Police sirens flash by somewhere. We seem to be in for a bit of a spell, as they used to say in 'Porridge'. Steady Mik' swallowed (properly):
There have been mumblings about the Decline Of Belle and Sebastian. [...] If we scale up these little barrels of fructive goodness to, say, the approximate size and complexity of a Scottish pop band, we see the gap between Lithe and Frowsy expands to, ooh, about four years.
I don't think that he was saying that Bananas & Sebastopol (Road) had declined. I *think* he was saying, in a clever and witty way (which I've just deleted from this account), that people's perceptions inevitably change and weary, in an unfortunate fashion that can't be helped. But you know, now I'm not so sure. Maybe he really *was* jumping on the rag-and-bone wagon of 'decline'. His 'model' (incomplete) seems to imply a change in the object itself rather than just in some external perception of it. You see, you start trying to reply to one of these things and, after 20 seconds, you're no longer sure what it was actually saying in the first place. It's like taking a bounce on the iterated flip-board of uncertainty. Under seashell clouds and gilded sun I went to a quiz yesterday, in Quebec, SE London. The Belmondoes fought the Sebergs to a tie-break with serves, volleys, headers, backhands, bungs, lobs, blobs, aces, jacks, straws, tic-tac toe, tic-tacs, iron maces, mace, Macy's, JC Penney, Woolworth, Woolco, Wilco (hence 'Dreddie'), banana kicks, avocado shakes, strawberry switchblades, orange crushes, pear shapes, partridge families, five gold rings, girls from Ipanema, Girl Talk, cherry bombs, sherbert dips, EMF records, Sandrine stones, UK CDs, Brazilian mistakes, aisler diagrams, Venn setts, badgers' houses, necking swallows, Santangelis faults, seconds alight, the sweetest punches, left hooks, right cheeks, middle distances, long shots, short order cooks, 96 tears, ring roads, black orchids, Flakey almond slices, the bride's trousseau, fifer's lanes, les bouts de souffle, paris kisses, glasgow smiles, london eyes and ears of (sweet)corn, with tuna. Cuba and Argentina were involved. It was high noon in Iceland. As the two teams staggered to their feet one last time, DJ Michael Wood of the LRB played 'Paradise City', and the tie-break question was announced: which is the best Belle and Sebastian ep? Stevie T saw his chance and took it. 'This Is Just A Modern Rock Song', he yelled, as Popkins leapt across the table in slow locomotion to try to stop the catastrophe. It was too late. Les belles Sebergs correctly announced the winner as '3...6...9', and the grand prix was theirs. We had to be content with 'Bandwagonesque'. ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead 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 +-+ "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 +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+