (in fact, both Grant McLennan and Robert Forster had released their first solo efforts by this time). I think it was the sleevenotes that sold me on it. Each song had a short note from either Grant or Robert. Like this one by Grant, for Bye bye pride - Cairns is a lazy, small town full of boats and cane fields. It is also unbea...