Los favoritos de Morrissey en 1986 (NME)

¡The June Brides mejor grupo!
¡The Shop Assistants mejor single!
¡Stephen Duffy "best dressed sleeve"!

Vic Godard: "Swing is Back (Again)" by Dave McCullough (Sounds 28-06-1980)

The Smiths singles box (Rhino Uk - 2008)

Rhino UK are proud to present “Singles Box”: a clamshell card box containing the first ten UK-issued singles in their original picture sleeves. What makes this particularly special is the two singles which are exclusive to this box set: These unique inclusions are the projected fourth single - “Still Ill” (which was pressed only as DJ promo “A” label) but was ultimately passed over and replaced by “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” along side the Dutch release of “The Headmaster Ritual” housed in it’s black & white “cowboy” sleeve – the rarest commercially issued Smiths’ single in any territory. The box is completed with four contemporary badges, a poster featuring the single artworks as well as an authentication certificate that contains a unique redemption code for mp3 downloads of the tracks. An absolute must have item for Smiths‘ fans, and limited to 10,000 copies only. All singles utilise the original production masters from the period. The front cover image of the box was personally chosen by Morrissey. It features Joel Fabiani from the 1969 TV series "Department S", starring Peter Wyndgarde, Joel Fabiani and Rosemary Nicols.


1. 7" #1 (Originally Released November 1983) Hand in Glove
2. Handsome Devil (Live)

1. 7" #2 (Originally Released November 1983) This Charming Man
2. Jeane

1. 7" #3 (Originally Released January 1984) What Difference Does It Make?
2. Back To The Old House

1. 7" #4 (Previously Unreleased Commercially) Still Ill
2. You’ve Got Everything Now

1. 7" #5 (Originally Released May 1984) Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
2. Suffer Little Children

1. 7" #6 (Originally Released September 1984) William, It Was Really Nothing
2. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want

1. 7" #7 (Originally Released February 1985) How Soon Is Now?
2. Well I Wonder

1. 7" #8 (Originally Released March 1985) Shakespeare's Sister
2. What She Said

1. 7" #9 (Originally Only Released In Holland) The Headmaster Ritual
2. Oscillate Wildly

1. 7" #10 (Originally Released July 1985) That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore
2. Meat Is Murder (Live)

1. 7" #11 (Originally Released September 1985) The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
2. Asleep

1. 7" #12 (Originally Released May 1986) Bigmouth Strikes Again
2. Money Changes Everything

Limited to 10,000 boxsets worldwide.

The Smiths' Singles Box is a clamshell card box containing the first ten UK-issued singles in their original picture sleeves.

Two singles in this box are exclusive to this box set, the projected 4th single - Still Ill (which was pressed as DJ promo 'A' label singles, but ultimately got passed over and replaced by Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now), presented in its original form, and the Dutch release of The Headmaster Ritual housed in its black and white "cowboy" sleeve – the rarest commercially issued single in any territory.

The box is completed with four contemporary badges and a poster featuring the single artworks. All singles utilise the original production masters from the period.

Robert Forster sobre Grant McLennan (The Monthly, July 2006, No. 14)

Leyendo este estupendo blog (http://pantry.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/demon-days/) me he encontrado este gran texto. Es una joya sobre The Go Betweens. Es muy largo, pero vale la pena.

