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October 2007

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Sinister: Stuart Murdoch on Butcher Boy
by Ian Watson 09 Oct '07

09 Oct '07

Hello everyone! It's raining here in Brixton. Not raining in my heart, but raining outside, really tipping it down. I can hardly see out of the window for all of the raindrops splattered over the panes. Good for the garden, of course, but bad for the family. I've got a shopping list and a restless 14 month old to think about. So I haven't written anything here for ages and ages, it seems. I wandered over to Bowlie and found myself staying there. But now Bowlie's closing, and breakaway sites have been set up to replace it, and there's sniping and griping and all sorts of strange behaviour. And the result is that nothing really feels the same anymore. What I liked about Sinister and what I liked about Bowlie was that both represented a sanctuary away from the real world. Oh, there may be normal life going on, with its strange values and its curious obsessions, but in here reality was shifted to, well, another kind of normalcy altogether. But Sinister is quiet these days and Bowlie, or what Bowlie used to represent, is disintegrating. And Stuart Murdoch (and therefore, by dint of being two days younger, me) is turning 40 next year. It all feels like the end of an era suddenly. But I don't like the end of eras! I like eras that are just beginning! New ideas, fresh hope, all that stuff. Like the new era that's clambering over me right now, trying to grab my glasses while I write this. He wants to go to the swings, but it's cats and dogs out there. Poor tyke. He's climbed up on the sofa now and is playing with my record player, spinning the main bit around, again and again. When he starts yanking at the arm, I'll have to put a stop to it all. Oh, he's just worked the needle off the arm! That's that. "You can't do that anymore," I've just told him. There's irony there somewhere. If you don't mind, I have two things I'd like to draw to your attention. One, is the group Butcher Boy, who are playing in London on Saturday. Stuart Murdoch recently wrote this about them in his diary: "Butcher Boy are playing in Offshore Café. I feel a little bit emotional tonight, so I go for the racing certainty that is soft chords, poetry and gentle souls. The ambience in the café is literarily unmatched by anything I¹ve experienced all summer; seeing Ciara, the transformation of the café into a listening place, the man behind the counter tiptoeing with our refreshments, the music and the 44 bus illuminating the ceiling every time it passes. It is darker inside than out. Time has slowed. Because our hearts have slowed. Because we are listening." It's a mere fiver in from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/22341. Please come. The second is the next night of my club night, How Does It Feel To Be Loved? For the last two years, I've done nights in the autumn dedicated to specific B&S albums. In 2005, we had a night where we played all of Tigermilk, in order (there's dedicated DJ-ing for you, pressing play and disappearing off to the bar for half an hour!). And last year, we had a night where all of The Boy With The Arab Strap was playing throughout the evening (not all at once, but peppered throughout). And this year, it's the turn of Sinister. I won't play all of the songs all at once, but they'll be dotted throughout the night. I was wondering which of the albums to do next, and I thought of ten years of this list, and all you good folk picnicing, and Chris asking me at Indietracks if I was going to the picnic and me saying no (I was in Toronto, on my holidays). So Sinister felt like the right thing to do. Ten years of Sinister. The end of Bowlie. A significant birthday next year. What does it all mean? I like to think it doesn't mean anything at all. And that the world is carrying on exactly as before, just how you like it. Ian x +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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