Firstly, did anybody else happen to see MTV Nordic's alternative Nation on Tuesday night? Because they showed THREE B&S videos IN A ROW (Is It Wicked, Dog On Wheels, Century Of Fakers). Followed by Arab Strap's new video. It all seemed to justify my habit of watching crap tv well into the night. Now if only I had a video recorder. Secondly, my weekend in Stockholm. After overindulging in a bottle of Pimms the night before, I was in no fit state whatsoever to participate in the sinister cricket game, so I had to give it a miss and crawl back to my sick bed in order to get the energy levels up. Otherwise I'd have never had a chance in the mosh-pit. We arrived at the venue mid way through the support act, and the place was already packed from the stage right back to the bar. By the time we had greased ourselves up and negotiated our way to the front, we only had a few minutes to wait before they came on stage to rapturous applause. That went on. And on. And on. Stuart did comment during the night on the fact that the Swedish people were the longest clappers in Europe. Between songs, the clapping lasted so long that by the end of it, all the individual clappers had synchronised into one big loud clap, like menstruation cycles in a convent. We even had rather irritating clapping five seconds into the songs, when everybody recognised what song was being played. It was all very Stars In Their Eyes. The set contained material from all three albums, concentrating mainly on Sinister, which was a bit of a surprise, 'cos when I saw them a year ago they played hardly anything from Sinister. Professionalism was the order of the day, and you could tell that the band had been through a few practise sessions. It was refreshing though to see that Stuart could still make a complete balls of the lyrics to A Summer Wasting. We were treated to three non-StuartM songs - Isobel's Is It Wicked Not To Care, StuartD's Spaceboy Dream (which, despite the fact that I don't care for it much on the album, was excellent live with the whole band wigging out like true rawk muthas at the end) and Stevie's Wrong Girl, which is the new title for Wrong Love. Stuart M played bass on this, which prompted Stevie to comment that he was the Phil Lynott of his generation, making us all chortle reverentially. As we did for all of the between song banter (my favourite being the time Stuart asked a mortified couple in the balcony to refrain from kissing as they were putting him off). Highlight of the night for me had to have been the storming version of The Boy With The Arab Strap. Stuart had another of his crazy mix-ups in his lyrics at the very end, singing "You're constantly updating your hit parade of your ten biggest fags / He's a waitress, and he's got piles / Sunday bath time could last for miles". Ahem. The duelling recorder bit during Judy was quite special too, with Isobel and Sarah seeing who could play most like the way I used to play when I was forced to learn it in primary school. That'd be all feeble and out of tune, in case you're wondering. All good things have to come to an end though, and after playing I Don't Love Anyone (their only Tigermilk song), the band left the stage, never to return, despite the fact that everybody hung around shouting for more. Pah, don't they know anything - every TRUE FAN knows that they don't do encores. Oh, but we wanted them to come back so much. I have no idea how long they played for, but it seemed way too short. The setlist, in no particular order ( and I'm doing this from memory, so forgive me if I left anything out / added anything) : Simple Things, Beautiful, Is It Wicked Not To Care, A Spaceboy Dream, The Boy With The Arab Strap, A Summer Wasting, Century Of Fakers, Seeing Other People, Like Dylan In The Movies, Get Me Away From Here, The Boy Done Wrong Again, Judy And The Dream Of Horses, Wrong Girl, I Don't Love Anyone. Apparantly the same set they played at one of their UK gigs. After several post gig pints in the Big Ben (I don't think there were any listies there, but I could be wrong), I made my way back through the streets of Stockholm in the rain, heartily singing B&S tunes in a style not too unlike my recorder playing in primary school. So it's back to Gothenburg and down to earth for me now. There were a couple of more things that I wanted to write...Oh yes - there was a post recently about Hefner and B&S's connection (and I apologise if this has been answered recently - I still have a wad of digests to get through). Stuart M is thanked on the Hefner album, but did not play on any of the tracks. His contribution from those recordings can be found on the Hefner Soul 10" on Too Pure - he plays keyboards on More Christian Girls. Richard is also thanked on the album for loaning some drums to Hefner. And has anybody else seen the new Fortuna Pop! website. Not only is it the best UK label in existence, but it also has a rather spiffing reference to B&S in their list of likes. Unfortunately, I don't have the URL here with me, and I got no joy when I tried to do a search for it, but you'll find it at the back of any of their recend deluge of singles. What do you mean you don't own the new Airport Girl single? Shame on you. That's it for now, folks Mick +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". For list archives and searching, list rules, FAQ, poor jokes etc, see http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +---+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" +---+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+