True Hipster

Remembering Grant McLennan

by Robert Forster

On 6 May, on a Saturday afternoon while preparing a housewarming party, Grant McLennan, a friend and working partner of mine for 30 years, died of a heart attack. He was 48 years old. This is a remembrance.
Grant and I started the Brisbane band The Go-Betweens in January 1978. We’d met two years earlier in the drama department at the University of Queensland, where we were both doing Bachelor of Arts degrees centred mainly on English literature. Most of the drama subjects were taught at a small off-campus theatre called the Avalon. It was a jostling atmosphere in which Grant and I felt immediately at home, and our friendship began and blossomed here, amid the costume trunks, the works of Beckett, Genet and Ionesco (perfect for a pop band), and a genial professor, an Englishman by the name of Harry Garlick. It was action, and fun, and good learning, and it’s where The Go-Betweens started.
Grant was a whiz-kid when I first met him. His passion was film. He was either going to be a director or the greatest film critic this country had ever seen. At 18, he was writing reviews for a publication called Cinema Papers, while working at the Schonell, the campus cinema where he assisted with the programming. At 19, he’d done his BA. It was as if he’d raced so hard, and with such brilliance, that he’d got slightly ahead of himself. His application for the film and television school in Sydney was turned down on the grounds that he was too young. Which is where I came in, to fill a gap that was to be merely a year or two, before further adventures took us elsewhere.
While Grant had been pouring himself into film, I’d been falling into music. My academic record at university was patchy beside his. I never finished the degree. The electric guitar and stirrings overseas sighted in the music press were starting to consume me. Grant knew I had a band with a university friend and a drummer, and this intrigued him. The band, which went under two names, The Mosquitoes (taken from Gilligan’s Island) and The Godots (from Beckett), only did three shows over two years, of which Grant saw the last two. At the final show, we played the first good song I thought I’d written. It was called ‘Karen’.
The similarities between us were strong. We were both private-school boys who’d done well academically but come out of the system with no idea of a career. We were both looking for something that bohemian-free Brisbane couldn’t offer, except in the traditional safety of an Arts degree. And we were both uneasy and difficult, having emerged from families who looked on somewhat bewildered at the eldest sons they had produced. When Grant and I met, we didn’t know it but we’d found each other. Rough mirror-images. And when the friendship that had begun in classes grew to the point where I visited his house and saw his bedroom stacked with film books, novels and posters, I realised his “thing”, film, wasn’t just an enthusiasm; it was an obsession. And I knew that was exactly how I felt about music.
We began a slow exchange. He told me about French new wave cinema and film noir. I told him about the greatness of the Velvet Underground. He told me about auteur theory and the genius of Preston Sturges. I told him about Dylan in the mid-’60s. He mentioned Godard and Truffaut. We became Godard and Truffaut. Brisbane didn’t know it at the time, but there were two 19-year-olds driving around in a car who thought they were French film directors.
So we started the band when he accepted my offer to teach him bass guitar. But it was more than that. It was the decision to pool our ambitions and resources and go for something greater than ourselves, and in this we were aided by one piece of luck: Grant was musical. He could have remained a film student who played the bass, but instead he quickly became a musician. He had a fantastic singing voice and a perfect melodic knack, unknown when I asked him to start the group. What I did know was that, given his obvious creative tendencies, he would write songs. That it took only six weeks surprised me. But after such a short time, he showed me a bass riff, I wrote a chorus, and it became the first Forster–McLennan composition. It was called ‘Big Sleeping City’, and we played it for a year.
Being in a band and releasing our first single – ‘Lee Remick / Karen’, in September 1978 – gave us a certain instant notoriety, which we both enjoyed. For Grant it gave him things at 20 that a film career mightn’t have handed him until he was 30: recognition, creative adventure, the instant smell that we were going places. The journey had begun. The first vial of our friendship was put aside and we became The Go-Betweens. And from then on we set off on the crusade, with the band as first priority in our lives. We travelled, recorded, added and lost members, and built up the best body of work we could until we crashed 11 years later. Occasionally, through these years, Grant and I would catch each other’s eye – as we flew into New York, or played a big Danish rock festival, or went on a French TV show – and think, this is what we did it for, these pop moment milestones that both of us had dreamed of back in Brisbane, at the beginning.
Through all of this we stayed good friends. There was something special about our friendship that we could take deep into our work, making crucial creative decisions along the way and never flaring up or tearing at each other. We operated on two rules: each was to have the same number of songs on every album, and we both had to agree on something before we did it. Our confidence in what we could do was amazing. It was as if being in The Go-Betweens gave us an invisible shield, allowing us to believe that nothing could knock us out. Grant was central to this. Every album was “our best so far”, and any time I dipped in confidence he was there to pick me up. He was a great working partner. Not only the songs – ‘Cattle and Cane’, ‘Bachelor Kisses’, ‘Bye Bye Pride’, ‘Streets of Your Town’, ‘Finding You’, ‘Boundary Rider’ – but also as an up-close inspirational artist in my life.
This is what he was like. I’d drive over to his place to play guitar and he’d be lying on a bed reading a book. Grant never felt guilt about this. The world turned and worked; he read. That was the first message. He’d offer to make coffee, and I knew – and here’s one of the great luxuries of my life – I knew I could ask him anything, on any artistic frontier, and he’d have an answer. He had an encyclopaedic mind of the arts, with his own personal twist. So, as he worked on the coffee, I could toss in anything I liked – something that had popped up in my life that I needed his angle on. I’d say, “Tell me about Goya,” or, “What do you know about Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry?” or, “Is the Youth Group CD any good?” And, his head over the kitchen table, he’d arch an eyebrow just to ascertain that I was serious, which I always was. Then he’d start. Erudite, logical, authoritative and never condescending – not one ounce of superiority came with the dispensing of his opinion. God. I’m going to miss that. And of all the holes his departing has left, this for me is the biggest: the person you can go to who is so much on your wavelength, stocked with shared experience, whom you don’t ask for life advice – Grant would be one of the last people there! – but who, as a fellow artist, you can go toe to toe with and always come away totally inspired by. Well, that’s a great thing.
