The latest entry for the band diary, again from Stuart, dedicated to all those taking exams right now. This will appear on the band WWW site soon I guess, when Mick recovers from the stunning defeat of Russia and Latvia by those clowns from Denmark in the Eurovision Song Contest. Apologies to anyone from Denmark on the list :) Honey x ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Diary Of A Band (17/5) Belle and Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch remembers his years at Glasgow University You'll be needing advice on how to get through your exams probably. I'm the worst person to ask. I failed the same exam four times before I finally packed it in. The results got progressively worse! How could it be! The first time I had a real go, and thought I'd passed it. I'd never failed an exam before! Higher Ordinary Physics it was. I failed it. I had the summer all planned out, but that really fucked it. I went to work anyway, my third year at Butlins in Ayr. I figured I'd come back a month before the exam and stay in deserted halls to get peace, really knuckle down, discover again the 'artistry' of Physics. Yeah right. I bought some records. I bought some clothes. I lived in a sleepy basement. I went to watch Orange Walks!! Actually, that last bit was a lie, but you get the picture. I did popmobility. I signed on, and walked by elaborate routes to do it. I made up alternate popmobility tapes and fantasised about me and the ladies in synch to New Order. My friends came back from their holidays and laughed at me. I think the examiner must have had a chuckle too, because I wrote a lot of pish in the exam. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I mean, I hope you can avoid doing the same, but I know there's no way of avoiding your own fuck-ups. So I went back and repeated the year. I was definitely in denial. I even did all the labs again. I'm surprised the staff were as pleasant as they were to me. I pretended I was a lab technician, to avoid embarrassment. I went to all the lectures. Partly because I was paying for it. Mostly because in the year that had now engulfed me, there was a girl in the class. She had a wee brown splodge on her temple. She hid it under her bob. I watched the splodge all year. She watched the blackboard, and passed. I know, because she wasn't at the resit. How could someone who looked like that be good at Physics. It wasn't fair. By the time the resit came around again, all I could think of during the exam was the four records I was going to buy after the exam. My friend Lewis said that I would have been better just going in and writing a playlist. Later on, on a bog wall in the reading room, I saw written 'Fold your hands child, you walk like a peasant' It struck me as smart and mysterious. I was suddenly alive to the possibility that there were people around who, if they wanted, could bring the country weeping to its knees with a line of poetry. I set out to find them. Footnote Great and classic albums from Summer 1987 Sonic Youth 'Sister', The Go-Betweens 'Talullah', The Fall 'Bend Sinister' Stuart Murdoch +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+