I'd like to say I saw Australia's songwriting laureates The Go-Betweens live once, but I can't....
I saw them 2 times. On consecutive nights. But let me digress a little.
I miss Maxwell's, the club/restaurant located in downtown Hoboken New Jersey. The restaurant remains open, but this summer they stopped booking bands. I hadn't been there in a while--I almost went to see Sloan play there in June. Yeah, that's right Canada. Sloan, your alternative-era version of the Beatles in a place where the fire code limited attendance to 175 people. Hard to believe. But it's why Maxwell's will always be regarded by me as a legendary venue.
Though I didn't make the trip there often, it was my favorite place to see a band. Tiny room with an amazing sound. And a restaurant/bar attached to the performance area. A great roster of bands have played there over the years. Ticket prices were cheap too. I've heard so much press and bemoaning about the closing of CBGB's, but really, Maxwell's really deserves more than it got. Give CBGB's credit for it's place in punk history, but for many years it was a shadow of the joint it once was. It was kind of a dump when I first went there, but eventually when I looked at the music ads in the Village Voice there would almost never be any interesting bands playing there anymore. But the club business seems to be a pretty hard way to make a living, and small venues have an even tougher time competing with larger places. Maybe its not a surprise, then, that places like Maxwell's have stopped booking bands, given the economic malaise and the sort of economics of scale we have in the US, where small fish ultimately get gobbled up by the bigger fish.
So, I saw the Go-Betweens for the first time at Maxwell's---It was the reunited band, probably their 2nd tour here after Forster and McLennan got back together. I have to say that the show was fantastic, probably perfect. The two guys and I think Adele Pickvance on bass. Nope, I'm wrong. It was in fact Carrie Brownstein, formerly of Sleater-Kinney. No drums. Though they both composed their own songs, it was remarkable seeing Grant and Robert's synchronous performance, how their two guitars meshed together while playing altogether different parts.
And it was pretty amazing seeing them perform from about 8 feet from the stage.
Something kind of weird happened early on at the show. No, not a riot---seeing the Go-Betweens is a lot like seeing Simon and Garfunkel--but apparently a tall lanky guy in front of me was up to something. He was right next to the front of the stage in front of Robert Forster. A security guy came up to him and told him to cut it out. I don't know what it was that he was doing. Honestly never really noticed anyone doing this sort of thing at Maxwell's before. About 5-10 minutes later the security guy came back and spoke to him again. The guy remonstrated with the bouncer a little and suddenly the guy wrapped his arms around the guys arms and torso, picked him up and carted him out of the concert while the Go-Betweens were in the middle of a song!! When the song ended, Forster had this incredulous look on his face, and said something like "I wonder what that was all about?"
When the show was over the band left the stage. If you know Maxwell's, you know that there is no rear exit from the stage. The band goes through room to get on stage, and departs through the crowd at the end. So that same bouncer was escorting the band through the mostly rapturous audience. Then they went past me. I was just standing there with my arms down looking at Forster when the bouncer guy gives me a big open handed shove to my chest. Kind of caught me by surprise and completely unnecessary. It wasn't like a mosh pit opened up during Cattle and Cane.....Maybe the other guy was out of line, but its funny how people behave when get an iota of power bestowed on them...
I was excited about the concert that I tried to see them the next night. They were playing at the Knitting Factory when they were still in Manhattan. Sold out. I actually called the place and discovered they had a few tickets still. It was also a good concert, but not the same as at Maxwell's. There were a few drunk overly rowdy people shouting stuff at the band way too much, which wasn't really appropriate. I mean are you there to watch a show, or be the show?
If you have never seen the Go-Betweens live, I have located an unsatisfactory substitute, for there really are no better options anymore. A great musical partnership was permanently sundered eons before its time. Recently, I noticed people selling a live CD of the Go-Betweens for pretty extortionary prices on-line. Well, I went on the Go-Betweens' offical website and discovered that Live in London, a 2 disc greatest hits live collection is available for only 10 Pounds. 28 songs in total, very well recorded, and the songs on the 2nd disc mostly have strings on them. You can't beat that.
The greatest hits album that was recently released entitled Quiet Heart also has a bonus live disc from 1987 from Germany, I think. But if you aren't familiar with one of Australia's greatest exports, the Live in London discs would not be a bad place to get acquainted!
Just listening to the 2 disc reminded me that they made a ton of terrific songs. And there were still a lot of great songs that I wished were included.
And the disc brought back a lot of great memories.
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