Hello Sinister. I finally got back to my house on Monday afternoon, after all the fifth birthday celebrations. I turned on the radio and was greeted by “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”. It’s such a bloody wonderful tune, and lyrically is just what I like; I’m a sucker for a lovely melody and a things-are-shit-but-hey-you-gotta-move-on message. “…I’m never gonna stop the rain by complainin’…” has been sung in the shower every day this week (the smart arses among you will no doubt want to tell me that the way to stop the rain in a shower is to turn off the tap, but anyway), and the song is generally imbedded in my psyche now. So hearing “Raindrops…” moved me to dig out my copy of the Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid soundtrack, by Burt Bacharach (from which the song is taken, natch), and suddenly, whilst listening to it on the bus today, I realised that I’m a bit bored of songs with words in. What seems to float my boat these days is musical themes, recurring motifs, dynamics, orchestras, and not tales of boy-meets-girl in rhyming couplets. Of course, I still adore songs with words in, but I haven’t heard anything new which makes me go “wow” for a very long time. It’s probably a phase, and one that will be shattered by the next B&S release, but for the moment, Storytelling is, by far and away, my favourite B&S album. I even listened to the other four just to check, but I’m right, y’know. To me, it just sounds so much more accomplished, and like a whole album rather than just a collection of songs. It’s just, well, complete. To those who dismissed it – go on, give it another try. G’wan. G’wan g’wan. Y’will… etc. My sister gave birth to her second child yesterday, which was rather amazing. Now I’m an uncle, twice over, and it’s all very exciting. It’s a good piece of news, which is rather refreshing given the general theme of this summer. But I’m never going to stop the rain by complaining, so I won’t. Love Asm.x P.S. I was going to write a Birthday Post, with lots of Sinister-related top fives, but I never got around to it. But for posterity’s sake, here was my nigh-on-impossible-to-compile TOP 5 SINISTER POSTERS OF ALL TIME (in alphabetical order): 1. Ian Dimensionflip 2. The Pinefox 3. Archel Playforth 4. Stevie Trousers 5. Peter Miller ================================ "He's strictly a pain in the ass, but he certainly has a good vocabulary" - Holden Caulfield "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy" - Mary Cohen _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+