Last week I went to a gig by Holy Roman Empire, who are my favourite Oxford band at the moment. The felt-tip pen drawing seems to be more low-key these days. The first time I saw them the singer, Ste, had drawn a heart on his chest with black marker pen. As I was watching from a fair distance I thought that he either had a heart-shaped chest wig or had shaved his chest hair into the shape of a heart. This time he limited himself to a few red streaks on his arm. But, "arkk!", cymbal player Martin has abandoned his cymbal (apparently it was too much of a hazard when it fell into the audience) and now just poses around behind a keyboard draped in leopard skin, though he still waves the stick about. More about them on http://www.bejo.co.uk/lpeach/html/hrehome.htm, if you're interested. The gig was also notable in that I met a former colleague who told me that the computer system I used to look after had crashed and they had to have an crisis meeting to try to sort it out. I couldn't resist emitting the kind of YAAAAY that only someone in possession of a redundancy cheque and P45 can muster in such situations. Then on the way home I met an old housemate who told me that her college won't let her have her degree until she pays them the five thousand quid she owes them. I suspect that this will entail a very large number of shifts in the Quod Bar. "Who are the Blue Aeroplanes?" asked Sarah. The Blue Aeroplanes are unique. Gerard Langley is more of a poet than a singer and has a very particular vocal style which is complemented by rodney allen's more conventional singing. IMHO, Beatsongs was their best album, with Rough Music a close second, though Swagger is very good as well. Their latest is called (I think) Cavalier, though I haven't heard it. Has anyone else....? Mark. ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+