February 2001 - Sinister

Sinister: Admiring The Pinefox
by David Moore 07 Feb '01

07 Feb '01

Hi Indie Kids, "rector [rek't?r], noun a ruler, governor or controller (obsolete); in the Church of England, a clergyman of a parish where the tithes are not impropriate; an Episcopal clergyman with charge of a congregation in the United States or (since 1890) Scotland; the headmaster of certain schools in Scotland, especially those called academies; the chief elective officer of many Scottish (Lord Rector) and foreign universities; a college head (as at Lincoln and Exeter Colleges, Oxford; Science and Technology, London); an ecclesiastic in charge of a congregation, an important mission, a college or a religious house, especially the head of a Jesuit seminary (Roman Catholic)." "(b) Scot University = person elected by the students to represent them" According To the Borders (London, Oxford St.) ad, Peacock Johnson (or maybe Stuart David) will be Appearing There on aPril 19th. Doesn't indicate whether its a book reading or a Looper gig though. But book your flight from Canada anyway :) According to the Angry Tortoise Promoter: "We have sold out of 5 and 8 berth chalets on the ATP website, the only outlet left with them available is Ticketline 0161-832-1111. Internet sales of the 4, 6 and 7s are going fast so don't say I didn't tell ya." So if you're dithering get decisive. Radio 1 reminders: another Arab sTraP track on Colchester boy Steve Lamacq's Evening Session (soon) & sodAsTream session rePeated on Peel tonight 22.00 to 00.00 UK time. Why is Mark comparing his endurance to Beyond The Sunrise? increAse The Peace, David Moore Chelmsford, UK +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Sinister: 30 seconds of orgasmic pop brilliance Vs The Song that Hazlewood Forgot...
by Mark Casarotto 07 Feb '01

07 Feb '01

Brian posited, while lamenting the Duke's tangential philosophising about 69 Love Songs and Fold...: "So as a result we get joke songs as filler, moments of brilliance and lots of mediocrity in between." and... "I see it as a great shame that such great songs as "Ferdinand de Saussure" are featured on the same album as "Punk Love."" Am I the only one who thinks he's got the two albums tragically the wrong way round? (The Pinefox then went on to say lots of startlingly brilliant stuff I didn't have a hope of understanding) See you next Saturday, Markx ********************************************************************** HIT Entertainment PLC Maple House 149 Tottenham Court Road London, W1T 7NF Tel: +44 (20)7 554 2500 Fax: +44 (20)7 388 9321 The contents of this e-mail from HIT Entertainment PLC are confidential and intended for the addressee only. If you are not the intended recipient you must not copy or further distribute this e-mail; please notify us by telephone on +44 (20)7 224 1717, and delete this message from your computer system. This e-mail has been checked by our anti-virus system before leaving us; we accept no responsibility for the e-mail and any attachments once they leave us. www.hitentertainment.com www.bobthebuilder.com ********************************************************************** +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Sinister: From The Top Of The Brill Building
by P F 07 Feb '01

