Fluffy little christmas chickies, I do like the tinsel in your beaks! You look so cute. I want to nestle you all in my arms and sing you christmassy songs about the farmyard. Interestingly that's the name of the next B&S album, the whole sentence. But it's only a working title. Below you'll find the latest B&S diary entry from the Guardian, written by the lovely and fragrant Mickolas Cookulas. He's probably put it on his band site by now, but a few people encouraged me to keep shoving it into your boxes so here it is. Thanks Katrina. Katrina also wished me to alert you to a very sad fact: the proposed Peel session by the band didn't happen - again go to Mick's site for the lowdown. Apparently Stuart David had a runny tummy, how freaky. What a bummer, in fact. For details see: http://www.myspace.co.uk/belleandsebastian/news.html I was much disturbed by Jason's mail about finding an old man dead in a cafe! My goodness, that's hardly a twee thing to find is it, little chickies. It reminded me of when I got back from the Bowlie extravaganza and found our newt Bobbie (or Thelma, we could never tell which was which) dead in our kitchen - he (/she) had made a brave attempt at freedom and crawled out the newt tank, across the kitchen floor and dried out and died by the kitchen door - I imagine the poor little thing getting slower and slower like Charles Hawtrey in the desert in Carry On Follow That Camel (Bowlie link, trivia fans). Amazingly the cats hadn't eaten Bob/Thel, which is odd because they eat everything, including raw pasta and earwax. I cried and cried after finding the newt dead honestly, you can ask Linda or Michele, I was a real pain. I imagined Jason's old man like the poor little shrivelled newt leaning over a bowl of newt soup, only in a suit and tie and possibly a newt hat, and then I thought that's a bit insulting because people are supposed to be more important than newts. You can see an artist's impression of Bobby and Thelma on the "things" photo page if you want. There's lots of other new photos too, some rude. Next week: newt bodyparts. Finally a Christmas plea. I know a make a pain of myself on this list, so I daren't do it on another one too. For two years I've jealously lusted after a copy of the Marbles list's double CD "Dustbin" and sent off three sets of blank CDs to people who've not sent me a Dustbin back and my heart is wilting from disappointment. If anyone HAS a copy and the ability to do me one, I'll be your friend forever, and you can meet Jesus in our kitchen. See, we have a baby newt now, born posthumously after Bobbie/Thelma died, so it's a sort of mysterious virgin birth newt thing, and when it grows up might well be Jesus of the newt world, which brings us back to Christmas and makes me think of the lovely Low EP, even though Jesus Newt might come to a sticky end, if newts are as cruel as people. So if anyone can send me a Dustbin set, you can be a newt Wise Man or Shepherd and bring bloodworm, frankincense and myrrh and be a star in the Newt Estament. Finally finally: for all of you going away over Christmas and the Milleniummm, or just intending to turn off your computers and contemplate celestial peace and goodwill PLEASE remember to suspend your list subscription over the holiday period. It's dead easy, you just send a mail with "set sinister nomail" in the body of your message to "majordomo@majordomo.net" and then send a "set sinister mail" when you get back - "set sinister-digest nomail" etc. if you're a digester. If you do, you won't get put back in the nursery, if you don't and your mail account runs over quota, I get a deluge of error messages and the list software suspends your account. If you want to see more details, refer to a mail of mine from ages ago at: http://www.mail-archive.com/sinister@majordomo.net/1999-month-03/msg00254.ht... which I see is poignantly titled "Sinister: Bobby and Thelma doing fine". I think I'm going to cry again. Sorry for all the newt stuff. Honey x ************* DIARY OF A BAND 8th December 1999 Belle and Sebastian's trumpet player takes his turn to write for Guardian So we all trooped down to Newcastle to record for The Apocalypse Tube. It was not quite what we had expected. More than half of the 'live' show was pre-recorded. And much to Stevie's dismay, Paul McCartney was no longer recording on the same day as us, as was planned. The train broke down ten minutes outside of Edinburgh, so we waited an hour and a half before a new engine arrived. Richard and I got chatting with a really nice old lady, which passed the time. We ended up an hour late for the soundcheck. Stuart David had driven down with his brother, so was already sitting there on the vast stage (complete with 12 foot catwalk- it was the same stage as Robbie Williams was using) when we arrived. We had to go on quite late, because Carl Cox was late arriving. He just shuffled in, did his fifteen minutes, then pissed off again. Business as usual for him, I expect. The only other band being recorded on the Friday was Underworld, so the audience was somewhat different from the audience we're used to. Most of the women looked as though they were auditioning for a part in a dramatisation of Sid the Sexist, and one guy was even wearing see-through PVC trousers and Ali G shades. We had to tell them that this was the chill-out part of the evening. That seemed to go down okay. We recorded two songs. We did two takes of one, 'The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner'. We asked if they could show the first. They showed the second. All I can remember about that second take was me playing the wrong chord at one point, and Stevie turning to me and shouting, 'Play the right chords mate!'. Although said purely in jest, I went to pieces, playing a succession of wrong chords after that. Afterwards, in the hotel bar, our manager Neil and Tony (Doogan, our producer) did us proud by humiliating several members of Chris Moyles' entourage. Neil poured gin into Moyles' pint when he wasn't looking. Tony challenged one of them to a Riverdancing competition, and proceeded to wipe the floor with him. Comedy Dave, my arse. Mick Cooke +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the reborn Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". WWW: http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+