Dear Sinister Siblings, The blur of winter is wearing off and spring is getting it's ass in gear finally. After suffering a brief bit of apathy and a slight dip into maudlin thoughts the arrival of LLPJ slipcase helped to hearten me, as did the arrival of several books by Harlan Ellison including a collection of his essays for the LA Free Press which rekindled my spirit and gave me a swift kick in the butt, waking me out of my winter blah induced haze that had been hanging around for about two weeks. This was mostly due to several run-ins with (in no particular order), a rabid bigot, a sexist, a homophobic moron, a pack of religious zombies, and an ex-girlfriend. However, besides LLPJ and Harlan several other things cheered me to no end. 1) American Beauty swept the awards. Which it deserved even though the Insider was a brilliant piece of filmmaking as well. 2) Hilary Swank won for "Boys Don't Cry", as she said in her speech sunday, the amazing thing is that the movie was even made (which would have been unthinkable three years ago), let alone won an award. Which just goes to show how far we've come in such a short time. 3) By September same-sex civil unions will be protected in Vermont. This is almost assured to pass despite objections from the Moral Majority Midgets, welcome to the twenty-first century, please watch your head. Though I am reminded of the many states where these legislations are being shot down and of things like the bus situation in the UK and the fact that we as a nation couldn't pass the ERA so what hope do civil unions and laws protecting equal rights for homosexuals have? 4) I spent a day at an elementary school reading Winnie -the-Pooh to fifth graders and was rewarded with a group of smart, sharp as tacks, kids who joked around with me and expressed an interest in reading. I am also going to be spending this summer working with kids as part of a day-camp program through the local community ed. 5)Thanks to those who turned me onto some very cool stuff after I mentioned that I liked B&W photography and was developing a greater appreciation for phtography as art (though to be honest, can we please avoid the what-is-art, what-is-music bits?). Having said that I hope Erica won't mind if I point out something that I thought was just brilliant, www.chickpages.com/rants/golighty/art.html I'm not sure if Erica did all that herself but I think the middle pic is amazing. There's some other brilliant pics on her site, especially the London pics. Of course, I can look at pics of dog turds if they're b&w, I just love it. Idiot of the day: "Darwinism equals Communism"- bumper sticker at MSU...no, I'm not making that up. I'm not sure where I'm going with this one so bear with me, though I do promise actual B&S content and a bit of it to boot. This will prolly end up longish, so apologies about that. Oh, I may spout off odd quotes at times...I apologize in advance, I'm feeling verbose today... "Sure, I'm a vegitarian, but I'd kill a cow in a New York minute for a cool looking jacket"- Bobcat Goldwaite Nothing really to say about the above, just that I wanted to share that. Also, the fact that if I'd love to be a vegitarian...but, I just likes the meat too much. *sigh*, I guess there are no morally pure positions in the world. Onto the B&S stuff then; The new album. I'm excited. It's a new Bell and Sebastian album (plus we have the promise of a new Delgados album this year too, what? not listening to the Delgados? Run out and buy Peloton right now and pick up "the Virgin Suicides" by AIR while you're at it) so of course I'm excited. As to the whole idea of "retro-sixties", jeez, does it really matter? I'm of the mind that B&S is in part descendent from those folk-rock roots anyways. Retro? It doesn't parse for me, the titles and look of the album still owe to where B&S have been. If it is retro-sixties it is in the idea that B&S are musical descendents of the folk groups of the sixties in the same way that rock of the fifties grew out of skiffle and country/westen and blues/jazz. You'll pardon me but I get in a slight sniff when the term retro is used as a pejorative. Which it can be pejorative in the same way 'camp' is. When people today try and do camp they usually make a fine mess of it in the same way people who *try* to 'do' retro stuff end up with a lackluster product. But there's a difference between "retro" and simply playing folksy music with a semblance of sixties nostalgia. But I don't think we are seeing anykind of concentrated effort to produce a retro-album with "Fold Your Hands Child.." (am i the only one who can't do the abreviation?), instead I think they are building on what they've done before