07 Feb '01

SYNGE AND YEATS ARE ON HIS SIDE I see in queue, I mean, Q, on a station platform (terminus, concourse, booksellers, or what you will. It's like the 1840s happened) that MORRISSEY is revenant, yes, 'returning', with a long-player, as yet unrecorded, called IRISH BLOOD, ENGLISH HEART. This will excite those academics and Jon Savage fans (they exist, I think) who have long called on "M" to acknowledge his gaylicity. I haven't done that, but it will excite me, too, if it ever appears. But it does raise (not beg) a question: what ever happened to the Los Angeles LP of whose existence Michael Bracewell was the first to inform us? INDEPENDENT READER? I? I have still yet, yet, still, to see any further discussion on this list of the album THE NEGATIVES, by the singer once known as 'The Singer With Soul Band The Commotions'. So far, all told, I have only heard the following, non-sinister comments - possibly accurate, possibly not; you be the judge, jury, and indeed executioner - on this LP: 1) It's called THE PARANOIDS 2) 'You' can 'download' it 3) It seems to be all about Los Angeles. I'm afraid that this has not satisfied me. Why is no-one talking about 'Man On The Verge', the song of 2000? Or 'Past Imperfect', the other song of 2000? Or 'That Boy', the third song of 2000? Goddamit, this *is* the LLOYD COLE MAILING LIST, isn't it?, run by and for LLOYD COLE FANS!!? Think about it. HEARTBREAKER, by PAT BENATAR Someone just mentioned Dave Eggers. Last night I read Ian Sansom's review of his famed book, which naturally I've not read (I don't read books). On the basis of what Sansom (I.) quoted, I felt that his critical faculties had taken a walk down a long pier. The tone seemed waff and less intelligent, not only than it doubtless thought it was, but than the estimable Sansom (I.) thought it was. I think that only Welthorpe (E.) can help me on this one. I WAS BY THE WIRE FENCE, AND DODGING FLYING BRIDGES Obliquely she reminds me: the other day I saw that Mooro pitched in with a rare flight of provincial romanticism - >>> Stevenage, oh town of cycle tracks and my birth. Zooming through the underpasses swerving past scared early morning shoppers on the way to work at the Lister Hospital. Walking the flying bridge from the railway station through the Leisure Centre to the pedestrian only shopping precinct with futuristic clock tower, cars flying underneath like some torrent in the St Gothard pass.... [etc] - that really cannot be allowed to go uncommended. It was one of the best things I'd ever seen from Mooro. I think he should write a 'concept album' or something. TIME'S TIDE WILL MOTHER YOU Genevieve W wrote something that I thought was pretty sound: >>> but how can Pop music be about longevity when all of this won't be around in 40 years anyways. It's the moments that count. I am remembering a 14 year old girl buying If You're Feeling Sinister from a gorgeous record store boy, and her not knowing anything about the band she was about to hear. I remember her secretly listening to Tigermilk on headphones in boring classes... As I hope shortly to say, I think Pop music can be about longevity, shortlevity, and lots of other things. But I think Ms W is on to something here. Why (for instance) demand that B&S go on churning stuff out, if they're not up to it (I have no idea, of course, whether they are or not), when they have already given us things to value and live by? We need (I find myself formulating a provisional 'rule') to be able to *value the finite*: for most is finite. And I also happen to agree with Ms W that nostalgia - next-door neighbour to love - can be a great thing in the context of pop. Or of anything. When Ms W gets older, she may sadly find that she finds it difficult even to be nostalgic as she used to be. That is a bona fide loss. CRITICISM AND ICONOGRAPHY It is time for stormy weather. It's time to broach once again this silly chestnut of the MFs vs B&S question, as raised in the article to which the geezer Miller, then Honey, pointed us all. I was going to fall silent on this, but enough others have taken it up that it seems to be worth having one last swing at it. A meta-comment first, on the geezer Pennington's comment: >>> This sort of thing infuriates me to no end. Critics. People who seem to think that they are illuminating us about our own opinions. Is Mr P saying that 'critics' are a bad thing? I think he's wrong. 'Criticism', which has of course been historically defined any number of ways, does all kinds of different things: but one thing that (for instance) it can do is to make us see an artefact differently: to see it more clearly, perhaps; to see it in a relation to other things that we hadn't thought of; to get a bit more out of it. Saying that 'critics' are bad because you don't like some 'criticism' is like saying that pop music is bad because you don't like some pop records. >>> Most people realize there cannot be objective standards for music. Or, I take it, for any other kind of aesthetic judgement? You may well be right: though even about this I do not feel sure. However, it is, I think, a good pragmatic presupposition, which makes it less likely that you'll cause needless offence. >>> But the bare fact is that no one is capable of writing 69 quality songs in that short a span of time. What span of time? If I'm not mistaken (but I could easily be mistaken), 'Papa Was A Rodeo' was written around the time of The Charm of The Highway Strip. In any case, your case is not proven, and not easily proveable. >>> It's all very interesting as a concept but piss-poor as an album if you ask me. I think you are quite, quite wrong: but you have already pointed out that this is all subjective stuff, so fair enough. STRANGE RELIGIOUS TRACTS Anyway, on to the geezer Fitchett (AF) himself. I don't really know the geezer; he may be a splendid soul, generous, funny, intelligent, erudite and all the rest of it. I expect he won't mind - I daresay he won't care at all - if I find fault with his work. I don't care for the style of the thing: I find sentences like 'Or maybe I am. I have no idea.' annoyingly slack. This, too: 'it's useful to draw parallels because� because� because. Because.' But I don't want to get bogged down in that marsh, Rodney. What about the substance (2001)? - PEOPLE DON'T LISTEN TO FYHCYWLAP ALL THE WAY THROUGH I find this a perverse line of argumentation indeed. If AF doesn't like the LP, fine: but he must know that thousands of people have listened to it all the way through hundreds of times. I don't like it all equally (who does? who does with any LP?), but I do find most of it (I suppose there could be exceptions: 'The Chalet