Sinister: So long and thanks for all the fish

[Keith Watson]

Interesting one in this weeks NME. In an interview with Therapy?, Mark
Beaumont (the bloke who reviewed If you're feeling sinister in NME) asks one
of the members of Therapy? when the last time he punched someone for buying
a Belle and Sebastian album was. The drummer bloke says one of his mates
bought one recently and he was horrified, although the singer then points
out that he quite likes Belle and Sebastian.
    Not a lot to it really, except that you begin to wonder exactly where a
question like that popped up from if there isn't some sort of hidden agenda
going down in Mark Beaumont's head. From his original review of "If you're
feeling sinister" I got the impression he didn't like the idea of a band
coming along and drowning out the memory of some of his favourite bands -
which Belle and Sebastian are liable to do on account of them being
infinitely better.
    A few months ago Steve Sutherland from the NME said something to the
effect of "What is the point of Belle and Sebastian" , which I find a
particularly stupid question from a bloke who's worked for the music press
for nearly twenty years. I don't doubt he knows that the answer is that the
point is that they're a bunch of musicians who want to make records that
people will like - again, it's what's the motive for asking such a blatantly
daft question. It just makes me wonder whether or not they're trying to
force Belle and Sebastian to play the game and start doing interviews with
them. It'd be a pity, cause Melody Maker seem to have treated B+S with much
more respect, which I find annoying cause in my opinion it's a terrible
paper - indie guitar weekly, Steve Lamacq's fanzine etc.


    Anyway, I'm currently reading "Hammer of the Gods" (the Led Zeppelin
biography) which is the reason for the slightly cryptic title of this
message - I've left 10CC songs well behind now for email titles. It's a
cracking read, and if anyone in Scotland - or indeed Leamington Spa, has 3
quid spare then pop into Fopp and get a hold of it cause it's currently
going well cheap.

    Is the Bernard Butler album worth buying then? cause I bought the last
one, and it was the sort of thing that I thought I should like, but it
turned out in the end that it was almost all shite. The two singles and a
song called Disappointed were good though.

    Here's something I found evilly amusing the other day. I bumped into a
friend of mine at Tolcross in Edinburgh last Saturday night and he was
completely out of his brains staggering down the street from side to side,
I've never seen him that rubbered before, cause he never used to drink all
that much. So I'm asking him what he's been up to and he tells me that he's
been out drinking with Arab Strap!

Cheers,
    Keith.

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.             Listen, this is pish, I think I'll leave
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