And it wasn’t only me. Since his death, his role as inspirer and informer has come out strongly in remembrance. An old friend, Steve Haddon, says, “Meeting Grant in 1976 was like getting an education.” Another friend, Andrew Wilson, writes, “Thank you for playing ‘Johnny Jewel’, Blonde on Blonde, and Jane Birkin to me in a wooden Spring Hill room.” Of the 1500 responses that quickly sprung up on the internet, many spoke of a meeting with Grant, in a bar, a café, somewhere in the world, when he told them something of someone – made an inspired artistic connection, a tip that these people carried with them. His place here is as a true hipster, in the 1940s and ’50s sense of the word. Someone perched on the streets, in the saloons, on the lower side of life, possessing razor-sharp and deep knowledge of the cultural front – but never lording it in the traditional manner. Half jokingly, I once suggested he return to academia. He laughed the idea off, preferring to be the secret holder of wisdom “on a barstool throne”.
The break-up of the band in 1989 was savage and abrupt. Grant and I had had enough. We’d written six lauded albums and the band was broke. In the end, we were doing Sydney pub gigs to pay ourselves wages. It was a nasty treadmill. Grant and I had planned to go on as a duo and do an acoustic album, but this got blown sky-high when his girlfriend left him on the day he told her that the band was over. The next weeks were chaos. Grant was destroyed. I stayed, consoling him and trying to make sense of the mess that we had brought on by trying to gain our freedom. But then I had to follow my own heart and return to Germany, where I’d found the beginnings of a new life over the last six months. The duo idea hit the rocks when Grant informed the record company he wanted a solo career. The fact that he told them before me hurt. But he had a girlfriend to try and win back, and this coloured many of his decisions over the next years.
For the remainder of the decade we had fulfilling solo careers. It was great to work alone and grow. There were letters and calls between us, uneasy given the differences between our new worlds – him in the cauldron, me in the Bavarian countryside. We both felt happy to have the band behind us, immensely proud of the work we’d done, but drained from all that it had taken out of us. When my first solo album, Danger In The Past, came out I didn't even want to leave the house. There was only one show in Australia: in Sydney, where Grant joined me. Professionally, that’s what we did together for the remainder of the decade; every eighteen months or so, an offer would come in from some part of the world, attractive enough for Grant and I to do a one-off acoustic show together, catch up, and then go back to our own lives.
There was one other thing, though: the film script. This was a crazy dream dating back to the late ’70s. When Grant and I started working together, The Go-Betweens was to be the calling card, the most visible and instantly attractive thing we did. Behind it, we had a number of other ideas we were going to unleash upon the world once the band was famous, which our 20-year-old minds figured would be in about three years. It was the Orson Welles theory: get famous at one thing, and then bring on everything else you can do. So there was a film and a book in the wings. The film was a jewel-heist caper set on the Gold Coast and then Sydney, a vehicle aimed at our favourite American actor of the time, James Garner. The book was going to be a microscopic dissection and ode to our favourite pop-star of all time, Bob Dylan, and it was going to be called ‘The Death of Modern America: Bob Dylan 1964–66’ (which still rings like a great line to me).
Neither got beyond rough fragments, though the wish to write a film together stayed. So, in 1995, with both of us back in Brisbane, we spent three months in the bowels of the Dendy cinema in George Street writing a film called ‘Sydney Creeps’. It was wonderful being in a room together working on something other than music, though the script is not as good as it should be. The wrestling over each line and plot twist robbed it of flow and a strong voice. Still, it was done, and there it was: a thick notebook written in longhand, many lines crossed out and written over, lying in a trunk of Grant’s last possessions.
We reconvened the band in 2000. Over the next six years we recorded three albums, toured, and took the whole thing, to our great pleasure, up another level. We were on the cusp of something. It’s strange to say that about a band that had existed for 17 years, but with Adele and Glenn, our bass player and drummer, by our side, all doors still felt open. We were still up for the championship, and we had a growing audience willing us on to bigger and better things. And we had new songs: Grant had a fantastic batch for an album we were going to do next year. I said to him that all my writing up until the recording would just be catching up to what he had. Album number ten was going to be something special.
Yet he wasn’t happy. He was proud of the band’s recent success, and his private life, after a long bumpy ride, was settled. He was in love, and the most content and up I’d seen him in a long time. But deep down there remained a trouble, a missing piece that he was always trying to find but never did. Family, a loving girlfriend, a circle of friends: all could count for so much, and it was a hell of a lot, but it could never cover over a particular hurt. When Grant was four, his father died. Perhaps it stemmed from this. The missing father, the anchor that would have kept him in friendlier waters and, maybe, on narrower paths through his life. He cut a lonely figure. He was sad. Sometimes I would visit him and it would take me an hour to pull him out. Twice in his life I was with him when he was totally shattered. And there were many years I missed when we weren’t in the same city.
I can remember being hit by the lyrics he put to his first songs. I was shocked by their melancholy and the struggle for joy. I’d known the happy-go-lucky university student. As soon as he wrote, there it was. Any appreciation or remembrance of Grant has to take this into account. He didn’t parade it, but it’s all over his work, and it was in his eye.
His refuge was art and a romantic nature that made him very lovable, even if he did take it to ridiculous degrees. Here was a man who, in 2006, didn’t drive; who owned no wallet or watch, no credit card, no computer. He would only have to hand in his mobile phone and bankcard to be able to step back into the gas-lit Paris of 1875, his natural home. I admired this side of him a great deal, and it came to be part of the dynamic of our pairing. He called me “the strategist”. He was the dreamer. We both realised, and came to relish, the perversity of the fact that this was an exact reversal of the perception people had of us as artists and personalities in the band – that I was the flamboyant man out of time and Grant the sensible rock. In reality, the opposite was true.
The last time I saw him was about two weeks before he died. The circumstances of the visit were the same as they’d been for almost 30 years: to play guitar together and do the catch-up with an old friend. He had a two-storey granny flat at the back of the house he lived in, and we played on a small deck there. A railroad track runs behind the house, and occasionally trains passed through the songs. We took breaks from the playing, and talked; we had such fun together. Talking. Always talking and gossiping – silly stuff we’d go round and round on.
After four hours I left. He was standing on the front veranda as I walked down to the front gate. In the mailbox was a wrapped copy of the New York Review of Books. I took it out and looked at the cover. I called to him, saying I didn’t know he got this. He told me he had a subscription, and if I wanted to I could borrow back-issues. I thanked him, said I would and then said goodbye. As I walked to the car and got in, I wondered how many singer-songwriters or rock stars in the world got the New York Review of Books delivered on subscription. Not many, I thought. Maybe just one.

