James Lees, musical director and co-producer of Brisbane production 'The Sound Of A Finished Kiss', bought his first Go-Betweens album after flicking through his Dad’s Rolling Stone and Countdown magazines.
As a young man in the 1980s, he loved watching Boy George and Cyndi Lauper on Saturday’s music video shows. But to find anything alternative, he had to go searching.
At the recommendation of a magazine review, a 13-year-old James set off for a tiny record store in a Sunshine Coast shopping centre where he ordered The Go-Betweens 1986 album 'Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express'.
“I said ‘Oh my god, they’re from Australia? And oh my god, they’re from Brisbane! A band from Brisbane? Is that even a thing?'
“I didn’t know very much,” James says. “But that’s why I hold The Go-Betweens very near to my heart.
“'Liberty Belle...' was putting the needle on and letting the music flow into young ears that were definitely ready for something different.”
So it was a no-brainer for James to get onboard with 'The Sound Of A Finished Kiss', a “play with a live rock & roll soundtrack” courtesy of his beloved The Go-Betweens.
A mutual friend re-introduced him to writer and director Kate Wild, who James had last crossed paths with at university. “When Kate and I first got together, she didn’t know me very well,” James says. “But when I told her that story, she said ‘Okay, I think you’re the right person to do this'.”
'The Sound Of A Finished Kiss' starts with a mixtape made by a group of four Brisbane friends in the early 1990s, heavy in Go-Betweens material, that is unearthed when one of the members is moving back to Brisbane from London.
“After managing to find a tape deck, somehow, they put it on, the first track rings out and that whole vault of emotion and feeling that all started back then just explodes,” James says.
A lot of the show’s storytelling is from the perspective of the present day, but it meanders back and forth in time, capturing the shift in its characters’ personalities from 1991 to 2016. “Something like a piece of music is so integral to a period of time or an experience,” James says.
“Many years later, you hear it again and it all floods back, gives you this perspective.”
Local audiences will particularly enjoy the coming-of-age story specific to Brisbane.
“Kate and I have a similar experience of moving to Brisbane as very young people from the Sunshine Coast and Toowoomba [respectively].”
Two years after Expo ‘88, Brisbane seemed like a more exciting place to move to. “It was finally ready to grow up and not be a sh*tty country town anymore,” James says.
The play echoes the excitement and the slight terror that comes with newfound adult independence: crazy sharehouse experiences, dirty parties and the left-of-centre personalities you meet through university.
“Anybody from any era can relate to those early adult experiences: the intensity of it, the brashness and the innocence of it, even though you don’t think you’re very innocent,” James says.
Audiences might think they know every note of the songs unearthed by 'The Sound Of A Finished Kiss' and don’t need reminding of the people they used to be, but they’re in for a “complete rediscovery”.