Lines'?) rather *easy* to listen to. This is not a criticism: I find Lloyd Cole terribly easy to listen to. And the question which surely arises is: how often does anyone listen to 69 Love Songs all the way through? However much you admire it, you'd have to set aside three hours of listening time. It's not that the album doesn't deserve our attention, but that our time for doing such things doesn't readily come in three-hour blocks. Anyway, I find the whole 'all the way through' idea somewhat spurious, for I think there's a case for *not* listening to things all the way through. Listening to, say, The Queen Is Dead all the way through - let alone a Smiths 45s compilation - you get acclimatized to it, get used to it: its strange wonders have, perhaps, that bit less effect. Isn't there a case for listening to songs you really love *one at a time*, with intervals, not all in a row? - MURDOCH SHOULD WRITE EVERYTHING IN B&S Some agree, some disagree - but this is a very old chestnut. I think a fresher question might be: what is the current state of Murdoch's own creative powers? Imagine that the next B&S LP has 12 songs, 9 by Murdoch, 3 by 3 other people. If you really don't like those other songwriters, you can skip them - but the crucial question for you will be, has Murdoch delivered the goods on *his own* songs? That's what will matter most, if said LP ever turns up. - MAGNETIC FIELDS ARE BETTER THAN BELLE & SEBASTIAN As it happens, I agree - but are such polarizations, hierarchies and stand-offs that useful? I also think that the Beatles were better than the WHO and the Smiths better than the HOUSE OF LOVE, but I wouldn't want to be without those 'lesser' outfits. Part of the fascination of culture is all that proliferation of variety, of voices which can't help but be different from one another. And I would never have heard of the MFs without B&S, anyway. - STEPHIN MERRITT IS GOD Believe it or not, I have as high an estimate of Merritt's songwriting as AF does. But I don't think that this 'god' stuff is that useful. For one thing, as another listee has pointed out to me, it has a very dodgy Rock History (Hendrix, Clapton, etc); but more generally, it's just so vague, so reach-me-down, as to be uninformative. Saying that someone's 'god' is a poor substitute for detailed description and analysis. Does AF give us those things too? Maybe. - CLAUDIA GONSON COULDA BEEN A STAND-UP COMEDIENNE If I'm not mistaken, CG is energetic, garrulous and very talented. That is not the same as having the qualities (whatever they may be) required for stand-up. - TO HEAR 'ACOUSTIC GUITAR' IS TO HEAR JULIE LONDON This is a *bit* intriguing, but I'm not quite sure that I understand it. - BEGHTOL, KLUTE AND SIMMS SING LIKE ANGELS I find this a peculiarly unhelpful claim. For one thing, there is, I think, a vague convention in pop thinking that 'singing like an angel' means something like: ethereal; high; dreamy. Examples presumably include Fraser, Wheeler, Berenyi/Anderson, etc etc. Now, I admit that this is a limited-looking use for the term, a mere convention, and perhaps AF is trying to break out of it, turn the idea of 'singing like an angel' into something else. But is that worth doing? I think not, because - like 'god' - it has been so used and overused that it no longer seems to tell us much. There are so many *detailed* things that could be said about the unusual voices of Beghtol and Klute (I think that AF does quite well on Simms - whose performance blew me away, and about the spelling of whose name I am never entirely sure): the 'angel' thing is a clich� that, once again, substitutes for those details rather than summarizing them. - THE NATURE OF POP IS... The nature of Pop is, according to AF, lots of things, which may or may not cohere. He frequently gives us another of Pop's defining characteristics, another reason why something is untrue to Pop - of which the most contentious example round here was 'Pop is Not Democratic', so B&S are bad. Miller says that that's wrong, because Pop *is* democratic. I think they're both wrong, because they're both right. It seems to me very likely that pop music can be, perhaps even should be, 'democratic' (ie: with creative input from lots of people) in some cases, 'undemocratic' (ie: dictated by a single talent) in others. This 'Nature of Pop' stuff always seems to narrow the field of pop in unnecessary, indeed illegitimate ways. If I'm not mistaken, there was a lot of talk about this stuff a while back - on sinister in the early days (I wasn't around), on other websites perhaps, at pub tables where Tim Hopkins had just got a round in, etc. Beyond the geezer AF, I'm not entirely sure who has spent a lot of time issuing definitions of The Nature Of Pop, or whether anybody still does it - though come to think of it, I seem to have heard Welthorpe do it occasionally. But despite having no clear target to aim at, and at the risk of shooting a dead horse, I submit that 'Nature of Pop' talk can be a mixed blessing. - On the one hand, it seems to have released, or stimulated, a lot of valuable energies: to have got people thinking seriously about pop music and why and how they love it; which I cannot think a bad thing. If the forging of exclusive definitions and rules is what it takes to get that to happen, so be it. - But on the other hand, talk of The Nature of Pop usually seems to amount to saying 'I like this... and it's Pop', and 'I don't like that... it's not really Pop'. In a word, it is, of course, an *evaluative* discourse: but it wears the garb of a merely *descriptive* one. It seems to me that there's an unnecessary confusion of language games here. Furthermore, reading AF's meditations on Pop made me imagine coming across a website full of people earnestly debating whether, ooh, Tony Harrison, Dave Eggers, Samuel Beckett, John Keats, Laurence Sterne and John Buchan were !LiTeRaTuRe! or not, formulating rules for the literary which amounted to jealous defences of certain authors that they loved, etc. I am afraid that I would find such a discussion somewhat absurd, because it would appear that it was wasting time on these matters of definition, boundaries, exclusions, etc, rather than simply describing the pleasurable, treasurable particularities of any number of instances of the vast and unwieldy field that is pragmatically called the literary. Those who have come this far may be glad to hear that that is, at last, all I have to say; as well as being roughly, as Raymond Williams used to tell committee chairmen, what I came to say. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Sinister: Re: Why we hate indie kids
by mark waudby 07 Feb '01

