Laurel wrote:
>my linguistics prof wants us to find him some good
british/american english comparisons. if you'd like to contribute a
favorite word or phrase, feel free.
What's always puzzled me is how a country that doesn't know it's arse from it's fanny managed to rise to such prominence...
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>That sounds very plausible to me, sadly Stuart succeeded in proving
>quite the opposite. Don't we love them for their guitar-led brilliance
>rather than this synth cackhandery? Guess it just goes to show that
>even a band as talented as B&S can have their David Bowie moment.
>Let's just hope they drop the touted speed garage track "Sebastian's
>Nation" from the next album. I had hoped they were above all that.
>
>x Belle
Hmm I love electronic renaissance although it certainly does split the
ranks. I don't really care too much about synths or guitars either, the
song's lovely and that's good enough for me, indeed I like the variety in
arrangement. Indeed I'm going to spend the day listening to Kraftwerk. And
David Bowie in fact. Is there something wrong?
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-----Original Message-----
From: Laurel Girvan <lgirva13(a)calvin.edu>
To: michael <mct101(a)york.ac.uk>
Cc: Sinister(a)ph.ed.ac.uk <Sinister(a)ph.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 26 November 1997 18:34
Subject: Sinister: turkey day and books
>
>thanks to whoever wished us u.s. kids happy thanksgiving. what's the next
>national holiday in the uk? boxing day or something, i'm sure.
I did actually try to find out if it was some obscure holiday yesterday so's
I could wish everyone a happy Ascension day or something, but to no avail.
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Tigermilk copies
----------------
No, I'm not looking for one - I have mine already courtesy of Ben,
complete with sessions and demos.
So, if anybody out there wants me to make a copy, get in touch. I'm
living in Sweden at the moment, so I suppose it makes sense that I'd do
a copy for anybody in that vicinity.
Also, I'll be back home in Ireland this weekend, so if there's any irish
folk on the list that want me to send them a copy then, get in touch
with me today. Do not reply to the list! I'm only on the digest, and
chances are I won't see it before I leave work today (about 5pm Irish
time), and so won't get time to make the tape (also, please note that
there's only about 4-5 hours tonight that I can make the tapes, and each
one will take 90 minutes, so in case I get a deluge of requests, I can
only make tapes for the first three people. Others will have to wait
until next week) Write to me at qhsmich(a)aom.ericsson.se
Arab Strap
----------
While I wasn't very au fait with this band, I'd seen them being
mentioned on the list a lot. I got the Hey!Fever/Girls of Summer single
on Chemikal Underground yesterday. I was quite pleased to see Stuart
Murdoch and Chris Geddes credited on Hey Fever, but not even that
prepared me for the song itself. Let's just say that any tune that can
get me to bop around my apartment at 6:30 am has to have something
special going for it. My question is whether this is 'typical' Arab
Strab (I love Girls of Summer too, only not quite as much)? And if so,
does anybody have a discography?
Ta,
Mick
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Funny that should come up...I was so nervous meeting Stuart Murdoch in
NYC....All I could think of saying was "you're not a Hun, are ya?" pretty
sure he said he supports Celtic...and I think wee Chris said that as
well....
we won't mention who *I* support. supported. humph.
xbeth
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Back on the theme of the proposed London meet, my friends are organising
a pop quiz for Thursday night (tomorrow). So why not use this as a
London meet?
The details:
Pop quiz at the John Snow pub on Broadwick Street (This is the large
road on the left when you're walking from Sister Ray (Berwick St) to
Selectadisc (further up Berwick St), the pub is abou 50m down on the
left hand side).
Doors open at 8pm with a £3 entry fee that makes up the prize pot - top
prize £50 with hundreds of small prizes. Records to be given away
(including loads of promos such as some Saint Etienne records and some
SFA - sorry, no B&S!).
Cheap (for central London) drinks, a good pint of beer is £1.48, with
lager at £1.70 and very reasonable spirits and mixers.
Will also have a sound system there, and if Simon remembers to bring it
the background music should consist of Tigermilk for some part of the
night.
Anyway, hope to see a few of you there, will be cool to finally match
some user names to faces :)
David & Katrina
Belle and Sebastian Fan Club
--
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http://www.totalweb.co.uk/bluesoda/
mailto:bluesoda@totalweb.co.uk
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Hello all.
A while back, some were posting about a book called Beatnik, or something to that effect. I have looked for it everywhere here in NYC, but have had no success. Would someone be kind enough to post more details about it so that I may be better armed in my queries to those bookstore types? That would be greatly appreciated!
