Robert
Forster
The Toff
in Town, Melbourne
Saturday
12 March 2016
$40
I Love Robert Forster And I Always Have
There’s a song on Robert Forster’s
new album, Songs To Play, called I Love Myself and I Always Have. As the
second last song on the album, it is perhaps the exception that proves the
second of his rules (from the 10 rules of rock and roll) that ‘the second last
song on every album is the weakest’. If there are any weak songs on Songs To Play, then this isn’t it.
At an in-store launch of the album
at Readings book shop in Carlton last October, Forster revealed that the
genesis of this song was when his email broke down and to re-generate it he
needed to send himself an email, but rather than simply send and email with
“test” or a series of key strokes, he actually wrote himself a loving missive.
When his wife later saw this, she observed that he really did have a good
opinion of himself. From here he developed the song, for which he employed, he
said, a favourite old trick of using a humorous title to mask a reasonably
serious song.
The song might be about self-esteem,
being true to yourself or a simple comment on onanism, but the general
sentiment is one I share – I Iove Robert Forster and I always have.
Ever since I was 16 and sneaking in
underage to Go Betweens gigs on Monday nights at The Tiger Lounge in Richmond,
I’ve followed Forster’s career. When The Go Betweens split in the late 80s, I
followed Robert Forster’s solo career more closely than Grant McLennan’s. Of
the two, I preferred Forster’s left of centre approach, angular melodies and
his lyrics that mixed the poetic with the prosaic, and the flippant with the
fervent. I also responded to his sense of showmanship and his literary
demeanour – I could easily picture him in Paris in the 1930s, sipping absinthe
with Gertrude Stein, and Marcel Proust. This might say more about my
pretentiousness than anything to do with him, but it is nevertheless symbolic
of the esteem in which I’ve always held him.
I’ve been seeing Robert Forster
perform for 35 years with both The Go Betweens and solo at numerous venues
across Melbourne; the Central Club in Richmond, The Club in Collingwood, The
Seaview Ballroom in St Kilda, The Exford Hotel in the city, Chaser’s nightclub
in South Yarra, Melbourne University in Parkville, The Ferntree Gully Hotel in
Ferntree Gully, Festival Hall in North Melbourne supporting REM, the
Continental Café in Greville St Prahran, the Dan O Connell in South Melbourne, the
Toff in Town in the city, the Thornbury Theatre, the Old Greek Theatre in
Richmond and numerous other venues long closed down and forgotten. Somewhere in
a cupboard, rolled up with old posters, I have a set list I pilfered from a gig
at The Club around the Spring Hill Fair
era.
From an earnest, nervy performer in
The Tiger Lounge days prior to the release of their first album, Send Me a Lullaby, he gradually
developed into a loquacious and extroverted performer. By the time Tallulah was released in 1987, he had long,
peroxide blond hair and was returning to the stage for encores wearing dresses
– full-length ball gowns and makeup. The song Draining The Pool For You was usually his cue for putting his
guitar aside and embarking on slick, snake hip dancing and vocal extemporising.
At the Central Club in Richmond, the
dressing room was upstairs. Most performers would finish their set and wait in
the wings while the audience dispersed, rather than shouting an exhilarated
“Goodnight!” followed by lots of “Excuse me’s” as they pushed through the crowd
to get to the stairs. Not Forster. He concluded an encore one night with a
commanding, even lordly gesture for the crowd to part, and as the rest of the
band continued playing, Forster strode imperiously through the channel that opened
up, like Moses through the Red Sea, and made his way unimpeded to the stairs
and dressing room.
He is always entertaining. My friend
John and I had seen him play at The Thornbury Theatre in November to support
the new album, and when this show was announced to coincide with his visit to
the Port Fairy Folk Festival, we decided to come along again.
The Toff in Town is an intimate
little venue that hosts cabaret, music acts, comedy and theatre. It is located
in Curtain House, an art nouveau building on Swanston Street that is also home
to Metropolis bookshop, niche fashion boutiques, Cookie Bar and Thai restaurant
and a rooftop cinema. We met our friend Manny in Cookie Bar, on the level
below, for a pre-show drink.
When the curtain parted the band was
already on stage playing Learn To Burn,
the opening track from Songs To Play.
The band consisted of the John Steel Singers’ Scott Bromiley and Luke McDonald
on guitars, bass and keyboards plus Chris O’Neill on drums and Forster’s wife
Karin Baumler on violin.
At that Readings in-store
appearance, Forster had said that Learn
To Burn has a rockier edge and that when he wrote it, he did so as a Tom
Verlaine type riff, played on the lower strings which was different to his
normal method. It’s a great song and a suitable opener to this gig.
After the lyrical Let Me Imagine You, Forster introduced
the group saying, “We’re from Brisbane and we’re a young band playing a new
kind of folk rock” before they launched into I’m So Happy For You, also from the latest album.
I was at the bar for Surfing Magazines, which he dedicated to
the lapping waves of Port Fairy, but was back in my spot just a few people deep
for the old Go Betweens number, Head Full
of Steam. This set most of the audience into a nostalgic sway. Without his
baseball cap I couldn’t be sure, but the bloke next to me looked a little like
Glenn Bennie, the guitarist from Underground Lovers, who I had seen just the
night before.
The band was tight and crisp
throughout, providing just the right light touch for the material. Highlights
included Songwriters on the Run,
which he introduced by saying he’d played it at a panel show that morning at
Port Fairy where it had absolutely bombed.
Also Finding You, originally sung by Grant McLennan on the Go Betweens’ Oceans Apart album, and Heart Out To Tender from his first solo
album. For this song he forsook the guitar, took the mike from the stand and
made earnest eye contact with every member of the audience as he told his tale
about looking for love.
The set concluded with one of the best
songs from the latest album, A Poet Walks
and the rollicking Go Betweens song Here
Comes a City, also from Ocean’s Apart,
about a train ride through Germany.
The first song of the encore was Part Company that Forster and wife Karin
Baumler performed as a duet with guitar and violin. The rest of the band returned
to the stage for Make Her Day and a
sprightly version of Spring Rain. At
the Thornbury Theatre show a few months previous Forster had said that he
always tries to include in the set a song with the word ‘rain’ in the title,
and there is perhaps no better one than this classic 1986 Go Betweens song.
The full band returned for one final
track, the marvellous Danger in the Past,
to close out another fabulous Forster show.
Looking back, there is not a lot of
danger in my own past, but there is an inordinate amount of time spent
listening to Robert Forster. I couldn’t have been in safer hands.
Setlist
Learn To Burn
Let Me Imagine You
I’m So Happy For You
Surfing Magazines
Head Full of Steam
Born To a Family
Disaster In Motion
Songwriters on the Run
Finding You
Heart Out To Tender
I Can Do
I Love Myself and I Always Have
A Poet Walks
Here Comes a City
- - - - - - -
Part Company
Make Her Day
Spring Rain
- - - - - -
Danger in the Past
Encore: I’m not necessarily one for meeting
my heroes, but I felt pretty safe with Robert Forster when I joined the signing
queue at the Readings in-store appearance. I was one of those annoying people
with multiple items for him to sign – the new album on vinyl that I bought on
the night, as well as my copy of The 10
Rules of Rock and Roll and a CD version of my favourite Go Betweens album, Before Hollywood. Even then I thought I
was keeping things to a minimum, and considered it a sign of maturity that I
didn’t get him to sign my left breast. I can’t promise I’d play it quite so
cool if armed with a permanent marker in the presence of PJ Harvey or FKA
Twigs, but hey, I’m only human.
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