I've decided to send another mail in to Sinister from sunny Dublin. I'm feeling a bit sulky about the way B&S took to hanging out with listees and gig goers down in darkest England, but they didn't do the same when we went over to see them in Scotland. They must have seen me coming or something. But still, I have the idea it's better not to meet your idols. Yesterday we went to see Magnetic Fields. They were supported by Tendertrap. Tendertrap are Amelia Fletcher's latest band. Amelia looks almost exactly like she did when I saw her in Barnstormers fronting Heavenly ten years ago. Which is strange. The band sound basically like Marine Research of Heavenly, with maybe a slightly greater interest in electronics. The Magnetic Fields themselves were grate, as they say. Don't lots of listees hate them? I think they're just inventing a Magfelds/B&S rivalry because Stephin Merritt and Stuart Murdoch are the two greatest songwriters of our times. It's a Beatles/Beach Boys thing. But I say, why have one when you can have both? Anyway, on this occasion Stephin Merritt was a bit poorly with some kind of food poisoning he'd picked up in Scandinavia. So he was dosed up to the gills on some kind of medicine and had to let Claudia Gonson sing a much higher proportion of songs than normal. Which suited me, as I could drown in that woman's voice. For all that I love the Fields on record, live they are such a stronger proposition. With just four of them on the stage they manage to create an amazingly multilayered sound. I suppose a lot of this must be down to the two ones who let their musical instruments do the talking. Anyway, they played lots of lovely tunes, including some by the 6ths, with Amelia Fletcher shyly coming back to sing the song she apparently does on one of their albums. Rener made a new friend who it somehow became apparent had kept going to gigs to see the Mull Historical Society support someone, only to arrive late and find the headliners already onstage. He then told her an amusing anecdote about the time he met Isobel Campbell, but that's Rener's story so I'll let her tell it. Did you hear that Delia Derbyshire died? Did you ever hear of Delia Derbyshire? She worked for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the 1960s and performed the original music for "Doctor Who" using a range of tape loops and oscillators and things. One thing that's funny about her if you ever see old pictures of her is how much like a random lady member of B&S she looks. See for yourself at http://www.deliaderbyshire.com/ This has gone on a bit, so now it will stop. bless you all, DV +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+