Nick was spot on when he quoted Stuart's "playing in the band isn't a job that seven people's lives have to revolve around".
The funny thing is, I'd thought I'd made that quote up. I must have an exceedingly good claim to know the mind of Stuart Murdoch after all. There was a wanky thing in the Guardian Guide last Saturday, in which top TV psychologist Oliver James offers some clues as to the mind of Eminem through an analysis of his lyrics. Apparently the 'loose chain of thought' displayed in The Real Slim Shady 'has many parallels with the schizophrenic thought pattern'. Beware rambling posters. Someone wanted to know what a Wooskie was. Actually they wanted to know what a Wooksie was, which might be different. I think someone said 'Wooskie' is some kind of nickname Stu D has for his wife Karn, but I might be wrong. I don't know why people get the 'k' and 's' the wrong way round. It's sometimes interesting when people get lyrics consistently wrong. In The Selfish Gene's appendix, in the course of his exposition of his meme theory, Richard Dawkins points out two examples and tries to account for them . It's "Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves" (ie. an exhortation, not the descriptive 'Britannia rules the waves') and it's "We'll tak a cup o'kindness yet / For auld lang syne" not "For the sake of auld lang syne". Perhaps it's not interesting in the case of Winter Wooskie/Wooksie. Residual memory traces of Chewbacca, maybe. In other news, Tom Ewing was a belated convert to Belle & Sebastian and their mimsy voiced lead singer, but now he's kind of changed his mind again. Have a look at his long, thoughtful piece at http://www.freakytrigger.com/belleseb.html and see what you think. I think he misses the mark with a lot of what he says but infuriatingly, I feel unable to articulate why. I like his sideswipe at 'a certain kind of listener [who] is going to like anything with boys and girls and a bit of cheap bathos' though. Nick xx +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+