Happy Thanksgiving to the US Kids,
Paige
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Just in case you delete this, remember that a copy of this mail-out can
be found on the Fan Club site at http://www.totalweb.co.uk/bluesoda/
--
Belle and Sebastian
--
Well, we promised we'd let you know what was happening on the gig front,
so here's the confirmed details:
Belle and Sebastian are playing the Manchester Town Hall on Saturday
27th and Sunday 28th December. There will be no support band on the
Saturday night, however Future Pilot will be playing the Sunday night.
Now, as we know an awful lot of want to go to these gigs, we've managed
to secure 350 tickets per night to sell via the fan club. Yaaaayyyy! We
hear you all scream. Well, this is how it's going to work.
The Tickets set aside for the fan club are available to those paying by
cheque/postal order ONLY! (This includes international money
orders/Eurocheques etc.). NO cash or credit card payments will be
accepted. There will be a maximum of four tickets per transaction, and
each ticket is subject to a booking fee (which includes postage and
packaging costs). Tickets cost £9 plus the 70 pence booking fee, total
cost per ticket is £9.70 EACH. All cheques/postal orders/IMO's/
Eurocheques etc., are to be made payable to FOUNDATION and posted to 191
Alexandra Park Road, London, N22 4BJ, England. DO NOT send your
ticket orders to the fan club PO Box address or to the band, as your
order will not be processed, and you'll regrettably miss out. Your
tickets will be dispatched within two weeks of cheque clearance.
For those of you who wish to buy your tickets in person, or by credit
card, there are a few outlets to do so from:
Tickets for the Manchester gig are available;
in person at:
Piccadilly Records on Oldham Street, Manchester (speak to Laura 'cos
she's lovely!).
by Credit Card at:
Stargreen UK Ticket Outlets on 0171 734 8932
and in person & by Credit Card at:
The Piccadilly Box Office inside the Virgin Megastore, Market Street,
Manchester. 0161 832 1111 (9am to 9pm seven days a week).
Ticket prices are still £9 each, but will be subject to a booking fee at
the outlet's discretion. Please phone the outlets for more information.
There will not be any tickets for sale on the night at the gigs, so if
you want to go, you'd better get your mitts on a ticket now!
Or, you could try to win a pair! Just look below and enter the fab and
groovy compo to try a more risky but cheaper way of
acquiring tickets.
--
Competition
--
Yes, it's competition time again, and if you can answer the following
question correctly, you will go into the draw to win a pair of tickets
to the Sunday (28/12) night show, plus maybe some other bits and bobs.
Ok, the question is; What football team do (the majority) of Belle and
Sebastian support? All answers on a track and field postcard to the PO
Box address below (e-mail entries will not be accepted), and if you win,
you'll be winging your way to Liverpool and Widnes, well, no Manchester
really, to see B&S live! The competition closes on the 12th December,
and the winner will be notified by phone (so please include a
daytime phone number) by 19th December. Good luck!
And here's another reason to get to the Manchester gigs - we've had a
lot of people inquiring about the Judy and the Dream of Horses mugs,
which sold out at the Kelvingrove/QM gig. Well they're back in
production, and there will be another limited run, this time 300, to be
sold exclusively at the Manchester gigs. We would sell them through the
fan-club, however the P&P costs are extortionate, and we don't want to
take the risk of stock being damaged in the post, so mugs at gigs it's
going to be.
Isobel is also designing another badge or two, these will be a button
badge design (similar to the original Dog On Wheels badges), and there's
even rumours of Belle and Sebastian stickers too, so please come and
visit us at the merchandise stall at Manchester to find out what's new.
Rest assured the badges and stickers will be available by mail order
too, so keep sending your stamps, and you'll keep getting more info!
Speaking of merchandise, we've got the brown and silver Belle and
Sebastian prefect badges back in stock again, as well as the
yellow/green large bus design T-shirts. The badges are £2 each, postage
is free if you order another item (T-shirt/CD etc.), or enclose a SAE or
extra 50 pence per badge if you're ordering them on their own. The
yellow/green large bus T-shirt is £8 plus UK £1.50, Europe £2 and ROW
£3.50 postage. If you need another merchandise leaflet, just write and
let us know, and we'll send one out. Unfortunately, we have run out of
the orange/brown medium bus T-shirts, so the only bus designs left are
the yellow/green in small, medium and large, or the orange/brown in
small only.