07 Feb '01

>after all that they >suddenly get a job and start listening to Moby and Aimee Mann. What I ask >you is the fucking point? Wow!!!! I was with you all the way until this bit!!! Who's Aimee Man??? Only other confusing thing is that you consider all listed points to be bad traits, when all right-minded individuals, of course, know them to be uniformly virtuous and superior. Do you own a button-down shirt, perchance? mark _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Sinister: Son of If B & S Were 14 Year Old Japanese Schoolgirls
by Rob Lorenson 07 Feb '01

07 Feb '01

I haven't posted in a long, long time. Today I was forced against my will to listen to the Jpop group "Tampopo," which is a group of 4 14 year old Japanese girls all wearing frilly black and pink burlesque-style outfits and big pink top hats, so they kind of look like the Mad Hatter if he was a stripper. Their first song was pretty horrid, something about frilly girly things and skipping through Kyoto and flowers and crap. The second song was pretty much the same, and my friend who was driving in the car was grinning her big bad-teeth grin and chuckling and saying something in Japanese that ain't in any textbooks (my friend is from Osaka, if anyone cares, and she's a strange girl). Then the third song came - - and the both of us swear that the girl in Tampopo started singing about "Okama" -- male homosexuals, and "resubian" -- lesbian. And that got me thinking -- what if B & S were 14 year old Japanese schoolgirls singing about the same subjects that they do now. The exact same songs. Would they be as popular? Or would people think that they were complete freaks? Would we all be writing to each other on the list, and meeting each other in clubs, and wearing silly T-shirts, and walking through the grocery store singing "dirty dream number two" at an audible level, or screaming every time Chris or Stuart or Isabelle or Mick or Etc. got on stage, or pissing off the annoying people who live in the house below yours by cranking "woman's realm" at 3 AM? Or would they fade amongst the obscurity of Shinjuku BDSM clubs and Toxitown Junky Queens? would they end up in a smoke-filled club stinking of booze and body odor while 50 year old business wanked off to them while they gyrated and twisted and pranced on a rounded stage, their arms and legs bruised and holed with needle marks, their septums burned out and trickles of blood dripping down their face? Sorry. I am on a weird tangent right now. I just finished reading the book "Coin Locker Babies" by Ryu Murakami, which is about transvestites and drug addicts and male/female whores and rock and roll stars and pole vaulters and a fashion model with a pet crocodile. And Shinjuku, where I went one before, and will go again when I'm in Japan this summer. Toodles. Your Pal, Rob ======================================================== "If your engines aren't revved up, then what you need is a holy ghost enema right up your rear end!" -Suzanne Hinn "And remember, if New Jersey was made out of neutron star matter, a teaspoon of New Jersey would weigh as much as New Jersey!" -- James "Kibo" Parry http://home.earthlink.net/~rtoad ALL SORTS OF THINGS FOR YOUR REAR ======================================================= +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Sinister: When I grow up I want to be Stuart Murdoch
by Genevieve Wesley 07 Feb '01