Robert Foster vs el Kiko (Rock de Lux Septiembre 2008)

Edwyn Collins on Vic Godard (The Guardian - August 22 2008)

Edwyn Collins on Vic Godard

"When you mention Vic Godard, everybody still goes 'who'? Only the real cognoscenti know who he is. I first met him when I was stood outside the Lyceum in Edinburgh. He was playing with Subway Sect, along with the Slits and the Jam, but Subway Sect were my favourites. I asked if I could carry his gear in. I didn't meet him again until 1991 or 1992. Geoff Travis put us together, and I produced Vic's album End of the Surrey People. Paul Cook was his drummer by then, and he was a bit cagy, a bit protective. He thought I was taking the piss."

TV Personalities interview - Juniper Beri-Beri fanzine #3 (1985)

El fanzine de Stephen y Aggi Pastel entrevistó a Dan Tracey.

Aquí está el link: http://www.televisionpersonalities.co.uk/reviews/juniper.htm

The Smiths - "Elvis Would Have Smiled" (2008)

Para bajarselo: http://noisejunkie.blogspot.com/2008/06/proximamente_8332.html

Este es un bootleg que se editó en japón el 25 de Marzo de este año y que se está vendiendo como si fuera prácticamente oficial..

The Smiths - Elvis Would Have Smiled (2008)

01- Reel Around The Fountain (Troy Tate outtake, prob from TATE1 set)
02- How Soon Is Now? (alternate studio outtake)from the Italian "William, It Was Really Nothing" 12" single
03- The Queen Is Dead (live Los Angeles 28 August 1986)
04- What Difference Does It Make? (Troy Tate outtake, prob from TATE1 set)
05- The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (live 4 Feb 1983)
06- Handsome Devil (Troy Tate outtake, prob from TATE1 set)
07- Rusholme Ruffians (live Dublin 13 November 1984)
08- This Charming Man (live Dublin 13 November 1984)
09- Hand In Glove (Troy Tate outtake, prob from TATE1 set)
10- Barbarism Begins At Home (live Dublin 13 November 1984)
11- "Still Ill" (audio from 1984 tv appearance on The Tube) also appears on the "Unloveable" bootleg cd in better quality.
12- Girl Afraid (live Glasgow 2 March 1984) originally released on a cassette titled "Department Of Enjoyment" only available by mail-order from the NME magazine in 1985
13- Pretty Girls Make Graves (Troy Tate outtake, prob from TATE1 set)
14- Nowhere Fast (John Peel session 1984)available officially on the "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" cd-single
15- These Things Take Time (Troy Tate outtake, prob from TATE1 set)
16- Jeane (Troy Tate outtake, prob from TATE1 set)

Young Marble Giants en el Primavera Sound

Foto de www.fotolog.com/misternilsson/59300039

The Smiths - The Queen is Dead - A Classic Album Under Review [2008] DVD

Rare footage of The Smiths

Studio and live recordings of every track on the album

Revealing interviews with band members and many others who worked with them on the record

Footage of and comment on the pivotal influences on the music and lyrics

Comment, criticism and review from
Stephen Street, Tony Wilson, Craig Gannon, Johnny Rogan, Len Browne, Professor Steven Logan, Brett Anderson, Gavin Hopps, Douglas Noble and Grant Showbiz

In The Studio - a 'featurette' with Stephen Street, on working with the Smiths from behind the desk , throughout their career. The Queen Is Dead Interactive Challenge - an exclusive gaming feature: Contributor Biographies - Meet The Panel

NME C86 tape

"Dive For Your Memory" by Kevin Pearce (from tangents.co.uk)

Pic from The Go Betweens - "The Able Label Singles"

I used to listen to the Go-Betweens a lot. I listen to the Go-Betweens a lot now. I used to pay some Go-Betweens songs all the time, now I play other Go-Betweens songs all the time.
I´ve deeply personal memories of many groups, but I never listen to those groups and I dont want to remember many things. I do have vivid memories of the Go-Betweens, and I´dd like to share a few, if you will excuse me.
1. The 1982 World Cup: was that the one where the sheikh in the crowd stood up and his national team trooped off in protest at something or nothing? I should have been putting final touches to my revision, but all I can remember is watching football and listening to the Go-Betweens Send Me A Lullaby and The Blue Orchids Greatest Hit.
2. That was a small thing, I know, but it stayed with me, as did many a Go-Betweens line. "His father´s watch, he left it in the shower." And, of course. "Thats her handwriting, thats the way she writes."
3. 1983, at the Venue, Victoria, squeezed in between Felt and the Smiths and certainly stealing the show. The debut of Robert Vickers, adding an angelic mod presence to a set of songs that would become Spring Hill Fair. Do I still have a tape of that night? Probably not, and I dont need it. Its not easy to forget just how substantial their sound was then, and how barbed the guitars were on that occasion.
4. You´ve got to agree that its hard to separate the Go-Betweens from the romantic glamour of Postcard legend. There was a time when I knew Alan Horne´s text in the Postcard brochure off by heart, particularly the story of how he hooked the Go-Betweens, later verified by Grant and Robert on a tape zine. How Horne was in London to drop off copies of the Orange Juice debut at the Rough Trade shop, and saw a copy of the Go-Betweens Lee Remick on the wall, next to Ambition by Subway Sect (or was it above it?), remembered hearing Peel play it (so do I), asked for a copy and was informed that they were in town, arranged to meet up at the legendary Northern Soul Subway Sect shows supporting Siouxsie, missed one another and eventually linked up in Glasgow in time for the Funky Glasgow Now! shows. One thing can hold us, one thing can break us.
5. Some stories about their time in London. Poverty and drugs in Kings Cross, a bad time for lots of people, as told in the Jasmine Minks Somers Town and Ghost of a Young Man, when there were lots of exiled kings in mirrors. Robert and Lindy, upstairs and downstairs, huge arguments and madly making up.
6. Another triumphant London Show at the Clarendon, and someone gave a copy of my fanzine to one of the group. I was too starstruck to say anything, but I always wonder if they read it.
7. A final triumphant London show at New Merlins Cave, Kings Cross, a fond farewell arranged by Adam from the Jasmine Minks with all the proceeds paying for their air fares. The power being turned off past closing time but an acoustic Cattle and Cane carried on, carried along on a wave of emotion.
8. Robert´s hair care tips, as featured in Dave Haslam´s Debris. It´s important to care, Robert wrote. Enough to change your life, or at least your shampoo and comb. Like on of Richard Brautigan´s books where a character always puts pepper on his tomatoes, and I have done so since reading that.
9. At an AIDS benefit at the Town and Country Club, with some dear friends from Birmingham, just after seeing The Claim for the first time, and I cant remember anything about the Go-Betweens set except the violin and Robert´s dancing. I wasn´t loyal to the Go-Betweens around that time, but Im sure I had some reason for it: some deep, dark suspicion of polished surfaces and other things on my mind. I do remember Hurrah! playing If Love Could Kill with vivid poignancy and I remember what I wore.
10. Their tension and their tenderness. Yesterday, as all week, listening to 16 Lovers Lane on my walkman, on a busy (but not too!) commuter train wondering what my fellow travellers are listening to, reading, passing Blackheath where still the graffiti says "I feel like Alan Minter", though I never have nudged my neighbour and said "Go on then, what Fall song does that come from?" However, I sit at my desk and sing: "I tried to tell you, I can only say it when we´re apart. About this storm inside of me and how I miss your quiet, quiet heart."

