Hmmn, Yeah, crabby old Marxist that Swells is, I though that Panda boy Williams gave a pretty fair responce. Sure, the Belles aint Swells cuppa, but at least he wrote eleoquently and amusingly. He's the sort of old fool that loves the attention. As for accusations of sour grapes at the NME I'm not so sure. I felt those letters painted B&S fans as rather foolish, petty and silly. The reply that Simon Williams gave made a lot of sense (not to bring up any good/bad gig, professionalism/ineptness deabte again). Its no conspiracy. One guy hated the band. The rest of the paper (belatedly) seem to love them, despite the fact they don't "play the game". See Jason Pierce's comments in that Awards round up for fair comment about where the majority of the NME staffers heads are at the moment. Sad to say, its the best indie-based mainstream mag around, now we've lost the MAker up its own Smash Hits obsessed arse (at least Pricey and Taylor liked pop for pops sake, not idiotic irony manifesting itself wank-led piss-poor writing..). Oh well. Some people always have to be petty. Simon -- *** Luv, hugs and kisses from Simon *** (aka Chipper! Fanzine aka Squirrel Fanciers' Quarterly) simon.gooch@zetnet.co.uk ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . We're all happy bunnies humming happy bunny tunes. Aren't we? -----------------------------------------------------------------------