BAND APART Music, Memory and Kriv Stenders’ The Go-Betweens: Right Here
‘16 Lovers Lane – we deliver this pop jewel and it brings us nothing. Like, financially, nothing. We may as well have put out a free jazz album,’ says Robert Forster, singer/songwriter of the titular band discussed in Kriv Stenders’ documentary The Go-Betweens: Right Here (2017).
Formed in Brisbane in 1977 by Forster and fellow singer/songwriter Grant McLennan, independent rock band The Go-Betweens attracted little popular attention over their eighteen-year career, which spanned 1977 to 1989 and then 2000 to 2006. Today, however, the group is considered one of the most inventive and important in Australian music history. Testament to this is the fact that, in 2001, the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) listed ‘Cattle and Cane’ from the band’s sophomore album, Before Hollywood, as one of the top thirty Australian Songs over the preceding seventy-five years, despite the tune having never reached the local charts. Furthermore, in 2009, the Brisbane City Council announced that a new bridge would be named the ‘Go Between Bridge’ in the band’s honour.
Stenders’ documentary is a vital, honest and revelatory portrait of its subjects, telling the stories not only of their songs, but