07 Feb '01

Because it seems he can do everything! Poet, singer-songwriter, janitor, bus driver, potential Rector, and probably Dashing Firefighter who rescues kittens. I am curious as to what it is a Rector does? I thought the Magnetic Fields vs Belle & Sebastian piece was quite interesting, as the Magnetic Fields have always been one of those bands that I should like and that everyone loves but I just never got into..maybe my tastes weren't ready for them a few years ago, I don't know. Try, try, again. I don't hate them or anything, I like a few songs, sometimes for pleasure I even do a strange ballet dance to You Love To Fail. But for me, they will not come close to the height of B&S. Strange to observe the delirious love the Duke has for them in contrast to my absence of feeling. I really liked Kim's post. It seems like many immediately jump at being the self-righteous victim and throw out the 'well, it's MY RIGHT' me me mememememe stomp-your-foot. It's always about what's owed to someone, but never the responsibilites. It is refreshing that Stuart Murdoch cares and thinks about others instead of always himself and this is why he is lovely and yummy and the icing on my cake and has the most beautiful singing voice. So maybe they will and maybe they won't be releasing beautiful records year after year, but how can Pop music be about longevity when all of this won't be around in 40 years anyways. It's the moments that count. I am remembering a 14 year old girl buying If You're Feeling Sinister from a gorgeous record store boy, and her not knowing anything about the band she was about to hear. I remember her secretly listening to Tigermilk on headphones in boring classes. I am thinking of certain parts in The Loneliness of the Middle Distance Runner, Expectations, There's Too Much Love...and OH, it goes on, those certain bits that just break me. Like the line in Le Pastie, 'how you love, and the halo surrounds you' make me feel like running, to be all windswept and exhilirated, pure joy! Maybe there will be fewer moments, but how beautiful they are. When I'm an old lady cruising down the highway, listening to the oldies station, hopefully I'll hear B&S and those Moments and nostalgic feelings will all come flooding back, and oh how I'll yearn for Magical Elf Struan once more. Love, Genevieve p.s Did the Poetry Parrot die again? The following is apparently The Worst Poem Ever Written in the English Language. "Theophile Marzials..born in 1850...he once interrupted a hushed library room by loudly declaiming: 'Am I not the darling of the British Museum Reading Room?' He also had an enthusiastic propensity for giving impromptu public recitals of his works." A Tragedy Theophile Marzials Death! Plop. The barges down in the river flop. Flop,plop. Above, beneath. >From the slimy branches the grey drips drop... To the oozy waters, that lounge and flop... And my head shrieks-"Stop" And my heart shrieks-"Die"... Ugh! yet I knew-I knew if a woman is false can a friend be true? It was only a lie from beginning to end- My Devil-My "Friend"... So what do I care, And my head is empty as air- I can do, I can dare (Plop, plop The barges flop Drip, drop.) I can dare, I can dare! And let myself all run away with my head And stop. Drop Dead. Plop, flop. Plop. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Sinister: Generation Indie
by MIWinship＠aol.com 07 Feb '01

