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Monday, May 24, 2010

67. "The Locust Girls" by The Go-Betweens


Ukuleles got really small frets, is all I have to say.

Well, actually I have a few other things to say, like how I'm still pretty seriously haunted by the loss of Grant McLennan. As a songwriter I've usually felt like what I do is a little more similar to Robert Forster's material, but it's Grant's stuff that most often amazes me for how inexplicable its perfectness is. Small words, small melodies, almost always at least one completely original image that seems utterly casual in its construction-- in this case, it's "Feelin' the rain come nailin' down"-- but stops me dead in my tracks even after many, many repeat listens. Seriously. "Bye Bye Pride" has followed me around for ages; it was, along with "Visions of Johanna" and "What Goes On", among the first songs I learned to play for Miranda as lullaby-ish things when she was a newborn, which means that they were also the first songs I could sing and play by heart all the way through. Miranda may think I wrote it.

I got a little ahead of myself in recording this one and got the structure wrong, which gave me a little problem to work out when I recorded the vocal. I decided to just write my own third verse, which maybe Grant would've done. That verse is dedicated to Ridley. I think Ridley could be in any number of Go-Betweens songs.

Personnel: Rex

1 comment:

  1. Sweet. I'm a very new uke player, and would like to learn this. Could you tell me the chords and the strumming pattern you use? Thanks much!

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