Now onto other news, as you may have gathered by now, the London and
Paris gigs didn't end up by going ahead. After the Manchester shows,
Belle and Sebastian will probably play some gigs to coincide with the
release of the Modern Rock Song EP (Jan/Feb '98), and the
as-yet-untitled third album (Feb/Mar '98). There will be more news about
both of these releases in the next proper mailout.
On the Internet front the bands own web-site at
http://www.totalweb.co.uk/belleandsebastian/ is going to feature the
creative efforts of all band members in the near future, well worth
using the school computers for. Oh, and one last internet thingy, Belle
and Sebastian are hopefully going to participate in an internet forum
chat in early December, where you can ask the band all the questions
you've ever wanted answered! We don't have any details as yet, but
closer to the time there should be information on both of the
above-mentioned web-sites.
--
Another note regarding the Manchester gigs. We are attempting to arrange
a meeting-point for fans going to the gigs, and should have more details
closer to the dates. If you are heading up to Manchester, and would like
to meet up with other people, please phone us at home AFTER the 15th
December, when we will have something sorted out. If you have any
suggestions about meeting places i.e. pubs/coffee bars close to the Town
Hall in Manchester, then please phone BEFORE the 15th December. Our
number is 0181 560 1815 - please call between 8pm and 11pm only, and try
to avoid clashes with Eastenders
or any Friday night comedy, whether it be on BBC2 or Channel 4! Or as
you're on the net use the feedback form to let us know your suggestions.
--
. . . and here's a bit from the band.
--
"At Katrina's request, here is an update from the flightdeck on how
we're all managing to squander our leisure time these days. This is your
Captain Sarah.
A new LP is finished, or as good as finished recording anyway. The
studio is too busy for us to mix it just now, and so we've gone and got
ourselves an office with three desks, a couple of plants, a kettle and
some pictures. Stuart Murdoch has been redefining office-boy chic. We
like to think we're a finely-tuned, efficient machine with our fax
machines and desks and
in-and-out trays, but really our main activity is sitting around
wondering at the mental health of some of the people who have written to
us, and listening to Stuart David's brutal character-assaniations of our
correspondents. Some kind person sent a picture of George Best in a nice
pair of shorts, for which I will be eternally grateful, but I'd been
away to see the Violent Femmes in London, so I don't know who it was
from.
I think it's fair to say games consoles are becoming influential on some
of our lives. Chris and Richard have had a PlayStation habit for quite a
while, and I have a clear memory of Stuart David looking for cheat book
for Tomb Raider. While I was visiting my friend Gerry at the weekend, we
got carried away in Woolworth's and came home with a Nintendo 64 and the
Star Wars game. Since then, I've been struggling to find a reason to
leave the flat. Yesterday, Boba Fett got what was coming to him, and I
blasted his ship for good measure. On Tuesday, Stevie was round and said
"Bah! Computer games!", but within minutes he
was one of us.
Side-projects are appearing all over the place too. Wee Chris and Stevie
have been backing up New York power pop genius Michael Shelley in the
studio and in a couple of gigs. The Two Brothers (my hobby band) will
have to be put on hold until Teenage Fanclub's tour is finshed, at which
point we'll go back to our gin-fuelled acoustic roots after a disastrous
gig of Pastels cover versions.
We've just said we'll do a radio show - Beat Patrol - on Radio Scotland
on December 21st. A Belle and Sebastian Christmas special. Then the
Manchester gigs, with support from Future Pilot and some DJ's on the
Saturday. We're working on a few versions for a support slot we'll be
doing, so our repertoire could be more varied the next time we hit your
town"
--
Belle & Sebastian, PO Box 14153, London SW11 4XU, UK
--
Yeah, we know it was a long wait for that, but what with the details
changing every two seconds we even had to update the paper version a day
before we posted it and re-did all of this one. Any updates will again
be posted to the sinister list and announced on the Fan Club site at the
URL below.
thanks
David Katrina
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http://www.totalweb.co.uk/bluesoda/
mailto:bluesoda@totalweb.co.uk
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Problem solved I think - thanks again to Andreas's suggestion. I
won't know how a mail program can be so stupid as to fling everything
back to the list, but the evil miscreant has been removed and
(hopefully if I got it right) blacklisted. Michele - you saw "too
many hops", thank goodness, because mail programs set a maximum
number of points on an email's journey before they decide not to pass
it on - usually around 18. This is to stop just this sort of thing:
Sinister mailing to a mentally disturbed mail program that sends it
back to the list, that sends it back to the program...
