Sinister: Guardian article - (warning: LONG!)

[Nick Dastoor/BSHO/GB]

I don't know if this is a good idea and I haven't even read it all but perhaps 
some of you might like to see this article from today's Guardian on the scene 
in Glasgow, "Britain's undisputable second musical city" (I presume he means 
London is the first - why?).  More mentions of the wispy, delicate and 
'unbelievably shy' Belle and Sebastian than you could shake a small bus at, but 
no photo (ha!).

Nick S. Dastoor
nick_dastoor.bsho at notes.compuserve.com

SCOTTISH BANDS - WEST END PEARLS. By Tom Cox.
Exit Central Station, ride the tube four stops anti-clockwise from Buchanan 
Street, get off at Hillhead, and you're there: at the hub of Scotland's leading 
cultural outpost, the midstream of a humble but broad-minded metropolis with a 
fast-accelerating civic pride. After a regional survey, last week's Big Issue 
magazine voted Glasgow Britain's coolest city, decreeing it was spontaneous, 
classless, young and vibrant, with a youth population who wouldn't want to live 
anywhere else in the world. Owing largely to Trainspotting and the 1996 Turner 
Prize, it's been propitious to be Scottish for some time now. Being Glaswegian, 
the survey proves, is better still. Canvassing Glasgow's thriving musical 
community, I arrive at even more conclusive results. When interrogated, nine 
out of 10 Glasgow musicians stay inexorably loyal to their home city - and 
opine that Glaswegian pop music is currently at its bonniest ever. This is more 
than just hackneyed home-town pride. Look at the evidence. Recently, Glasgow 
has stepped forward as Britain's undisputable second musical city, leaving 
competitors Manchester and Liverpool in a cloud of sub-Oasis dust. Avant-garde 
overlord John Peel claims to have aired more records from Glasgow in the last 
12 months than at any other time during his four-decade career. Moody sods Arab 
Strap soundtrack the Guinness advert. The unbelievably shy and delicate Belle 
And Sebastian get closer to a Top Of The Pops outing with each single. Even 
Spice Girl Mel C has been seen out watching the really quite ramshackle Urusei 
Yatsura.
After a few years being buffeted around half-invented weekly music press 
scenes, Glasgow is set to transcend previous tags - lo-fi retro - though sheer 
eclecticism. In the first half of 1998, expect new albums from Belle And 
Sebastian, Superstar, Urusei Yatsura, The Delgados, Adventures In Stereo, Arab 
Strap, The Pastels, The Leopards, Future Pilot AKA, 18 Wheeler and Mogwai. This 
is a frequently terrific bunch, who - due to the once-unimaginable success of 
Belle And Sebastian and Teenage Fanclub, and the groundwork of deviants like 
Orange Juice and The Pastels - can now feel nowhere near as marginalised as 
they used to.
Back in the eighties, Glasgow rock meant Simple Minds and Wet Wet Wet: slick, 
bloated, arena-ready ego-massaging which said little about its place of origin, 
let alone the lives of its fans. Anything else was strictly peripheral. `We 
felt quite disenfranchised by the grandiose sound in the eighties,' remembers 
Stephen McRobbie from The Pastels, who along with the Jesus And Mary Chain, 
Primal Scream and The Vaselines, formed an original kicking-against-the-pricks 
guild in reaction to corporate misery. `We'd all had similar experiences - 
there was nowhere good to play in Glasgow and a lack of communication.' The 
difference now, with the stadium pomposity gone, is that the self-sufficient 
Glasgow band is a realistic commercial prospect - still able to operate on its 
own terms, but no longer creatively isolated, despite being 500 miles away from 
music biz central.
A proliferation of record labels, clubs and bands ensures constant moral 
support, without a niggling media spotlight. The effect is such that a band 
like Belle And Sebastian can earn universal praise and top 40 success with 
minimal nationwide gigs and still fewer interviews. Their decision is simple: 
`When it comes to chosing between a gig in London and playing in front of all 
our friends, we'll go for the friends every time,' explains Sarah Martin, the 
group's violinist.
Martin, a Mancunian who relocated to Glasgow in the early nineties, finds the 
underworld fellowship of the city both spooky and alluring. `It seems really 
incestuous in a way - once you're in a band, you end up drinking with all the 
other bands. Everyone's sensible here, though. No matter how successful people 
are, you still see them going down to The 13th Note to check out the latest 
group.' Delgados vocalist Emma Pollock agrees: `Because of what we do, we can 
just go out and have a party. Nobody's organised it, but you can't turn around 
without seeing someone you know. Plus, there's no pressure to compliment 
someone's band just because you're friends with them.' The 13th Note is the 
premier night-time rendezvous for Glaswegian subculture, a venue with a free 
plug-in policy, ensuring that fledgling local outfits can always get a gig mere 
days after first picking up a Rickenbacker. Step from Hillhead tube station 
into the West End and you're greeted by the other meeting places: the daytime 
ones. Immediately t
o your right is Jon Smith's, the book and record shop where Stephen from The 
