Let not the day go unmarked. Today, for the first time since the foundation of sinister, Sister Disco and Sruart Murdoch both appeared on a radio programme. If I am wrong and this has happened before, write to sinister and tell us. I turned on BBC Radio 2 at about 11:30, thinking: Murdoch's TRACKS OF MY YEARS is going to be on soon! Stuart Maconie is, you remember, replacing Kenneth Bruce for a week. He is doing a good job, in sooth, as they say in California, or, in truth - playing Lloyd Cole, talking to Stuart Murdoch, quoting Peter Miller, I mean, what more do you want? Anyway, Maconie said something like: - Ooh, I'd nearly forgotten, the feature that's named after me (what's it called again? remind us, Sister Disco) - and then he read out some puns on pop titles, relating to places in Wales. Casually, he continued: - Peter Miller suggests: - and I can't think what the exact words, the title, the place were. I did not write them down. But it was about the WHO, you see. YES, the WHO. I hope Mooro gets to hear it, possibly on an old-fashioned audio tape. I hope Sister Disco writes in and fills in the missing details too. The funny thing was: hearing Maconie read Miller's name, I felt as though he did it knowingly - the way I would, or some of you would, or the way Maconie would read, say, 'Paul Morley'. But I think this was probably an illusion, created from my mindset, in which Miller is a sort of major figure in fanzine-style online discussions of ROCK and other things. On reflection, I think that in reality, Maconie probably has no idea who Peter Miller is. Again, perhaps Sister Disco can set me straight on this. After the Miller moment, Maconie introduced Murdoch's first song. It was 'Do You Believe In Magic?', a song that Jerry the Nipper made famous, and of which Mr. David Moore gave me my first copy. It is very good. Murdoch then said, in a very high voice, things about how Orange Juice had always said in the early 1980s, things like, - We can never match this song, the only way is down. The funny thing is, they could never match that song - the only way was down. Endearingly, he then mentioned the Go-Betweens, in the same connection. I am reminded of the conversations I have had with Tim Hopkins in which OJ and the G-Bs become virtually two halves of the same imaginary entity, ie. you say one then you say another, and for me both mean: pop that people from a certain period like, but which sadly does not, *mostly*, live up to its reputation, being too scratchy and tuneless. So, Murdoch said something like: - I love the way that the Go-Betweens knew they could never write the perfect pop song / - which, in my paraphrase, is true. So, mixed feelings: a) he is silly to keep going on about those bands, but b) it is kind of touching, kind of keeps in touch, with eg. Peter Miller, on sinister. He spoke well, anyway. I stand by my statement of yesterday. The second track was something else, a soul track based on Bach; it was quite good. So, that was an exciting few minutes on Radio 2. What I have forgotten to mention is the way that Maconie went straight from Miller's joke to 'Life In A Northern Town'. I think it was the first time I have ever heard that song all the way through. It was a bit corny, but the way it sped up as it went was good. Once I asked Steady Mike about The Dream Academy, and *even he* did not know that much about them, though he owned a difficult second LP. I wonder two things: a) whether Maconie knows that Peter Miller comes from a Northern town; b) whether Murdoch will choose a track from Lloyd Cole, from that walk-in wardrobe that I mentioned before. And I suggest one thing: Miller should ring in with more puns, on subsequent days, and become a regular on this brief Maconie spot, and then he will be known to more people that like !P!o!P!! __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+