In fact if I hadn't been sleeping I would have noticed that the
bounced messages contained multiple footers indicating just this.
Incidentally it may come as no surprise that the site concerned was
using a Microsoft mailer...
Oh and if you're receiving this and thought you'd unsubscribed - can
I remind you to send sun/unsub requests NOT to this address but to:
majordomo(a)majordomo.net
I will NOT in general have time to do unsubscribes manually - too
much (real) work (eh?). And if you close your email account: please
unsubscribe from Sinister before! I know it's hard to remember
but... spare a thought for my aching mailbox!
I still love you all and want to have your babies.
P
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I thought I would post a more in depth review I wrote of this record now that
Mark brought it up as I agree that it is a very significant release in the
year of music that is 1997:
I find it astounding that an artist in their mid to late fifties can
continue to forge a career that is relevant AND productive of great work.
Take a look at Paul Simon's peers: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor,
Van Morrison, Roger McGuinn, etc. I
don't think anyone can argue that those artists are putting out work of a
quality on par with their 60's work. Part of this is due simply to singing
voice, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, for example, simply can't sing like
they used to. Anyway, I don't want to go on and on with these
comparisons, but upon hearing Capeman and realizing the tremendous
amount of work that went into the realization of this music, it just makes
me wonder why age decimates the careers of some geniuses and pushes
others onto new levels of greatness.
Part of that feeling comes simply from the sound of this CD. While you
can tell at first listen that this record was recorded in the 90's, it isn't
tied
to its time period the way classic records aren't. One of the wonderful
things about music is that it can exist outside of time, and one of the
marks of a great record is its ability to do so. For example, the doo wop
doesn't sound like "90's doo wop" it sounds legitimate and real, even
though doo wop is not a common musical idiom anymore.
It is difficult for me to listen to any record without focusing in on the
vocals and they sound excellent on SFTC, not only in performance but in
how they were recorded. Want proof? Play Graceland, Rhythm of the
Saints and SFTC back to back. Throughout the record, you hear that
familiar voice a voice that I bet all of you couldn't recall a time in your
life
when you hadn't heard it, and you hear it in a crystal clear fashion, thus
really making this feel like a worthy addition to an already prolific career.
The music is nothing to balk at either: from the ecstatic celebration at
the close of "Born in Puerto Rico", to the sinister piano that kicks off
Vampires, to the Rhythm of the Saints-ish guitar that drives "Trailways
Bus"... these are just great sounding moments, highlights from a great
record. I guess the engineer deserves some credit for this but anyway, I
would be curious to hear some other opinions about the sound of the
record.
The more I listen to SFTC, the more it begins to feel like an album
instead of a mere snippet from a larger project. I grew more accustomed
to "Satin Summer Nights", "Sunday Afternoon" and "Time is an Ocean",
the three songs that scream out Broadway to me. "Born in Puerto Rico",
"Adios Hermanos", "Vampires", "Trailways Bus" are classics in the canon
of someone who may have already the market cornered on classic songs.
The songs all establish a connection to Salvador Agron, without glorfying
him for committing murder, which I think was ultimately a tightrope
struggle in forging his story.
As well as musical, there are some incredibly moving lyrical moments on
this record (leaving me a bit surprised upon reading some murmurings
that these lyrics are somehow less poignant than Simon's previous work).
The "No one knows you like I do, No one knows your heart like I do" lyric
in "Born in Puerto Rico" backed up with that heart wrenching flute, the
beautifully sung "If I traveled the whole world, You guys would still be on
my case" lyric in "Trailways Bus", and the "I think you'd have to be Jesus
on the cross, to open your heart after such a loss" in "Can I Forgive
Him?". These are just a few examples of lyrical beauty.
Okay enough raving... Is this a perfect record? No. I don't think that was
its intent. It is so diverse and ranging in its scope and discontinuous in
its performances (meaning not having the same singer on each track,
etc.) that I have a hard time imagining a listener loving every song all the
way through. Nonetheless, I don't think that was its aim and there
certainly isn't anything difficult to listen to on it. I don't really
understand the inclusion of Virgil, the country-ish song narrated by a
prison guard, but maybe his character is more essential to the plot than I
realize.
Anyway, I hope I haven't rambled on too long, I hope to hear more and
more opinions as people grow more familiar with this record (and yes I
have repeatedly used the term record because referring to a work of
music as a CD will never seem right to me).
steve matrick
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