Pastels will sell you the esoterica of your choice. Across the road is a 
succession of cosmopolitan nosheries. Around the corner, you'll find bohemian 
backstreet cafes likely to be thronged with at least a million members of Belle 
and Sebastian, Mogwai or The Delgados at any one time. Glasgow may still be a 
mean city, and parts of it may look like eastern Europe with better shops, but 
this is different - safe, cultured and lively. Eight years ago Glasgow was 
designated European City Of Culture by the European Community. It's difficult 
to gauge the benefit this had on underground music, but there's a definite 
residual optimism. Most of 1998's rock population are industrial suburbanites 
who've been magnetised to the centre by its increasingly ebullient nature. The 
Pastels' Stephen McRobbie was one of the first. `The West End can be quite 
deceptive,' he points out. `Most of us actually grew up close to 
poverty-stricken areas. Our parents were only quite poor but our grandparents 
were really, really poor.' `Traditionally Edinburgh's slummy, ill-educated 
in-law, Glasgow is turning the tables, attracting a different kind of person,' 
reckons Gerry Love, who, like the rest of Teenage Fanclub, hails from the 
Lanarkshire no-man's land a dozen miles outside the city. `When I was growing 
up, the whole west of Scotland was like a wasteland and Glasgow was a 
demolition zone - like That Sinking Feeling, the Bill Forsyth movie. It's 
become more sophisticated since I moved here.' The archetypal minor Glaswegian 
rock star is often ascribed an innocuous persona in the music press - sleepy 
Stephen Pastel, cuddly Joe Superstar, cheeky Gerry Fanclub. Apart from being 
somewhat patronising, this undermines an inherent grittiness in their 
backgrounds. Would a bunch of grinning nice-but-dims have a discography as 
soaringly memorable as Teenage Fanclub's? I think not. There's a personable 
nature here, but there's also a severe, single-minded one.
Love tells me: `There's something bolshy and defiant about Glasgow bands. It's 
in our genes.' McRobbie defines it as a `swagger bereft of an over-egged 
rock-star arrogance' - something, as someone who's overseen Scottish 
independent music since the early eighties, he's recognised in all great 
Glasgow rock, from The Jesus And Mary Chain to Belle And Sebastian. What other 
factors are characteristic of the Glasgow band? Patience, for starters. Of the 
truly special Glaswegian works awaiting release in 1998, the majority come from 
songwriters who've quietly honed their pop chops over a number of years. Belle 
And Sebastian's introverted Stuart Murdoch was a familiar nomadic presence 
around Glasgow for years, DJ-ing in local clubs and distributing his 
home-recorded tapes of wispy, underdeveloped compositions inspired by the 
city's bus routes. Adventures In Stereo's fuzzy, Dusty Springfield-echoing 
mini-symphonies are textured by ex-Primal Scream axeman Jim Beattie. The 
emotionally intense, soulful Superstar are the brainchild of long-time Teenage 
Fanclub acolyte Joe MacAlinden, who, in an inferior incarnation, released an 
album through Creation Records in 1992. `I think what's emerged is a dedication 
to the art of making music, the same approach of film directors who maintain a 
high standard for 40 years,' as McRobbie sums it all up.
Without a `Conquer the world, quick!' manifesto, the typical Glasgow band 
reverses every rock'n'roll cliche in existence. `Live fast, die young' becomes 
`Nae hurry, drink lots of tea'. `You've got a lifetime to write your first 
album and a year to write your second' becomes `We still need time to develop 
as a band'. `We're genius, us, our kid' becomes `Give us 10 years and we might 
be quite good'. With this `Who, us?' demeanour disguising a quiet 
determination, the Glasgow attitude nestles light-years from its mouthy 
counterpart south of the border. `There was a nationalism in Britpop that you 
wouldn't get here. Because we live in a smaller country, we tend to think more 
internationally,' McRobbie points out. Perhaps this is why the west coast of 
Scotland in 1998 bears comparison to the west coast of America in 1968. From 
the city's San Francisco district - a cross-hatched hillside street plan 
similar to the one which dominates Frisco's centre - to the unprompted 
Glaswegian support of mavericks like Kurt Cobain, Brian Wilson and Big Star's 
Alex Chilton, from Belle And Sebastian's beautified appreciation of Simon And 
Garfunkel to Superstar's interpretation of Stax soul, Glasgow's symbiotic 
relationship with the US never ends.
`I think it's the port mentality, like Liverpool in the sixties - the next stop 
is America,' laughs Love. While it might not quite have reached Merseysound 
hysteria yet, something in Glasgow has changed, a shift from wilful amateurism 
to an ever-strengthening, communally stoked self-belief. The defiant spirit is 
still there, but now it's got new ambition and an accessible melody. Amazingly, 
it's honest and vibrant. What's more, the music business is just a little too 
far away to spoil the party. By its very determination to be unhip, Glasgow is 
becoming the hippest musical city of all.
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