Wahey! A fight... Mark wrote:

I'm also wondering if all you listees have a somewhat pro-Scotland/anti-London stance. Would it be the same if B&S came from Finchley?

Of course not. They would be totally different if they came from Finchley. A lot of great groups come from London, the Kinks are probably my favourite English pop group of all time, the Clash were great on their day, and nowadays we've got Saint Etienne and Stereolab...but just as the Kinks could have come from nowhere other than London, the Smiths wouldn't have been the Smiths if they weren't from Manchester, B&S are a product of their environment.

I for one think London is fucking wicked in almost every respect, I've lived here all my life (brief sojourn in Bologna excepted), and fully intend to stay here for ever and ever. I think it's beautiful, haunting, sexy, dark, vivacious, pretentious, cuddly and grotesque, and I love it. It does kind of annoy me reading all this "oh well of course I live in London but my life's changed ever since I went to Glasgow, what a wonderful place, so much more full of life and intimacy than big, anonymous, grimy ol' London Town" -

Lets have a moment's silence for poor little London, alone and unloved all the way down there, isolated from an uncaring world. With respect, Mark, you're talking bollocks. I hadn't noticed a lack of London letters, far from it. Like most non-Londoners I'm sick to the back teeth of the London bias in the media, the way bands from "the provinces" are even now treated as a novelty. Look at how Manchester bands have their quotes reported phonetically ("fookin' 'ell") as if any variation on Estuary English is some sort of bumpkin dialect. London has had the limelight for as long as I can remember, and you can hardly blame the rest of us for saying "it's our turn now".

if you don't like this place you haven't got to know it nearly well enough.

Maybe if you don't like London, you just don't like crowded tubes full of bad tempered passengers, bad air, fashion victims who don't dance, racists in the East End, stroppy taxi drivers and the overwhelming capital-centricity of far too many of its population. Myself, I like London for the most part. I like being able to find the records I want, see films, to see bands playing. I like Covent Garden and Soho, Thameside pubs, and Highgate Cemetry. And I'll probably end up moving there. But don't get all uppity if they happen to prefer somehere else. Rant over, Love Tag ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . Somos todos conejitos felices que tararean . consonancias felices del conejito - no somos? -----------------------------------------------------------------------