07 Feb '01

Yes, yes, Alright? It's yr 'Agent' Mike here. As ever, I have been drinking and mixing with theatre 'types'. Tonight, for example, I was stood at the bar next to Richard E Grant, and also laughed at the presence of Patrick Marber. So, like, indie kids are a bit sad and that, apparently. Ah, well, that's us told. Moving on: I can't emphasise enough just how good the new Future Pilot AKA and Bill Wells albums are. International Airport also 'do it' for me at the moment. I realise I may have killed off the 'rude' B&S craze, but must tip my proverbial hat to the author or 'Ease Yr Meat Into the She'. '69 Love Songs' is OK, but the best going to sleep music is Brian Eno or Papa M. So, who needs to move into a house in the Greenwich area in the next two weeks? You do? Then e-mail me now..... (Flagrant list abuse, I know, but we're desperate...) So, bye for now, and much jealousy to those in the North (that means you, Pez) and your 'snow'. Mike. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Sinister: it feels so 80s, or early 90s
by Robyn Fadden 07 Feb '01

07 Feb '01

hello smutsters, ah, the in-ter-net. ah, tech-no-logy. mmm. so much stuff. i feel like i'm planting seeds inside myself and waiting for spring when all these plants will start growing out of me. maybe i'm feeling too close to nature. or nature metaphors... here is something interesting said by Dave Eggers in McSweeney's about people who are impressed by nothing: "I honestly think it's a result of too much time spent indoors, in dark rooms, reading critiques of criticism of opinions about trends. One needs, I think, very often, some exposure to the source material � that is, the world." And i thought of jenowl out in the woods talking to the trees. outdoors is good. but so are books and the internet. i guess we must strive for balance. there was poetry mentioned. the other day, my boy gave me 'the lost luna bedaeker', a book of mina loy's poetry, which made me very happy as i've been living for years with only a handful of photocopies of mina loy poetry. it is nice when people give you things you really should have bought yourself years ago. now i just need someone to buy me a vacuum (one that sucks up dirt and dust in my house, not a space devoid of matter. though that might be fun to throw things into and then wonder where they went and wonder also when and if they will come back. ha ha, but don't we all have enough metaphorical vacuums anyway, hum hum, har har. ah. er.) the week before last was my birthday. really, all of that week. i had five cakes! the best cake was a homemade one in the shape of hello kitty, with red paper bow and licorice border. i thought a good cake would be in the shape of the b&s bus, but it did not happen. maybe next year. or maybe a cake in the shape of le tigre. which would be the shape of total radness! i don't know what that shape looks like, but it would be great. great like outdoors. great like the new le tigre ep. i'll meet you in the street, robyn ===== I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything. ~Steven Wright ~~~ Robyn Fadden rfadden(a)yahoo.com Vancouver, BC __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices. http://auctions.yahoo.com/ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Sinister: Why we hate indie kids
by Tom Ewing 06 Feb '01

