I opened up the July edition of CMJ Music Monthly, with the Deftones on the cover, and found a pretty funny little article on page 13 entitled... Ring My Belle: An Open Letter to Belle and Sebastian You may be known for lilting tunes about S&M and Bible Studies (and your moping skills rival the Cure at Christmas), but Stuart, Isobel, you have to admit it: Fascinating interviews aren't your forte, and you don't grant terribly many. Still, your new album Fold Your Hands Child You Walk Like a Peasant (Matador) is filled with plenty of intrigue, sexual and otherwise. So if you're out there, we have a few questions for you. 1) Which members of the band have slept with which other members - or perhaps it would be easier to ask which members haven't slept with each other? Which members of the band want to sleep with others, but haven't? Is this album your "Rumours"? 2) Your band has inspired more original poetry and fiction that any band since, maybe, The Smiths. What do you do to live down the shame? 3) For that matter, your band has been compared to The Smiths an awful lot. Could you list the top five reasons why Belle & Sebastian is not, in fact, The Smiths? 4) At least two songs on Fold Your Hands Child - "The Wrong Girl" and "The Chalet Lines" - allude to twisted sexual scenarios at the Bowlie Weekender, the festival you headlined last year at a seaside resort in the South of England. How much of the actual twisted sex that went on there were you privy to? 5) Is the Lisa who "learned alot from putting on a blindfold when she knew she had been bad" in "The Model" the same Lisa from "Like Dylan In the Movies" on If You're Feeling Sinister? What's she been up to in the meantime? Is she cute? Does she like music journalists? 6) How exactly does a peasant walk? ------------------------------------- A little smug, but still pretty funny. CMJ has never been able to suss out whether they love or loathe the band, evidenced by the fact that their review of the new album (in the same issue) makes no fucking sense in the least. I'd type that up too, but its not even coherent. Seriously though, CMJ has turned very mainstream in a very short time, with former cover stars Guided by Voices, Yo La Tengo, the Lemonheads and Sonic Youth being very quickly replaced with issues blaring the likes of Kid Rock, Rage Against the Machine, Buckcherry, Marilyn Manson and, most disgustingly, Limp Bizkit. It still has its indie segments, but there's a huge disaparity between the College Playlist bands in the back of the mag and the actual stars who grace its front (not one of its last 6 cover stars has even cracked its own fucking list, the CMJ Top 75). If you're reading this Mick, responses to the above are to be directed to Douglas Wolk at monthly@cmj.com To celebrate my first weekend off in fucking forever, the NASCAR race was rained out and I got a three-day migraine. You gotta love livin' baby Steve C. "That the public might become so discouraged that it would abandon the War impressed McClellan not at all. With him the only the question was when the professionals would be ready to start the game." *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* "Which Paul?" "BLAH!" visit http://callowkids.tripod.com or your crush will hate you forever Call WRNR 103.1 at (410) 269-1031 and request Callow's "Lessons in Shut-eye" or you will have bad luck...forever or something. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+