Ello my sinister chums. Well, what a fun week I have had, because I’ve been in Benicassim, at the Festival Internacional de Benicassim. I got back yesterday, only to be greeted with 233 new emails, which I loyally trudged through, but more thoughts on some of those later. This may be a long-ish post, because I have things to say other than the BENICASSIM REVIEW. + + + + + START OF BENICASSIM GIG REVIEW + + + + + + + + Rachel Playforth said:

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I’ve also been swimming in the sea every day this week (well except for today as it was a bit nippy) and how many Londoners can say THAT?

Well, I can, actually, because the festival was on the coast, and only a ten minute walk to the **warm** Mediterranean, so I swam quite a bit. Yum… Unsurprisingly, it was scorching hot, and the tent where the gig was just seemed to trap the heat. So by the time me and Hannah had stood through five mediocre bands (we arrived at the beginning to get to the front), whilst the whole tent behind us filled up to bursting point, everything was pretty packed and sweaty. Then at about 8.15pm, the music from the PA faded, and the string players came on. And then nothing happened. Then the string section went off again. The roadies had forgotten to sound-check some of the instruments and had forgotten to put out Mick’s trumpet and French horn on stage. Oh well. So about 10 minutes later, the music from the PA faded again, and the string section came on again, but this time closely followed by the band. They looked great, as ever. Struan in white short-sleeve shirt and dark grey trousers, Isobel in **that** Bob Dylan dress, etc etc. The Spanish fans were a keen lot, I’ll tell you that. There was one boy behind me and Hannah, and he screamed really hard in our ears when the band came on and then continued to do so through the first song, and I felt awful when I gave a him “shut up, please” face, because he was making us deaf. Anyway, the set was the same kind of thing as the UK tour, and here are the songs they played. From Tigermilk: My Wandering Days Are Over From TWATTYBUS: The Boy With The Arab Strap Simple Things To Make A Young Boy Sigh From FISHYCLAP: The Model Don’t Leave The Light On Baby The Wrong Girl Women’s Realm There’s Too Much Love From the EPs: Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie Legal Man Jonathan David From the Peel Sesh: The Magic Of A Kind Word My Baby’s Got Miraculous Technique Two New Songs: Wandering Alone Untitled Stevie Song Of the new songs, Wandering Alone was the better one I thought, although I thought both were grand. WA is a regular Struan song – nice, pretty, very B&S – and he needed the lyrics for it, which were produced from backstage scribbled on a piece of manuscript paper, so it must be pretty new (or very old). The other one was quite a Spanish sounding, almost country-and-western style jaunt sung by Stevie, which Hannah suggested (and I agreed) sounded like the Mavericks. But in a Good Way. The gig, overall, was just superb, and I might even venture to say it was better than the RAH, perhaps because the sound quality was better, i.e. not so much echo, and slightly louder. The band was really tight, and they seemed to be having fun. Richard gurned as only he can. Isobel looked very pretty as only she can. Struan danced as only he can. But perhaps the cutest moment in the gig came after the opening song, when a little envelope was passed from the crowd. Struan came down to collect it. It had lots of little twee stickers and the words “For Chris” written in felt-tip pens on the front, and it was really sweet. Struan gave it to Beans and he blushed… But anyway, I was trying to think was I was going to write in this post on the way home from the festival yesterday, and I think I’ve got it: The sound that B&S make is like an old, favourite, wooly jumper – it’s so comforting and familiar and such a warm-fuzzy feeling. I thought so anyway. I came away from the tent that night feeling like a proud father, which seems a tad bizarre, although I think I can justify it: In the campsite earlier that day, we were telling people to go and see B&S, and they were going, “Yeah, right, okay” rather dismissively. So when they played such a brilliant gig, I just wanted to go up to Struan and hug him and say thanks, not just for playing a great gig, but for proving to so many people how great I’d said they were. Okay, so I’m not being particularly articulate this afternoon, but hopefully you’ll get my drift. So yeah, they were fab, and we met Jordi, among other Sinisterines, and that too was fun. And that was about it – the rest of the festival was fab, too, but that’s probably the bit you guys are most interested in… + + + + + + END OF BENICASSIM GIG REVIEW + + + + + + + + + But wow! Things here are getting a bit uppity at the moment aren’t they? I totally concur with Honey and all that he said. But then again most other people probably do, too. Perhaps Honey just needs to bang some people’s heads together to make them let the subject drop. That’s all I’ll say on that. The picnic the other Saturday was fun. It was fab meeting the York massive – you are all lovely people. MIGMK’s dry wit made me chuckle lots. Indeed, Mummy I’ve Grazed My Knee said:

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At the other end of the scale, Sam Walton was much bigger than I thought. He looks like beans.

I shall only take that as a compliment. But tell me Chris, what kind of beans? Mange-tout? Runner? Baked? C’mon, you’re driving me schizo here… On the same subject of the picnic, Mr Apps Ben B said:

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There must be dozens of young hopefuls queuing up to have Asm Awlton's nimble fingers dancing on their neck <Gosh!>. I'm gonna bring percussion instead.

But alas, all hopes of that will be dashed next picnic, as I will bring my own geeetar. I’ll bring my trumpet too, since it was such a hit last time. I might even bring my kazoo, so I can do that bit off Mayfly. So yeah, what else has been happening? Brier Random said:

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The only thing I can't get is the line in "My Girl's Got Miraculous Technique" (which is the best song of the lot) which sounds like "Pee-pee, I made a bill” I’m pretty sure the lyric is “John Peel at Maida Vale/I got my clothes dry-cleaned to commemorate the day”, but I might be wrong…

Chim-Chim quoted Cake in a post. This is definitely a Good Thing. If only they’d tour the UK more. Perhaps I’ll join a Cake list and complain… And that really is about it. Sorry that this post has been so long, but I had to write about Benicassim, and well, once I got started... It’s cold here, and warm in Spain. It’s not fair. Love, Asm.x ================= "Shut up! The man's a demi-god!" - Mary-Anne Hobbs _________________________________________________________________ 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 +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+