So, it's official. The Divine Comedy are no more. They will be hugely missed by some of us, less hugely missed by others (Mr Hopkins?). Although apparently Neil Hannon will still be recording for the same label, and since he wrote all the songs anyway, it shouldn't be too traumatic, but still. It's strange, it feels like only yesterday I was watching them play live. Which is an odd coincidence, since I went to see them play at Rock City in Nottingham last night. And they were, as ever, fantastic. They even managed to surpass B&S's recent efforts in endurance by being onstage for just under 2 hours. The set included lots of songs that everyone knows and loves, and even a cover of Jennifer Rush's The Power Of Love. It was G!R!A!T!E!. Of course, all dispossesed Divine Comedy fans should immediately switch their allegiance to The Whitlams, who are still one of my favourite 3 bands in existence, and their G!R!A!T!E!ness has not diminished during the few weeks since I last raved about them. Meeting friends in a club after the show set me on the road to another discovery; that WKD, basically a mixture of vodka and Iron Bru, is a fabulous thing. I would declare it to be capable of giving vodka and red bull a run for its money, were it not for the nagging doubt that it may be in some way responsible for me feeling as rough as a badger's crotch this morning. In other news, I went to see the Lucksmiths in Nottingham recently. They were alright. Crap sound. The gig was only lifted above the average by them playing Untidy Towns as an encore, surely their best song. It's good to see a recent increase in randomness on the list. This is definitely a good thing. For a horrible couple of weeks I thought people might even start using subject lines that had some sort of relevance to the post, and writing "Off Topic" before saying anything, but things have returned to normal, and the world is a better place again. So, the IRA have started giving up their weapons. Their (mostly American) financial backers have finally realised that maybe killing innocent people isn't such a good idea. Shame it's taken 30 years for them to see sense, but what can you do? All we need now is for the Americans to stop bombing hospitals... The Pinefox wanted to be mentioned in a post. But I refuse to give into his vanity, so I won't do it. Big Stu +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the 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 +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+