Surely B&S's sound is far too intimate to be huge. A song like "Get me away from here, I'm dying" would be completely lost in a stadium.
intimacy is internal. you listen to 'get me away' and you think intimate, but there are, how many people have bought 'Sinister'? How many have a tape from a friend? So on that level it's not an intimate experience at all. it's a mediated, illusary intimacy. AS for stadiums, well i dunno... that's Rock isn't it? And anyway, a band will inevitably change as success impinges on their range of choices of venue etc. and the sound will alter, whatever... an 'intimacy' will be lost and 'original' fans may get disillusioned (i hate to draw the smiths parallel again, but it fits...) and move on to newer things, but... again this is the nature of Pop. You have to celebrate it when it means a lot to you. If/When B&S get to playing stadiums, their sound will probably be different, they will be a different band, the fans will be different, will either have grown with or apart from the band... all of which is irrelevant in the here and now, however, because we aren't in love with the band that might be, we are in love with the band that IS.
As for being too miserable to be popular, well OK so they're not ABBA (hey shame!). But they're complete hedonists compared to Radiohead, and OK Computer was a number one all over the world.
Radiohead are Rock and operate in a different realm to B&S. Their 'sadness' and their 'seriousness' are stereotyped, typically dull Boy Rock neuroses that have been done to death a million times before. It doesn't convince me at all. then again, i might have said that about the old Manic Street Preachers if i hadn't known them from the start, hadn't known Richey and all his genuine ideas and feelings. Whatever... There's a humour in B&S that a group like Radiohead wouldn't even begin to understand. And i laugh like i used to laugh when people told me the smiths were miserable, because them not getting the joke is funnier than the jokes themselves. whatever. keep the faith, the duke -- Tangents On-Line http://www.virtual-pc.com/tangent/ Tangents On-Paper: PO Box 102, Exeter, EX2 4YL, UK tangent@mail.zynet.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 -----------------------------------------------------------------------