in the same way "Sinister" and "Boy with the..." did from "Tigermilk". Will it be a new sound? Maybe, as Mike said (in far fewer words and much better than I) "There's only so long you can keep doing the same thing". It remains to be seen if the album is as strong as previous efforts, but I've got faith. "I write to remind you that you are not alone, we are all in the same skin, all heirs to the terrors and wonders of simply being human"- Harlan Ellison The Ep slipcase: Dare I say brilliant? Oh, I've heard them all before on mix tapes supplied by my Sinister siblings, but now I have them in CD format for my very own enjoyment and all for $17. I went into the local Harmony House (which kinda stinks in comparison to my usual haunts at Wazzo in Ann Arbor or Tower) and asked if they had it. To my suprise the women knew exactly what I wanted and even commented that one of the girls that worked there had been looking to buy their other copy and that they had sold another copy of the set earlier that day. (My friend Bryan submits that he had a similar experience in Tower in Ann Arbor. He was looking for something to get me and asked the girl at the counter if she knew who the spin-off groups from B&S were. She rattled off a long bit about Looper and Gentle Waves and B&S and how "absolutlely fucking brilliant" they were and he should buy every album by all of them. He ended up getting me Looper, which I already had but anyways, and buying Tigermilk for himself which he absolutely loves now) The MSU radio station, the Impact 88.9 continues to play B&S on a regular basis and I've also caught them on "Brave New Waves" which I dimly pick up from somewhere in Canada. A rather brilliant show to as anyone who's heard it should know. Judy: Well, our little girl's all grown up now isn't she? Went from dreaming of horses to pharmaceuticals to the dickslapping. Hmmmm, we had such high hopes for that one too. Not sure if I need an extended dickslapping though, the regular version should be quite enough for me thank you very much. "It is precisely at their worst that human beings are most interesting" - HL Mencken Non-B&S stuff: A book store in my little Michigan town was picketted last week. It's a little New Age store that sells incense and tarot decks and books on meditation and philosophy and Wicca and the like. About thirty people stood outside and prayed for it's closure and then went inside for over an hour and informed the owners in stern but soft voices that they were going to hell and that their satan worship wouldn't be tolerated in our town. The television news caught wind of the story and ran it as; "Churches protest Satanic Bookstore". I shouldn't even have to mention that there wasn't anything remotely satanic about the shop, that it was just a regular New Age shop that had some overpriced incense and power stones and a few tarot decks and some books on meditation and Wicca and Buddism that normally I'd give a rat's ass about but decided to check into since the stink was going on. Sorry, but I wanted to share that because I think it's sad that some people forget just what the First Amendment means and that people like that reverand managed to instill the FEAR into thirty people and have them 'praying' that a store would close. WWJD? He'd run the hell away from people like that. It's the twenty-first century and we still have the specter of the witchhunts over our heads. It is with much pleasure that I learned that many, like myself, were spurned to action by this and have in fact increased traffic at the store by coming in and spending money there as a form of counter-protest. I'm also heartened by the fact that the overwhelming majority of people wrote into the local paper in defense of the store and its right to be there. Books and such: Anything single book or collection of stories or essays by Harlan Ellison. "Dead Girls" and its sequels by Richard Caulder are mad novels about sex, death, fashion, living clothing, pop psychology and other fun subjects set in a cyberpunk universe by way of Alice in Wonderland. "High Fidelity" which has already been mentioned by others but needs to be mentioned again because it's just *that* brilliant. Oh, and "Empire of the Sun" by JG Ballard because it's so beautiful and tragic and told with much humility and humanity. That's all for now, "Goodbye Rag! Goodbye Tag! Goodbye Bobtail!" Be Sinister Children..... Jim (who's mood is much improved thank-you-very much) "...a young boy takes a feather out of his mouth"- Jeff Noon, "Vurt" +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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. 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