Hello you little charmers! This is my first post on Sinister, although I’ve been out of the nursery for a few months and had an overdose of Chu and Llew, which can be a fatal combination if you’re right out of the nursery at a young age. Took some time to recover. However, I survived and am now in posting mode. However I’m not very good with words. And if anyone remembers the pictures from the LA Sinister picnic in June, my looks don’t make me someone that can be fancied, so I doubt that the Sinister list crush mummy will be contacting me anytime soon. Perhaps I’ll have to go back to lurkerdom after this post. Here’s my introduction: male, 20, Los Angeles. Well, I actually live about 30-40 minutes north of L.A. I seem to share musical tastes with most people on the list here, and was extremely excited to hear my beloved Lift to Experience and Pernice Brothers get mentions in previous posts. My list of favorites is too long to mention (just ask Rachel Cornflake!) but I suppose I’d be open to make anybody a mix tape or cd. I just made her a mix, and she told me that it was brilliant. Well, I guess that last statement was to hopefully arouse some interest with the Wills and Rachels of this list to recruit me as an honorary member of their team to contribute to the mix competition. Will Salt, if you haven’t defected to the Rachels and become porridge yet, I’d like to join your team. I know your real last name is Salt, but perhaps I can be Will Pepper? Hopefully this name hasn’t been taken, as I subscribe to the digest version so I’m not always up to date on these things. Alright, the main purpose of this post: I wanted to give my Belle and Sebastian live show reviews! I know that the concerts were slightly over a month ago, and they are slowly fading away from my immediate memory, but I don’t recall having read any detailed reviews of any shows with the exception of the wonderful LA shows. They are still definitely something I won't forget in the near future (hence the title of this email)I went to both LA shows, but as other people have already shared their experiences (with words far better than what mine would have been), I figured that I’d talk about the San Francisco shows. Although I should mention that I’m the Ernie that Rachel Cornflake spoke about in her concerts post. After meeting up with her after the show (I was all by my lonesome during the actual concert) we got the chance to meet a few members of the band. I didn’t know what to ask them, but I managed to get Stevie and Stuart to sign my ticket and give me a hug. Strange, but by Stuart’s slight frame, I would have thought that he would have a better hugging technique. Yet I found Stevie to put more love into his hug, and his arm motion was smoother, so I would say that Stevie is my preferred hugger of the two. Didn’t know what else to say to Stuart, but I stuck around for a short while and was far too happy when I got home. After that, it was on to the San Francisco shows! The drive up there was nice, but I couldn’t leave until Saturday at noon, so I wasn’t able to attend the meetup. However the actual shows themselves more than made up for this! The Saturday show started with everyone on stage except for Mr. Murdoch. Sarah and Isobel started talking, little did I know (although I should’ve had the clue, as the original starts this way) that they were going to do “Leader of the Pack” which was made famous by the Shangri-Las! Stuart’s entrance was timed to coincide with the first motorcycle vroom in the song. He came out on a motorcycle, in his little white t-shirt and tight pants, but he had on a pair of black sunglasses, choker and hat! His attempt to look “tough” was a good one, and this was hilarious! They proceeded to play an amazing set, probably my favorite of the 4 shows I attended. Here’s the setlist I came up with from the recording I made: 1. leader of the pack (Shangri-Las) 2. le pastie de la bourgeoisie 3. there’s too much love 4. the magic of a kind word 5. i fought in a war 6. my wandering days are over 7. jonathan david 8. slow graffiti 9. the model 10. the boy with the thorn in his side (Smiths) 11. simple things 12. the boy with the arab strap 13. the fox in the snow 14. family tree 15. the state that i am in 16. dirty dream #2 (with Rachel Cornflake on spoken word vocals!) 17. the wrong girl (first couple lines sung in the style of Johnny Cash, but then Stevie stopped and the regular version was played) 18. woman’s realm 19. legal man 20. everyday people (Sly & the family stone) The whole performance was wonderful, definitely my favorite show of the 4. Of course the Smiths cover was great too! Stevie asked for requests, and I heard a few Smiths requests. I was going to yell something out, as I still have a dream of seeing them perform a Left Banke song, some of the covers that they did at the Nice N’ Sleazy show earlier this year (Rhinestone Cowboy, Pretty Vacant) or “A Day in the Life” by the Beatles (Stu does the Lennon bit, Stevie the McCartney bit, Beans messes up on the keyboards in between the bits. This would be brilliant!). However, I stayed quiet but hearing the Smiths cover was as good as my requests. They had an audience member sing most of the words, as Stuart couldn’t remember them all, and the audience member blew us all away! He sang the song perfectly! I must say that I have much more respect for the rest of the band after seeing them onstage. Isobel’s backing vocals on “Le pastie” just gives me the chills every time I listen to a live recording, and Sarah’s voice is splendid. Everyone performed exactly as heard on the albums, and the sound was mixed perfectly, I was so impressed! Alright, this post is much too long now, and I haven’t even given as many comments as I’d like on this show. Should go now, but I haven’t even mentioned the Sunday show yet! As everyone has probably skipped my email, and congratulations to anyone if he/she has read this much, I promise I’ll get back soon with information on the Sunday show. Cheers and hugs, Ernie _________________________________________________________________ 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 +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+