Good Morning!
Today we’re listening to “Streets Of Your Town” by The Go-Betweens
In the late 80s, Americans were obsessed with everything Australian. Crocodile Dundee at the movies, Energizer battery commercials with Mark Jackson, and…whatever Yahoo Serious was.
It was the same story on the air as well, with Midnight Oil, INXS, The Church, and other bands riding high on the charts. The Go-Betweens were there too, but never quite hit the heights stateside the others managed.
As they prepared to go into the studio to record their sixth record—1988’s 16 Lovers Lane—McLennan surprised the band with “Streets Of Your Town,” a song he’d written “in about 10 minutes” with violinist/multi-instrumentalist (and then girlfriend) Amanda Brown. By all accounts, this was the first and only time McLennan had brought a track to the studio without Foster hearing it first.
In a 2018 interview, Foster recalled that first listen:
“The fact that I hadn’t heard the song, it did miff me … Every other song from every other album that we’d done before that, and every album that we did after, I knew all the songs that Grant had. This was the one song that I didn’t. But a week later it was fine. That was the thing with Grant and I, we didn’t yell and scream at each other. There’s things that I did to him that he must have just had to swallow, too.”
It didn’t take long for him and the other band members to warm up to the track, though- they knew they had something special on their hands.
“It was so hooky! It was such a standout. And to see the two of them play that together, and Amanda doing that backing vocal ‘shine’, you know, she composed that, and it’s a hook.”
~Drummer Lindy Morrison
It wasn’t a hit here in America-but it did chart elsewhere. And 35 years later, it holds up much better than some of the songs that outperformed it.
And Yahoo Serious.
Coda: Speaking of Australian artists, while appearing on the Song Exploder podcast Courtney Barnett noted that her song “Depreston” was inspired by trying to learn “Streets Of Your Town.”
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The best-known moment of 16 Lovers Lane strikes the listener as a melding of McLennan’s and Forster’s styles. ‘Streets Of Your Town’, receiving heavy radio play in the US and UK and still, somehow, not furnishing The Go-Betweens with an actual hit, is as good an indie-pop song as the the 1980s ever produced. Full of small-town drama, both fascinated and bored with the low-key life of suburbia, McLennan’s downcast, almost muttered observations are beautifully set off against Amanda Brown’s bright, cooing backing vocals.
Click here to read the rest of this comparison of 16 Lovers Lane with Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
Listen:
“Streets Of Your Town” by The Go-Betweens| 16 Lovers lane, 1988
Click the record to listen on your platform of choice.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this track!
Thanks for being here,
Kevin—
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In the early '80s I was more than a little obsessed with the 'Australian invasion' of bands into the UK -The Saints, The Birthday Party (yet to morph into The Bad Seeds), The Triffids, and yes, The Go-Betweens.
I knew I could remember them in London, supporting Aztec Camera, but it took Google to tell me that this was on 22nd October 2022, at the King's College SU on The Strand (which is, I think, the only time we went to that venue). I don't remember a huge amount (it was 40 years ago!), but I think my summary was something like, "good, but not The Triffids', but then this was at the start of my David McComb fixation! Roddy Frame/Aztec Camera were more memorable.
On the rare chance this might have been one of those gigs randomly captured I gave YouTube a whirl, but no such joy, although it did yield this John Peel session from 3 months earlier, so these were prob some of the songs they played. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok9uuY-pbw8
My attention had slipped from the Antipodes by the late '80s, so I'll have to go back and give '16 Lovers Lane' a try!
Can't recall ever having heard of (or heard) The Go-Betweens, but "Streets of Your Town" sounded vaguely familiar. Whether I had heard it before or not, it dawned on me that they (or, at least, this song) sound very much like fellow Brits, the mid-'80s Prefab Sprout...at least to me!
I realize few, if any, have ever heard (much less heard OF) PS (and they were on domestic CBS Records, yet!), including Ed Biggs of TheStudentPlaylist, who breathed not a word of them, while listing a bevy of others he deemed influenced by (or sounding like), and, of course, the requisite Fleetwood Mac, the band I guess everyone is contractually bound and obligated to mention when confronted with another band with a couple guys, a couple gals, and a generally pleasing , classic rock vibe.
Maybe I'm daft in my comparison, but I wonder what Ed would think upon hearing some Sprout! I intend on listening to more G-Bs. Ed, 4 1/2 years hence, are you game for some Sprout? Thanks, Kevin, for shining a light on one I missed back in that day!