Kevin Pearce. July 1997 (tangents.co.uk)

The Smiths - "Rarities 1983-1987" Bootleg (from those-charming-men.blogspot.com)

Disco 1:
01. Miserable Lie (John Peel session, broadcast 1st June 1983, a superior recording to that issued officially)
02. Hand In Glove (Live on The Tube, 16th March 1984)
03. Still Ill (Live on The Tube, 16th March 1984)
04. Barbarism Begins At Home (Live on The Tube, 16th March 1984)
05. Jeanne (Acoustic-Johnny and Sandie live on Splat!, April 1984)
06. Bigmouth Strikes Again (Performed live on The Old Grey Whistle Test, 20th May 1986)
07. Vicar In A Tutu (Performed live on The Old Grey Whistle Test, 20th May 1986)
08. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (Live session from The Eurotube, 5th July 1986)
09. Panic (Live session from The Eurotube, 5th July 1986)
10. Sheila Take A Bow (Last ever live performance on The Tube, 10th April, 1987)
11. Shoplifters Of The World Unite (Last ever live performance on The Tube, 10th April, 1987)
12. Unloveable #1 (Rare soundcheck recordings from Inverness Eden Court, 1st October 1985)
13. Unloveable #2 (Rare soundcheck recordings from Inverness Eden Court, 1st October 1985)
14. Wonderful Woman (Unreleased Kid Jensen session version recorded 26th June 1983)
15. Girl Afraid (Live in Glasgow, 2nd March 1984 from NME Department Of Enjoyment cassette)
16. Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now (Different studio mix from Earsay, broadcast 31st March 1984)
17. How Soon Is Now (Ultra-rare otherwise unreleased version from withdrawn Italian 12" pressing of William It Was Really Nothing)
18. William It Was Really Nothing (John Peel session version broadcast 9th October 1984)
19. Jeanne (Rare soundcheck recordings from Dundee Caird Hall, 26th September 1985)
20. What’s The World (Rare soundcheck recordings from Dundee Caird Hall, 26th September 1985)
21. Asleep (Very rare Morrissey performance - Rare soundcheck recordings from Inverness Eden Court, 1st October 1985)

Disco 2:
01. How Soon Is Now (Unreleased John Peel session, broadcast 9th August 1984)
02. What Do You See In Him (Early version of Wonderful Woman from the Manchester Hacienda, 4th February 1983)
03. Reel Around The Fountain (Alternative Troy Tate mix from 1983 - newly discovered and different from all the others offered before!)
04. Miserable Lie (Alternative Troy Tate mix from 1983 - newly discovered and different from all the others offered before!)
05. The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (Alternative Troy Tate mix from 1983 - newly discovered and different from all the others offered before!)
06. I Don’t Owe You Anything (Sandy Shaw sings in session with The Smiths on Radio One’s Saturday Live, 14th April 1984)
07. Jeanne (Sandy Shaw sings in session with The Smiths on Radio One’s Saturday Live, 14th April 1984)
08. Half A Person (John Peel session versions, broadcast 17th December 1986)
09. Sweet & Tender Hooligan (John Peel session versions, broadcast 17th December 1986)
10. Is It Really So Strange? (John Peel session version, broadcast 17th December 1986)
11. London (John Peel session versions, broadcast 17th December 1986)
12. What Difference Does It Make (Alternative mix from the aborted 1983 Troy Tate sessions - different from all the others previously discovered!)
13. Accept Yourself (Alternative mix from the aborted 1983 Troy Tate sessions - different from all the others previously discovered!)
14. Wonderful Woman (Alternative mix from the aborted 1983 Troy Tate sessions - different from all the others previously discovered!)
15. You’ve Got Everything Now (Unreleased cut from the radio broadcast at Amsterdam De Meervaart Hall, 21st April 1984)
16. I Keep Mine Hidden (From their last studio session, 1987)
17. Work Is A Four Letter Word (From their last studio sessions, 1987)
18. What’s The World (Live from Glasgow, Barrowlands 25th September 1985)
19. Money Changes Everything (Rare instrumental, recorded 1987)
20. Hand In Glove (Featuring Sandie Shaw on lead vocals)
21. Jeanne (Featuring Sandie Shaw on lead vocals)

Vic Godard - "Cool Hand Vic", interview by Steve Sutherland (Melody Maker, May 8, 1982)

Girls at Our Best ! - Smash Hits 1981

GIRLS WILL BE BOYS
GIRLS AT OUR BEST!
PRESENTED BY MICK STAND!
PHOTOGRAPHED BY PAUL SLATTERY!
IT'S FOUR feet across, bright red and yellow and looks like a bizarre altar. Plumb in the middle, just where you'd expect The Bible to be, there lies the sleeve of the Girls At Our Best! debut album.
Actually, it's a shop window display unit and, at £165, the most expensive bit of cardboard I've ever laid eyes on. In the basement of Happy Birthday Records it was serving as a doorstop, but in the chain stores it will be competing with similarly extravagant promotional paraphernalia featuring more familiar faces such as The police and Meat Loaf.
Amazing. for a moment we all gaze at it in awe as if it really was a holy shrine - then we laugh.
BUT JUDY EVANS, GAOB! singer proclaims: "I'm fascinated with the idea of selling yourself. Everything is consumerism." On "pleasure", the said LP, the Girls take a poke at the record industry in "£600,000" and "Too big For Your Boots". this from a band with no experience at all of the big time.
They all come from the Leeds Area and the first glimmer was SOS, formed in '77 with guitarist James Alan and bassist Gerard Swift. then taking refuge reality in art school, Alan met Judy. Or, as she tells it: "I went to college to work hard and become a serious artist - until I met this punk rocker with a nervous rash."

