hello. i'm truly sorry to have to say this, and i guess after this i no longer deserve to be on sinister: i was deeply disappointed with belle & sebastian at haldern festival. i've just read dimitra's post, and i don't know what happened... i really love b&s, and they are able to move and touch me deeply, otherwise i would't be on this list in the first place. but in haldern they seemed completely fucked up, stoned, moody, listless, uncaring. i say this after having seen them in rotterdam in april and having found them absolutely gorgeous and glorious and tear-jerking there. i guess the main problem in haldern was that the sound was really shite, they were way too quiet, the microphone didn't work properly, etc.; must have been a specific b&s sound problem though, because gomez before them and the notwist after them sounded good (and were great.) hm. also stuart forgot some lyrics and sang really badly at times, it all sounded like a bad karaoke show. and it wasn't only me, i was there with a lot of b&s fans, and they all seemed to think more or less the same. although i really loved the songs, and i danced, and i sang with them, and i was still happy to see them, but generally they just disappointed many of their fans. so, that's out. would love to hear some opinions on whether it is okay to slag off a gig of a band one deeply loves. my personal haldern highlight were doves. OH MY GOD, they rocked so hard and they made me so happy. i was standing right in front of the stage with some crazy irish, australians, and english people with a rubber giraffe called jerry. i had so much fun up there, and i was so moved; doves were playing my favourite song for the first time ever ("sulphur man") and it made me cry with happiness. the other bands that rocked (in my opinion): gomez, cooper temple clause, savoy grand (heart-breakingly beautiful), mull historical society, supergrass, leaves, notwist. so a smashing festival it was nonetheless, and i had a really cool time, drinking a lot, dancing a lot, and laughing a lot. yeah. so what's the weather like in your parts of the world, because here in germany we have serious raining that has resulted in flooded areas galore in many parts of germany. leipzig, the place i am right now, is like an island in the state of saxony, where loads places suffered heavy flooding and a huge number of people had to leave their homes. it's catastrophic, but hopefully it will stop raining soon. anne. -- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+