Sinister, Salve!* y'know it's taken me about a month to work out what an 'ink polaroid' is. There hasn't been much posted in the last couple of days, so I thought I'd chuck in this lot: three T's, two thirds of Felix Culpa and some sad f*****s. Enjoy. TRAINS The bold old ‘70’s orange-coloured Strathclyde Passenger Transport electric multiple unit rumbles out of a tunnel into Queen Street Low Level Station. It is a damp 8.30am, and I am headed out of the city to my current job in Dumbarton, farther down the Clyde, close to where that river transforms to firth. Commuters disembark from the train; numerous,anonymous and weary, and I make to board noticing, on my way, a proud brass plaque adorning and somewhat at odds with my carriage’s smooth, modern flank. Cast in brass are the words GLASGOW FESTIVE ORCHID. Suddenly, I am transported to China, and the air is filled with the scent of lotus blossom. Why orchids should suddenly make me think of China I'm not sure, but it happens nonetheless. Images of orchids I try to conjure up, but being relatively unfamiliar with that species I make do instead recalling those fake plastic pot plants, in the mould of sunflowers that wear sunglasses and sway from side to side when elvis music is played. Ten of these in the mind’s eye, rockin’ in unison, seems suitably floral and festive. The morning’s looking up. TIPPI The singer songwriter Tippi pronounces her name ‘tippey’ with a hard ‘I’ as in ‘tippex’ rather than ‘teepee’. This said I’m still going to dub her, for these purposes, ‘the pritti weegie wigwam wumman’. She sang at Brel the other night, and I was there, sitting at a candle-lit table in the conservatory part of the establishment, for the most part reading the closing chapter of Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. (It’s about the last day on earth of an alcoholic ex- British consul in Mexico, by the way.) During the second of her two sets, Tippi was obscured behind several people standing in front of me, but for the first half I had an excellent, if gauzily short-sighted view, which was sufficient to notice that she was bouncing around zestfully to a simply but pleasingly strummed acoustic guitar. She has a new single coming out soon and if anyone’s interested, you can visit http://www.tippionline.com. That sounds like an advertisement, does it not? Well it does, but it isn’t ; ) TOOLS Man and his tools, eh? I was struggling with my busted umbrella this morning. It’s one of those ones with a telescopic stick, and the middle pole had become stuck in the base pole whilst the top one had detached ‘Help! Help! My stick is third-stuck and third-amok’ as one might appeal. Anyway, I decided I might be able to extract the middle bit by inserting my front door key into the cross-sectional void and wiggling it around a bit. As I was doing this I thought ‘hey, I’m practising the ancient art of tool-making.’ See, in short, I was using the key as an extension of my fingers. A tool is, I pondered, essentially an adaptive prosthetic; a specialised extension of the fingers. This particular tool was smaller across-ways than a finger, so it could get to places I couldn’t otherwise reach; it contained serrations, which could gain purchase on elements to be manipulated, much in the manner of a hook; and it was made of a material which in its rigidity could transfer a significant pressure from my hand to the point of contact between its tip and the element (s) concerned. Like all good tools it worked, and I remain dry. FELIX CULPA After all the fun with the umbrella, I did a bit of work then headed to Strawberry Fields in Glasgow to catch a band managed by a fellow sinisterian. The band is called Felix Culpa which means 'happy fault'. It arises from the tale of the Fall of Man: 'haha!' says God. 'It's just as well I chucked you out of Eden!' 'eh?' says Adam et al. 'Well, you see, now I can send bloke Jesus to go save you cos now you need saved but, more importantly, he needs the work.' One member of the band was in Dublin and was unwilling to shout that loudly, so the remaining member(?s) called themselves the Projeks and did something on their own instead. Sequencers were used as the engine behind some live sound manipulation and a guy joined in with some spoken vocals mainly about things burning. Jazzy soundscapes, yummm... With part of the evening still to go, I deftly skirted the city's red light district and over to Barfly there to stand, chainsmoking cigarillos, in front of some impassioned guitar rock. To be honest it was all high quality musicianship and very, very loud and so on but not really my cup of tea, so I booked a hotel room and went to bed. I suppose I could have caught the last train home, but did you ever camp out in the back garden as a kid? Well, it was like that: just for fun. And breakfast in the dining room on Saturday morning was ace, as were the bright orange walls in the bedroom, which is a scheme of decoration I've always aspired to. SFC That means Sad ******'s Club. We meet in a 70's theme bar and discuss corduroy with visual aids. This time around, these comprised a well-foxy long dark brown skirt with a lace-up arrangement at the waist, another skirt, some disco-tastic trousers in a maroon shade and a beige cord necktie. I only mention the existence of this elite bunch of sadnessss because it's a sinister spin-off, and a burgeoning rival to the Glasgow trendies, who I believe can now count spacy stacy amongst their legion and, soon, a guy called arik. Maybe one day we''l have a contest in Falkirk, to see who's cooler, with Sweetie as compere. Ok. Time up, I've got two things to go and enjoy. The first is Valvola and DJ Spectra from Firenze's 'Venus 69' Japanese Electronic Pop Art Music Museum CD and, to follow, eating scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream whilst watching College Girls on Ch4. Weyhey. Yeehah. I like Sunday evenings. Gordon *Or, bother and fiddlesticks, should it be 'Salve Sinister!'? +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+