Glasgow Saved Me From My Own Ears, or: A Narrative of Musical Revelation and Redemption I�ve been working so hard plotting the Ultimate Mixtape for the tape tree that I figured it wouldn�t be such a huge leap to actually contribute to the list for once instead of lurking around and silently admiring you guys. I just moved from Chicago to Northern California to start an anthropology phd program, not too long after the Berkeley show. Since I found Belle and Sebastian in 2000, I have moved to a new town every summer, missing the B&S tour by one month or less each time. To this day I have never seen them perform. This is madly appropriate because of the way I first discovered the band. I was spending a semester abroad in Nottingham in winter 2000. My boyfriend, a sexy-librarian-in-training, was in Glasgow during the same time. I spent more time in Glasgow than Nottingham because I was besotted with him and besotted with the city. The sandstone, the gentle light, the ring of mountains around the city, the green moss on the old gray stones, was searingly beautiful. I couldn�t spend enough time walking the city, sitting in parks, riding the underground. Glasgow looked to me like a city had grown from the ground all at once of its own will like a plant, and if I kicked the dirt away would be revealed as one organism underneath it with roots and tubers and underground colonies of carnivorous sheep (no.. wait... that was an Alisdair Gray novel... ). On the walls of these tenements around the corner of Byres Road and Great Western, only a few blocks from my boyfriend�s dorm, there were posters showing twins bathed in a sickly yellow light, one wearing eyeliner, one not, holding a book. �Belle and Sebastian,� I thought, �Who�s that?� I was too busy riding the underground and sitting in parks and being in love to go to a record shop and find out. That had to wait until the following summer, after going home, when I was about to embark on a road trip in Northeast Georgia. Remembering the poster on Great Western Road, I picked up FYHCYWLAP in Atlanta and listened to it driving around in the Appalacians. It didn�t leave the cd player for a week. Over the next month I bought the rest, and was shocked to discover that FYHCYWLAP wasn't even their best. I had come to buying music late, and never really developed good taste. After Belle and Sebastian came in through my ears and rearranged my heart, I couldn't go on listening to the crap I used to like and had to go about developing some kind of musical aesthetic of my own that didn't involve . . . well, never mind. My cd collection was pretty ugly. The less said, the better. The new album is in the mail right now. For all I know it could already be in the mailbox. I�m a little frightened, and very excited. Hearing a new Belle and Sebastian album is like moving to a new town or making a new friend, I never know what to expect and I always keep a little shell of resistence around my heart at first in case it isn't as good as the rest. Anna PS Are there any sinisters in the South Bay--San Jose, Santa Cruz, Watsonville, etc? Just curious. I know there's a few in San Francisco. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@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! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+