Interesting one in this weeks NME. In an interview with Therapy?, Mark Beaumont (the bloke who reviewed If you're feeling sinister in NME) asks one of the members of Therapy? when the last time he punched someone for buying a Belle and Sebastian album was. The drummer bloke says one of his mates bought one recently and he was horrified, although the singer then points out that he quite likes Belle and Sebastian. Not a lot to it really, except that you begin to wonder exactly where a question like that popped up from if there isn't some sort of hidden agenda going down in Mark Beaumont's head. From his original review of "If you're feeling sinister" I got the impression he didn't like the idea of a band coming along and drowning out the memory of some of his favourite bands - which Belle and Sebastian are liable to do on account of them being infinitely better. A few months ago Steve Sutherland from the NME said something to the effect of "What is the point of Belle and Sebastian" , which I find a particularly stupid question from a bloke who's worked for the music press for nearly twenty years. I don't doubt he knows that the answer is that the point is that they're a bunch of musicians who want to make records that people will like - again, it's what's the motive for asking such a blatantly daft question. It just makes me wonder whether or not they're trying to force Belle and Sebastian to play the game and start doing interviews with them. It'd be a pity, cause Melody Maker seem to have treated B+S with much more respect, which I find annoying cause in my opinion it's a terrible paper - indie guitar weekly, Steve Lamacq's fanzine etc. Anyway, I'm currently reading "Hammer of the Gods" (the Led Zeppelin biography) which is the reason for the slightly cryptic title of this message - I've left 10CC songs well behind now for email titles. It's a cracking read, and if anyone in Scotland - or indeed Leamington Spa, has 3 quid spare then pop into Fopp and get a hold of it cause it's currently going well cheap. Is the Bernard Butler album worth buying then? cause I bought the last one, and it was the sort of thing that I thought I should like, but it turned out in the end that it was almost all shite. The two singles and a song called Disappointed were good though. Here's something I found evilly amusing the other day. I bumped into a friend of mine at Tolcross in Edinburgh last Saturday night and he was completely out of his brains staggering down the street from side to side, I've never seen him that rubbered before, cause he never used to drink all that much. So I'm asking him what he's been up to and he tells me that he's been out drinking with Arab Strap! Cheers, Keith. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . 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 . Listen, this is pish, I think I'll leave -----------------------------------------------------------------------