Tag wrote: lots of lovely things. and david wrote things that went wooosh and made me smile and laugh and maybe want to cry just a little. and then the duke wraps his fingers round a mug of earl grey and is driven to witter on with a load of shite, made up on the spot because that's the whole fun of it, and that's, if you get the drift, POP. i was mad at the Melody Maker for their Richey thing, and i wrote stuff of my own about him because i felt there was a lot that had been swept under the carpet, or had been never stated publicly. i get mad at the media for telling us just what they want us to hear and i get mad at people who swallow it. i get mad at people who just blindly consume and who give nothing back. i get mad at myself. a while back someone in the chat room basically implied i was talking shite when i said, as an aside, that the manics got their name at least in part from the Jasmine Minks. i got mad at that person because, well... it doesn't matter maybe. i just doubted my own memory, and i hate that more. But Jim Shepherd just reminded me of the same thing, that they told HIM that too, and... I feel better. sort of. i also feel madder at myself for letting others with less imagination and spirit than me walk around like they are big shots, when they are in fact losers with no insight and a soul that if scratched would bleed thin air. which has what to do with Belle & Sebastian? Everything and nothing. Obsession. Go figure. there will come a day when people will go into chat rooms and tell someone like me that belle and sebastian were named after a kids tv cartoon, and i don't know what i'm talking about because this person will have all the LPs filed neatly in order, will have all the imports and his treasured copy of Tigermilk (£1000 quid in the auction, what's it to you, mate?) safely on display. He'll think he knows it all because he read it in the music press and a nice journalist told him so. which is fair enough. maybe we can get our collective shit together and make, as tag suggests, a magazine of the international pop underground (taking a cue from K there...), and maybe we can tell some kind of truth about the story of belle & Sebastian, and maybe someone will care. i dunno. This is more than being about a pop group though, it's about the way in which we lead lives, and i'm making no apologies for saying, yeah David, there's 400 people on this list, but how many do you think would share some kind of wish and desire and have the energy to actually DO something with the love they profess? Aside from just idly chit chat and look forward to the next release? i'm being cynical, i just can't help it because i've been in this kind of deal for so long. i'm impressed Tag still has the drive... i impress myself sometimes with the fact that i actually do things too. hey! i did start a fanzine (many...), i did start a club, i did write a million words that no-one read. i still DO. i'm not expecting your applause, i'm just saying that there are those who do, and those who don't. it's just about being obsessive enough to transcend your admirations. blind adulation did no-one any favours... i guess Stuart maybe found that out when he came back from London having failed to find Lawrence, and realising he didn't NEED his blessing, he just needed to put into practice the things he'd got from listening to Felt. i think that's true here. None of us need Stuart's or anyone's blessing to go do something inspired by what Belle & Sebastian mean to us, we just need to add our own bit to the story. i despair at those who won't take risks. Tag said he was listening to McCarthy, so i've just put on I Am A Wallet, and yes it is exciting, magical Pop. It does as B&S do, it makes me impatient to create something fragile and magical and yet brutally strong. But this is an individual thing, it's non-collective, it relies on nothing aside from me and my imaginaction. i don't know what i've just written, i don't know if it adds to what Tag and David wrote or if it just says the same in more words. i have no interest in that. i just have interest in what i'm making out of life, what other poets are making of it, and i don't mean writing poems either. You either get it or you don't, and that's life, that's my notion of Pop. Right and wrong, good and bad. do the right thing, kids. keep the faith, the duke -- Tangents On-Line http://www.virtual-pc.com/tangent/ PO Box 102, Exeter, EX2 4YL, UK tangent@lineone.net ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . We're all happy bunnies humming happy bunny tunes. Aren't we? -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Tag wrote

... we should be using all this we get from these records, making everyone laugh (like Peter and Susannah), writing witty little anecdotes about their lives (like Genevieve), or making films, getting together, forming bands, opening clubs, launching plans for an international pop underground magazine.

Are we sure this is McTaggart? Sounds more like Brother John Robb to me. Heh heh. A point well made though. Bitching about other peoples' favourite bands is harsh (though great fun), and I don't think the list is the place for it, really. I think one of the fantastic things about B&S is the way they come to unite people, not in an unthinking, we're-all-alive-together, Oasis-stylee, but as individual reference points, or like a jumping-off point, and things like the list are a part of that. What I mean is that, when you find someone else who shares your adoration, the chances are, not that you'll all possess the same Beatles-Ned's-Black Grape British Heritage CD collection like with other groups, but that they'll be able do you a singularly enchanting mix tape, and sends you off in loads of fantastic directions, and vice-versa. They're a part of the great big, sunny paper-chase of pop/films/books that, seventy-percent of the time, makes life worthwhile. That and the All Saints pictures in FHM. Who rattled my cage, eh? Jeez. Joseph xxx ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . We're all happy bunnies humming happy bunny tunes. Aren't we? -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Tag wrote:

Everyone,

I hope no-one thinks my last message was a dig. I just want people get emotional, not complacent. We've got a perfect base, all this technology, and I hate it going to waste in some petty discussion about what songs are in which Smiths albums or whether Radiohead are better than Sarah Records or whatever shite ... we should be using all this we get from these records, making everyone laugh (like Peter and Susannah), writing witty little anecdotes about their lives (like Genevieve), or making films, getting together, forming bands, opening clubs, launching plans for an international pop underground magazine. Otherwise the rest of the world has every right to call us a bunch of fucking losers.

Love Tag

i don't know why david hasn't said this first, but here goes ... ... at the club where he and i met (nearly two years ago now!), there was a kind of special bonding between all the "regulars". you see, they didn't just go out dancing every monday night, during the summer on bank holidays, they would hold special picnics. but you couldn't really calll them just picnics, they were more like events. the boys and girls would play football and rounders and that-game-where-you-have-to crawl-through-someones-legs-so-that-they-can-move-again - statues or something. and they'd drink alcohol and eat sweets until the sun came down over primrose hill or highbury fields. they'd then go and sit in the pub for a couple of hours, taking their mild heatstroke and hangovers with them, and by late evening feel rejuvenated enough to venture back into central london and go dancing. they made films of their escapades and showed them in the club on projectors. i've met anough fantastic people on this list (by e-mail and in person) to think (maybe foolishly) that we could make somethng like this happen this summer ... any suggestions? Katrina. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- . This message was brought to you by the Sinister mailing list. . To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". . For subscribing, unsubscribing and other list information please see . http://www.majordomo.net/sinister . For questions about how the list works mail owner-sinister@majordomo.net . We're all happy bunnies humming happy bunny tunes. Aren't we? -----------------------------------------------------------------------