Well, convent schoolgirl from posh Wetherby that she was, she joined the group regardless (what's known as a rash decision) and SOS turned into the Butterflies.
James comes over all queasy at the memory: "We were notorious. Very erratic. You know all the arguments that you have in a group when you're rehearsing or in the dressing rooms - we had them on stage."
Judy: "Me and James would be fighting in one corner, and then we'd turn around and find the other two had walked off and left us."

THE BUTTERFLIES were grounded at the end of '79 and the three of them began what amounted to a rest cure.
Seemingly the convalescent home was James's house, a riotous assembly of brothers and sisters and friends presided over by his mother, a remarkable lady who made her impression on the neighbourhood by painting "muriels" of her heartthrob Rod Stewart on the outside walls.
This was when the fates came up with a nonsensical gesture of support. Several months after the Butterflies had ceased to exist Rough Trade heard a tape of a song called "Warm Girls", loved it and offered to back its release on the band's (would be) own label, Record Records.
Renaming themselves after a line of their lucky song, they became Girls At Our Best!, sold 7,000 and hit the independent charts, then did again with "Politics".
Finally they acquired a drummer (absent from the interview) and a deal with Happy Birthday, who are small enough for "Pleasure" to be their first album and big enough to pay £165 for a bit of cardboard - you work it out.
Anyway Judy and James gave up their jobs at Leeds Warehouse (where Marc Almond of Soft Cell used to work) and Gerard quit plumbing, taking a 60 per cent pay cut to go professional with the Girls. After a 16 month break they were back on stage earlier this year, although they'd still only done 20 dates in total before their current tour.
IT'S QUITE clear that the most instantly distinctive Girl is the girl, Judy. Her voice soaring above what James describes as the band "oi-ing away" is high, pure - and jolly. Like a Girl Guide singing pop. Or a choirboy soprano on the edge of breaking - out of innocence perhaps. Strange. Even to Judy.

She'd had a fairly standard rock shout until they recorded "Politics" and the melody led her into new territory. "I thought it was really weird when I first heard the tape," she says. It's an expensive voice to run: they have to capture extra sound equipment to capture it live.
Then there's her face. When I say something hesitant about Judy being "good looking", the blokes chorus "us too!" So all right, she's beautiful. Knows it too.
"People have always told me I was sexy. At least since I was 12. It was frightening at first though."

But thankfully, later in her teens she learned to be comfortable with her looks. That's why she can write as good a joke as "Fast Boyfriends", the next single, where the boys are likened to burgers in a fast food joint, heat 'em up and eat 'em up. It's equally why she can come out with the sensual tenderness of "I'm Beautiful Now" or the Edward Lear-influenced "Water Bed Babies" with its whimsical and suggestive words: "Water babies in the sea/Water melons are for tea/Water bed are made for me/they make my mouth water", The flavour is playful sexy, innocent.GIRLS AT Our Best! are neat, light and bright. James may not be too far of target when he says "Pleasure' is a collection of greatest hits which aren't greatest hits yet."

(from girlsatourbest.com)

Microdisney: Daun Square to Elsewhere: Anthology 1982-1988 (2007)

Microdisney formed in Cork in 1980 by Cathal Coughlan and Sean O'Hagan. There was some kind of post punk agit pop agenda mixing poetry with the abrasive sound scapes that had been created by The Pop Group and Scritti Politti and others. The band became a high energy 5 piece but when the energy ran out Cathal and Sean took the 2 piece to London trading a music that crossed understated melody with odd imagery and story telling. The instrumentation was now organ/string ensemble and light electric guitar backed with faithful cheap drum machines. Microdisney recorded 2 singles for Kabuki records, won favour with John Peel and left Cork for London.
Jon Fell and Tom Fenner were recruited on Bass and drums and the band toured in a Transit playing to bemused English kids. Microdisney signed a small deal with Rough Trade Records and released a trio of LP's exploring and mixing highly unfashionable influences and genres.The early compilation 'We Hate You South African Bastards!' (later renamed 'Love Your Enemies'), 'Everybody Is Fantastic' and 'The Clock Comes Down The Stairs'. After signing to Virgin they released two albums 'Crooked Mile' and '39 Minutes'. The band gathered a loyal following but ultimately had done what they set out to do by 1988 when they called it a day.
Disc 1Hello Rascals / Pink Skinned Man / Dolly/ A Few Kisses / Dreaming Drains / I'll Be A Gentleman / Sun / Liberal Love / Everybody Is Dead / Patrick Moore Says You Can't Sleep Here / Michael Murphy / Love Your Enemies / 464 Loftholdingswood
Disc 2Past / Birthday Girl / Horse Overboard / Begging Bowl / And / Are You Happy / Town To Town / Big Sleeping House / Rack / Mrs Simpson / Give Me All Of Your Clothes / Singer's Hampstead Home / United Colours / Gale Force Wind

(from highllamas.com)

Weekend - Live At Ronnie Scotts (Cherry Red Reissue 2008)

Weekend
Live At Ronnie Scotts

The first titled reissue of this seminal mini album, originally released on Rough Trade in 1983 by pop fusion innovators, Weekend. The CD features 10 bonus tracks including 3 previously unreleased versions of tracks that weren't included on the original album.

