Zoe,

so,anyway,she eventually came down to the point that she can't listen to them because they are too light and that she can't find any connection between them and nick drake -apart from hazey jane II. she said that drake was a manic-deppressed person and that his whole attittude is reflected in his music but b&s are far more optimistic and ,well,not as ,should i say 'profound'yer,sth like that.

I'm sure your friend would claim you're misquoting her. But if not, you can tell her from me HA HA HA HA HA. Yeah man, like he really 'lived it'. Sometimes I wonder if I've built up a straw man when I set myself against this kind of absurd position, so it's nice to see there really are people who hold believe in it. Depressed = profound = worthwhile. Yeah, right. I don't actually deny that there are some artists whose mental illness and artistry are impossible to disentangle, but to over-extend from this and say that if art isn't doomy and/or epic then it's second-rate, well that's just bloody daft. And not everyone with depression wears it on their sleeve. I have a friend doesn't like them because there's 'too much singing'. Which is fair enough. Sorry to bring up WHO again, 60's WHO at that, but I experienced a musical epiphany the other day. I was listening to my radio walkman and 'My Generation' came on. Some pirate radio station with no respect for BBC local radio frequencies kept interfering with drum and bass and the whole thing was just CHAOS. But it was brilliant! It sounded three times as exciting that way, like Pete Townshend was trying to stop the tide of musical progress singlehandedly with his 'dow-now-dow-now-dow-now-dow-now' guitar. Or was that John Entwistle? Whatever. Not that I'm a luddite or anything. But it was a great scrap. After that, 'Venus in Furs' came on and that was good too. I recommend getting a crap FM radio and moving to Stoke Newington. I heard 'The State I am in' this way once too, but Stuart and his band of merrymen were really no match at all for North London's junglist massive. Perhaps I shouldn't have written 'junglist massive'. Po-faced 'Oh ho ho aren't these youth culture vernaculars a gas' remarks are so shit. I can just picture myself on some Radio 4 panel game. Someone sent me a listcrush on Valentine's Day. How nice!

I've been reading a fantastic book, "The Message" by Rodd Lumsden and Stephen Troussé. My favourite bit is when the hapless Troussé and his assistant go to a school to read out Boyzone lyrics to children. Didn't get arrested or anything. My other favourite thing about the book is the almost visible straining by several contributors not to go on and on about Morrissey. You should all rush out and buy it now, it mentions B&S too. And you'll be helping an NGO.

Yes, it really is a good read. Know what you mean about the Morrissey thing, but in its defence I would say that joe brennan (who posts here under his 'cute' name of p f, or pinefox) writes the most spot-on description of why Morrissey lyrics are good even though in some ways they're shit that I have ever read. Talking of good reads, try searching for a book called 'Fine Art' on www.amazon.co.uk (not amazon.com) and see what the top recommendation is. I think this came up before in a 'pointers in c' guise, but that way doesn't work anymore.

PPS: Nick, what do you mean, "loads of other rubbish"? You're supposed to be making me feel special :-(

You know, like rubbish in a 'good way'. You know? In the same post from Oct 1997, Peter drew an analogy between major label pop and Buckaroo. You've gotta check it aaht. Talking of major label pop, I've become obsessed with Fiona Apple and her funny twitching movements in the video for 'Fast as you can'. She's got a new album out with a very very very long title that makes little sense. Damn, I'm not aware of this being done since Marc Bolan lamented the lack of sky in his people's hair nowadays. It was my plan to do launch my music career with this trick and now people will just say I'm the new Fiona Apple. Tony Blair has announced plans for a Minister of Pop but the big fool left the exclamation marks out. Nick xx +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+