Monday night sounds

Tonights sounds are care of a twitter conversation with Greg Fleet, which is why twitter is the superior social network tool. Where else can you have conversations with people you don't know about things like great Australian songs and then find out that they used to live in a share house with Robert Forster and Lindy Morrison. I know!! And I'm guessing the amazingness of this will be lost on some of you - so if you don't know who these people are, you should find out. That's your homework because Robert Forster is a genius. Without. A. Doubt. 

This Go Betweens song is written by him and at the time he wanted to write a love song, but wasn't in love with anyone - so he wrote about Lee Remick. 

She comes from Ireland 

She’s very beautiful 

I come from Brisbane 

I’m quite plain 

She’s from the mountains, so close to heaven 

Clouds on her shoes, stars on her chest 

I love Lee Remick, she’s a darling 

She was in The Omen with Gregory Peck 

She got killed, what the heck 

Her eyes are like gems 

She’s an actress for Screen Gems 

I love Lee Remick, she’s a darling 

Her hair’s red, but it’s not dye 

If I touched her, I know I’d want to cry 

My life is desperation, but it’s only infatuation 

I love Lee Remick, she’s a darling

My Go Betweens story? I didn't think I had one until I started writing this post and then I remembered at art school I was obsessed with song lyrics and Bye Bye Pride was a song which featured heavily in my work at the time. It was the beginning of the never ending love heart iconography and Bye Bye Pride was a coloured linocut of a heart flying away. I'd take a photo of it, but like most of my prints - the registration was sloppy and the layers of colour all over the place. I bet there would also be fingerprints of black ink in the corners too, because no matter how hard I tried I was always such a messy printmaker.

Instead, you can see a photo of one of the many preliminary paintings I sketched before working on the linocut. It's a sketch so it is supposed to be bad quality. It is also behind a mat so you can't see the fingerprints. 

Back to the Go Betweens. Around the same time, Smudge put out their first single Don't Want To Be Grant McLennan and I loved the song because I loved Tom Morgan that sentiment was so true.  Everyone did want to be Robert Forster and when I saw the Go Betweens live in Canberra you could see why. Robert Forster was mesmerising, and in a venue like Tilley's right there on the stage just an arms length away - he sat on the stage with a quiet aloofness and I'm sure everyone in that room was swooning. I was lucky to have ever seen them to be honest because at the time they were having somewhat of a renaissance, touring on the album The Friends Of Rachel Worth. It was a fantastic gig and as luck would have it, I found the set list from that night. 

And that, is my very own Go Betweens story.