These were sourced from a pirate recording of the original gig in March 1983. Other bonus tracks include 3 tracks from a David Jensen BBC session and a recording from the legendary TV music programme, Old Grey Whistle Test. The CD artwork has been expanded by Spike Williams, original band member and he has contributed some of his recollections of the night in question.

Weekend were formed after the demise of the respected band, Young Marble Giants who featured Alison Statton as vocalist. Weekend went on to release 3 singles and two albums before calling it a day.

Late Night - Where Flamingos Fly / Winter Moon / Nostalgia Disco -Weekend Off / A Day In The Life...

Bonus Tracks - Past Meets Present (Taken From Live Pirate Recording) (Previously Unreleased) / Woman's Eyes (Taken From Live Pirate Recording) (Previously Unreleased) / A View From Her Room (Taken From Live Pirate Recording) (Previously Unreleased) / A Day In The Life Of (Taken From Nme Cassette 'Mighty Reel' Nme 004) / The End Of The Affair (Recorded Live / For David Jensen "The Evening Show") / Woman's Eyes (Recorded Live For David Jensen "The Evening Show") / Weekend Off (Recorded Live For David Jensen "The Evening Show") / Summerdays (Recorded Live For Bbc Television's Old Grey Whistle Test) / Drumbeat For Baby (12" Version) / A View From Her Room (12" Version

