Well then...so... A beautiful 16-legged musical miracle rolled into Japan on Monday night, for the first leg of a whistlestop tour which very suspiciously includes no weekend night. This happy gaijin learned a few new things over the course of the evening: 1) Fred Savage, dimpled star of hit TV schmalz 'The wonder Years' did not simply just fade from the public eye as he grew older. Instead changed his name to Stevie Jackson and moved to Scotland, where he learned to blow a truly mean harp. Kawaii, ne? 2) Kujo is not a big rabis St. Bernards dog from a second rate Steven King movie, but actually a station on the Osaka OTS port line. 3) A carefully planned mullet can actually be very, very cool indeed- nice one Bob. 4) Watching Stuart dance makes my neck hurt quite a bit. 5) Osaka is a very big and confusing city, where you can walk for three quarters of an hour and still be in the same train station. 6)Big Man in Osaka is actually a very large TV screen in Hankyu Umeda station that serves as a meeting place for the locals. In Glasgow it's a phrase denoting a modicum of respect, when received from spotty youths in shell suits. 7) I'm not Mark. Standing at the Big Man (see above) -"You're not Mark, are you?" -"No I'm not." 8) Mick actually does smile sometimes. 9) When she's doing her little mock-boredom percussion playing face, Isobel goes right off the top of the cute-o-meter. 10) Belle and Sebastian absolutely rock. The gig was great..there was the odd cough, splutter and cleared throat here and there at the beginning, but hey, its the first night. Stevie swung enchantingly between boy next door and boy that thinks he's johnny cash, stuart was the consumate entertainer and demonstrated once and for all it's confidence, not coordination that makes a truly great dancer. In fact everybody was just bloody lovely and the only complaint one could make about the concert is that it didn't last forever. Oh, that and the sound quality at the Zepp Osaka, which did make Stuart sound a little like Davie Jones sometimes. So it was all cool really. And then I got the Shinkansen as far as Okayama, met some Aussie mates and bored them to tears with a blow by blow description of the whole event. Then I got really drunk. Nice Song of the night: I fought in a war, just for stuarts extra slow moody start. Thanks to: DundeeRachel, L.A.Rachel and Oon for wishing me luck in my endeavours. I didnt get any good luck messages from any wills... Especially to the lovely Yuko Kaido, who was my guide and companion for the evening, and without whom I would probably have never found the concert hall, and would probably still be wondering lost around the streets of Osaka right now. Small Raspberries to: Dundee Rachel, who sees too many good concerts for my liking. Big Raspberries to: Motoko and Takahiro, who ended up not going to the gig. Your punishment is your crime. Lot of love to: Each and every one of you, and to Belle and Sebastian. Kyotsukete ne? Tobi Tbwthe _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+