…a line from her letter May 24.
mp3: The Go-Betweens – Bye Bye Pride
Tallulah, the fifth studio album by the Go-Betweens, was released in June 1987. Like everything else released by the band while in their prime, it sold dismally, spending just one week in the charts at #91.
Two of its ten tracks – Right Here and Cut It Out – had been released as singles in advance of the album, with neither making it into the Top 75. Indeed, the Go-Betweens had never had a single reach the Top 75 of the UK charts.
Despite all this, the decision was taken to lift a third single, and Bye Bye Pride was released on 24 August 1987, on 7″ and 12″ vinyl. Nobody in the band or at the record label was surprised when it too failed to dent the charts despite being, surely unarguably, one of the songs of the year. The press at the time were strangely muted, and it’s only been more recently, after the legacy of the band had been properly analysed and rightly praised, that the right sort of words were put into print:-
“An all-time band classic, with the best ever oboe solo in rock n roll”. Ian Harrison, Mojo Magazine, October 2019.
Ah, yes. The oboe.
Amanda Brown had joined the band as a multi-instrumentalist, and initially as a touring musician in 1986, shortly after the release of the fourth album Liberty Belle and The Black Diamond Express. She soon became a fully-fledged member, moving to join the others in London from her home in Sydney, and it’s more than fair to say that what she brought to the band, both in terms of her playing and her backing vocal talents, became integral to their sound up until the break-up in 1989.
I’ve got this one on 12″, and the mp3s on offer are taken from that piece of vinyl. The single is the same as the album version, and there are two tracks on the b-side, both lifted from a session for the Andy Kershaw show on BBC Radio 1 on 26 March 1987.
mp3: The Go-Betweens – The House That Jack Kerouac Built (BBC Session)
mp3: The Go-Betweens – Bye Bye Pride (BBC Session)
The Edwyn Collins series will be back next Sunday. This was very much a one-off posting for May 24.
JC
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
One of Grant’s best. It was twenty years ago this month that he passed away at just 48.
A great lyric, love the way he sings “a boat can go lost”. Part of an autobiographical sequence, a kind of sequel to Cattle and Cane (although the production is a wee bit less subtle).
Just another in a long line of fantastic songs by the band – with added oboe! Your title picks the best line, and I recall thinking at the time of the lyrical throw-back to another brilliant single that didn’t sell, Part Company. “That’s her handwriting, that’s the way she writes”.
It’s funny how their reputation has grown over the years. At the time in the 80s they were very much one of a bunch of bands who were just sort of ‘there’. Not quite obscure enough to be cult, not cool enough to be cool, not indie enough to be indie heroes- and their records were always in the second hand shops and bargain bins. The songs were always great, sometimes they just need time and distance for the rest of the world to catch up.