Microdisney (from Are You Scared to get Happy Fanzine) March 1985

'Hello, we're God...'- live on a wet March night? In Woolwich Poly bar? Well, there's these two Irishmen up on stage, and their band; they're doing a song now, all sweet-coated driving keyboards, rocky guitars ... the singer's sweating buckets, screaming tunefully - 'Stood in the Sunday rain was a still escalator...'. They've stopped: 'No, actually, we're not God- and this isn't a microphone stand either, it's a pile of shit!' O.K., who exactly are you? Let's take a stroll through Fiction-Land and try to find out... ...(First stop- John Peel Show, Summer '83: A Night Out With Microdisney?) ... So, it's evening, and you're walking down a semi-lit alley in some less-salubrious area of town; as you're passing this bar, you hear music ... well ... lurching out onto the pavement - guitars slipping and tripping over swaying, sliding keyboards - somewhere a wheezing drum-machine is calling 'Time'. You go in, and the noise fills the room - the sound of late nights and solitude and grown men crying into their beer. Up the far end, a hunched figure is half-way through some heart-rending confession ... 'Guess where I slept last night?' ... the rest of the bar is empty. You move closer, catch odd words - 'BEFORE FAMINE, I can't want you...' - revelations of betrayal pile on self-pity in disconnecting phrases - '...gone where I'm hated...': is this guy dangerous? A shock of curly black hair, wild bloodshot eyes, a huge frame of muscle and moroseness - very probably, yes. 'Let's just get drunk,' the ox moans: 'no faith, no love, nothing!'The view of the world through the bottom of a half-filled glass - you're about to leave but he's noticed you for the first time. Suddenly his mood changes - like some bloated, beer-blown Ancient Mariner, you can bet he's got a story to tell. 'I drink gin like a 1960's wino,' he roars in best Irish brogue. 'I can't go for it!' (you're not very surprised). He insists on buying you a drink, and embarrasses you in front of the bar-maid (where the hell did she come from?) - dancing round the room in a disconcerting show of exuberance, all verging on exhaustion and hysteria. Strange obsessions, too - 'I hate the heat, the heat hates me... there is a SUN!' You've been here before, you know what happens next: when he collapses in the corner with a slurred, defiant 'I'm just drunk!', you're the one who's got to take him home.Of course, on the way back, you get his life history. Nothing much makes any sense- lots of stuff about someone with blood 'where he once had eyes' who ends up in a sorry state - 'the cathedral was big and black, 'twas the doctor who brought him here' - he doesn't seem to care much for religion, or the medical profession for that matter - 'They have built a race who can't read, and are' - What? Oh- 'SLEEPLESS, like the sun'. This is worrying - you almost understand what he's on about.But then you've arrived back at his mothers house, and he's sobered up a bit, lost all the over-bearing vitality - in it's place rueful sentimentality. You accept the offer of a cup of coffee, then begin to regret it when he starts talking to a photograph of an old man - the bloke in the story? - here we go with more pity and pathos. 'Oh my God, I thought you were great, and I swam in your every whim ... fat little man in the MOON'. You don't know why, but tears are rolling down your cheeks - as you make your excuses and leave hastily, you sense somehow things will never be the same again ...... There are some fascinating little by-ways to be taken round here - like 'Love Your Enemies', a survivor from April '82 - that same old tipsy guitars, and a drum-machine sounding remarkably cheerful given the circumstances ... but then you can tell Sean and Cathal are happiest when they're getting it off their chests, as here ... a vocal performance which ranges from sulky-sullen to marvelously sarcastic-angry - some of the lyrics demand to be quoted ... 'Why don't you get down on your knees, adore your enemies?' is grumbled disbelievingly ... 'We lay in our bed in the hot afternoon, and we argued about only the money we had ... Life in the dark, life in the cold, this is the reason why we were born?' ... well, would you trust someone who talked of 'our freedom and our right to do just as we please with the likes of YOU!' ... Cathal, of course, has a ready reply - 'See what your love can do - say 'Oh, look what my love did!' - brilliant....... A few local landmarks ... 'Hello Rascals'/'Helicopter Of The Holy Ghost' - an A-side smeared with despair, 'darkly drenched in silence': this is a world where people 'watch the dawn in sick amazement' and find comfort only in old dreams. On the B-side, not even that luxury is allowed as Microdisney take a panoramic stare at Ireland's squalor - 'We have nothing decent we can dream about ...' - know the feeling? They don't pull punches: this song contains the following lines 'Where's the hope or beauty, truth or dignity? Put that suitcase down before you answer me!' - I'd like to explain why it's worth buying this record for the words alone, but I suspect you either see or you don't ... coming up on your left, 'Pink Skinned Man'/'Fiction Land' - more wit and wisdom ('Dear lover, you're no good; dear lover, you've no right- yours sincerely someone else.'), a more aggressive and optimistic (?) sound- in case anyone still cares, Microdisney USE keyboards, not vice versa, and create an accessible pop music which perfectly counterpoints the off-beat humour of the lyrics - there's even a mournful violin in the tail-end of this track, and it works! ... all the above-mentioned delights can be found on the 1984 collection 'We Hate You South African Bastards'........ A slight detour now, to the forgotten idiosyncracies of the 2nd Peel session, and 'Everybody Is Dead' ... starts innocuously enough, a bit like the testcard backing music in fact ... little guitar flourishes; is that Sean on background vocals, lending that extra something to lines like 'Spent my money, spent my energy, spent my purpose, will that improve me?'? So far so fair, but when the tune starts running on the spot and Cathal delivers a spoken vocal you might suspect the fun is only just beginning - 'there was only one thing I could say: 'I love you, I love you, I love you ...'' he shouts louder and louder - then screaming faster and more furious as the music trundles cheerfully onwards into the abyss of sound created by Sean hauling out strings of feedback - an attempt to drown out Cathal, who's now resorted to incoherent grunts and roars - the whole builds to some sort of crescendo, then abruptly stops ... sheer manic brilliance, closer to the true nature of punk rock than a 1000 singles by the Membranes or Nick Cave ... the ruins of this and many other former glories may be glimpsed on the Ruff Trade L.P. 'Everybody Is Fantastic', if you're that way inclined - well, the sleeve-notes are good ........ and now, the highspot of this or any other tour round the ravaged land of post-punk pop, Microdisney's 3rd Peel session. Some random thoughts ... the ideal soundtrack for a spring and summer of love? ... playing a tape of these songs to death last May/June, windows open wide ... what's happening - 'Friend With A Big Mouth', relaxed and tanned, comes trotting out of the speakers ... nursery-rhyme lyrics, then 'warm sun and breeze in the grass and in her hair' ... this is just right - but who the fuck is Howard? ... 'There is no hope for some of us yet' - not while people can ignore this gorgeous noise ... I always laugh at the fade-out, all those Goon-show voices screeching 'Hello eveybody' ... this is the sound of happiness; this is Microdisney's first serious move ... this is 'Dreaming Drains' - 'What is the meanest thing they can do?' Take away my tape, of course ... this music melts me. People will tell you Microdisney are gloomy: don't be taken in - they just know all about sadness ... Sean's awkward choirboy vocals are the (dream-)topping, a yearning sound, probably meant to be played in the dark (lying alone) ... 'Just savour this moment when your heart is broken; how long since I told you how much I hate you?' - that stings ... 'Teddy Dogs', and ringing guitars stutter, announce a sing-along tour-de-force ... 'Love and money, banks and beds, this is all there is ...'- Microdisney are learning about London ... keyboards which sound like a brass band- perfect pop music which belongs in the hearts and charts of the whole world, the real voice, the eye for important detail - 'Several shelves are standing next to where you stood' ... 'They don't want reason- they want obedience': is this man bitter? Check the run-off, single or session, to find out Sean and Cathal know all about hollow words and empty ceremony - 'Only a puritan hides his fear of Springtime by pretending to celebrate it. To each puritan his daffodil, his hydrangea ...' - Stephen Morrisey, are you listening? ... so let's look into 'Loftholdingswood' ... this will always be some sort of peak, right from the opening bars, the spacious piano which sets you at ease before the needle slides in - 'I died on a cross, and now I'm the boss' ... sad summer evenings, tired questions - 'Aren't you glad you were born in England, aren't you glad you were born an angel?' - are you? ... Microdisney use words for effect, with due respect, economy, precision - every phrase tells its own tale ... 'You turn away, I hear you say 'Loftholdingswood...' - there's an effortless grace about this chiming, seductive music, about Cathal's voice, just before the beat ... my heart always bleeds a little as this song ebbs away ... you can't take these songs individually, only as a whole ... as an E.P., this would be the best single ever, a sound to reclaim that sullied word 'pop' from the harlot-shops of radio and music-press ... so many moods - aggression or reflection, jaunty cheeriness or stately grandeur. This is pop? This is progress, a genuine new wave, stamping in the ashes of indie synth-crap, not bowing before Born-Again guitarism ... it betters any previous best ... Beg, steal or borrow a tape of this session from someone who knows, but the 'In The World' 12", see for yourself ... right now, it's back to Woolwich - the 3 Johns are on, playing 'A.W.O.L0, once, twice ... the third time it starts, we leave. (from bubbyworld.com/microdisney)

The Go Betweens Songbook (April 2008)

The Go-Betweens Songbook is being issued in April, to coincide with the release of The Evangelist. The book comprises music and lyrics for 26 Go-Betweens songs, an extensive essay on the history of the band by Klaus Walter, many previously unpublished photographs and an introduction by Robert Forster. The book will be available by mail order from amazon.de or directly from the publisher, Schott Music. The book is published on 4th April 2008.

(From go-betweens.org.uk)

Robert Forster remembers The Go Betweens story (Uncut 05-2008)