06 Feb '01

1) They like indie music. Obviously. 2) Their regulation thick-frame black glasses. No more breakable item of nosewear has ever been invented: on slow afternoons I could happily cruise the streets for hours walking up to indie kids, lifting these ridiculous excuses for spectacles from their filthy-pored noses and breaking them at the bridge. How the indie kid would howl! Perhaps they would threaten to "kick my ass". Needless to say all indie kids have adequate eyesight: any slight impairment of vision is due entirely to their regime of perpetual masturbation. 3) Indie kids are at it like rabbits. Or want to be. Scratch any 'community' or 'scene' of indie kids and you will find a seething cauldron of sexual frustration and backstabbing. Most indie kids are vile to look upon: I think this because I am enslaved by societal standards of beauty. 4) Societal standards of anything are bad, pretty much. Unless it gets you a shag. Or earns you - or more likely your parents - the vast amount of money needed to get through college on some no-mark computer games degree AND buy a billion useless identical records. 5) On the rare occasions when an indie kid does get it on it at least distracts them from listening to indie music. Or making it. All indie kids are in indie bands. 6) Indie is short for independent, because indie kids are not mainstream. No sir. They are individuals. A quick look at an indie kid website will reassure you of that. 7) All indie kids are unique. They are however looking for other indie kids who are unique in exactly the same way as them - cool, huh? 8) Among the unique things about indie kids are their haircuts. The square mainstream observer might mistake the uniform dyed bobs and crops of indieland as the sinister hairstyles of a clone army hell-bent on taking over teenage america and making it listen to At The Drive-In. But such an observer would be a fool. There are crucial differences in the haircuts. Some are, like, really expensive. 9) Some records are really expensive, too. You must really love the music to spend $200 on eBay on a one-sided seven-inch, right? It shows your dedication to music is for real and unique, like your taste. 10) Indie fashions are individual and unique too, and are marked by the indie kid's strong sense of irony. For example, a lot of indie kids like wearing overalls and workshirts as worn by real live working class people. As the indie kid finishes a two-hour shift at Border's they feel solidarity with their working-class brothers and sisters in the bakeries and pizza delivery companies all across the nation. 11) They don't feel solidarity with the suits working in offices, though. Those people are a plastic fake herd of manufactured, soulless brainwashed lemming robot drone sheep enslaved to mass culture pap. (This is true, obviously. But sorry, indie kids are worse.) 12) Not all mass culture is pap, though. Hey! What about those cool Powerpuff Girls? 13) Infantilism is endemic to the indie kids. When was the last time you heard one of them use the word 'man' or 'woman'. Nope, it's always 'boys' and 'girls'. Some girls are 'cute'. Some boys are 'cute' too. The more incurable indie kids use the words 'grrrl' and - shudder - 'boi', for all the world as if they were living in a Disneyworld 1994 Experience ride or fell into a copy of Sassy once and never escaped. 14) When indie kids pair off with a cute grrrl or boi (all indie kids are in theory bisexual, of course. Just don't ask them to do anything about it.) they tend to treat each other like shit and then write it up on their web pages ("I am SUCH the geek"). This is because they are very sensitive, not as the casual observer might have guessed because they are emotional dwarves with no concept of human interaction outside a fanzine problem page. You become sensitive by listening to Belle And Sebastian a lot. 15) All their records sound the same, due to influence inbreeding. The gene pool of influences on indie rock has been shrinking steadily since 1977, thanks to paranoid scenester tastemaking. The constant slathering praise directed at the likes of the Get Up Kids and Sleater-Kinney is the critical equivalent of a one-eyed chinless inbred mutant winning a beauty contest. 16) Indie kids like experimentation, but not too much experimentation. They like extremity, but not too much extremity. They like songs, but they like them to be a bit shy and fuzzed-up and nervous and not too songish. Best of all they like bands which sound comfortingly like the other ones they already know are cool. 17) Of course they listen to other stuff too, carefully weighing it up for its purity of motive and general indie-ness. Other genres are assessed with a practised eye, and only the records which have the most spiritual kinship to indie are acceptable - no attempt is made to take these musics on their own terms, since indie is in any case superior. Eventually a fashionably anti-PC stance allows the indie kid to reject even bothering with hip-hop or dance records - that would after all be 'tokenism'. 18) The worst thing about indie kids is how apalling they are at even being indie kids. After idling their college years going to 'shows' every other day and then spending two years in retail working on a screenplay or writing a novel about following a band or recording a thousand tinny songs on a hundred cheap cassettes and giving them to people they fancy in the hope that a rare Braid EP track might get them a quick fuck on some other indie kid's sofa and pretending to like the Spice Girls and pretending to like the Magnetic Fields and pretending to like each other - after all that they suddenly get a job and start listening to Moby and Aimee Mann. What I ask you is the fucking point? Tanya Headon and Tom Ewing with additional material by Maura Johnston 2 January 2001 _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Sinister: Revelations on Hal Hartley
by paul.rudolph.b＠bayer.com 06 Feb '01

06 Feb '01

During the first few weeks of all of this Hal Hartley hubbub, I kept thinking Hal Hartley was Hal Lindsey. For those of you who might not know, Hal Lindsey is is the writer obsessed with the Book of Revelations and our impending doom. I spent about a week trying to figure out why Belle & Sebastian would associate with Hal Lindsey. Have they joined a cult? Thankfully, a sinister post referred me to the IMDb and I realized everyone was talking about Hal Hartley (and my fears were assuaged). I don't want to know what my mental state is 40 years from now. I think classifying people into sub-cultures is analogous to the "evil corporation" who has to classify their customers through "targeted marketing." So, what's up with the "Interminable Three Chord Break" in the Modern Rock Song sleeve? I haven't seen any mention of it in the archives. It probably was discussed during a flurry of posts about oxymorons in Belle & Sebastian songs, or something like that. Sha la la la la, Paul +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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