At ease, comrades What ho! I was shocked to read an article in today's Guardian on the top 10 rock and roll hellraisers of all time, referring to a feature in this week's Melody Maker (the kind of journalism that has made it the vital force in British music it so obviously is), and find no reference to our beloved oddball twangling-jack-and-jills. Wither Stu M's auto-destructive guitar abuse in Dublin? or Sarah's alka-seltzer and haliborange binge at Bowlie? or Mick Cooke's nude rampage through the streets of Edinburgh...? Gah. I was interested to see the return of Simon Reynolds to the sinister list, courtesy of my learned Brockley correspondent. The essay is certainly interesting, mostly - from my point of view - for illustrating how far his vision of criticism has moved from a broadly subcultural-Hebdigean analysis to the Barthesian formalist abdication of analysis he favours today. I think he would do well to have a second look at it himself. Mr Reynolds did actually list B&S as one of the most over-rated things of (was it?) 1998 on his website, which I can't be bothered to look for the url of. More in response to the doxa of indie-pop opinion than anything else I imagine. Indeed, I think he's a subtle enough critic to appreciate that the unclassifiable beauty of melody is just as radical as the most jouissant code-jamming. Ahem. Mr Tony kindly mentioned the low-key launch on Thursday in London of a fanzine I'm involved in. Loathe though I am to deluge Sinister with self-publicity, might I ask people to point their tapetty-lightboxes in the direction of www.papercuts.co.uk later this afternoon for fuller details. It has also come to my attention that some people who had ordered previous issues may not have received them because I am a lazy git. Rest assured that I am also too lazy to have cashed cheques. If this is the case with you, please email me at my swanky new email address: trousers@papercuts.co.uk and I will apologise in a fashion so abject it is not becoming a man who just noted grey hairs peeking through his stubble this weekend. And you will be fully compensated with apes, ivory and peacocks. You know, it has come to my attention that several of our old guard have defected to a gothlist devoted to the new Al Stewart, called "Bat Wings". I say we challenge them to a fight in the quad at first light, before the deportment mistress is up and about. As you were Stevie Troussé +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+