Sinister: They made us forget our dreams

Carrick C Blair carrick44 at xxx.com
Fri Oct 23 19:49:40 BST 1998


Once upon a time in the far away land of Boston lived a young caligraphy
major named Larissa.  Her fondest pen pal, Shilough, from Pensylvania,
greeted her with the wonderful news that Belle and Sebastian were comming
to visit.  And he was, too. 
Larissa  went looking for tickets.  She finally found them in a cold dark
attic where a swarthy and sinister character dealt in dreams, and also
tickets.   Carrick came from Connecticut with Mr. Todd.

Shilough was living for the week on a fire escape with a few blankets and
a stack of books, subsisting on bread and wine ('95 Chateau Guibon
Bordeaux) and counting shooting stars ( two ). 

Wednesday evening, Larissa, tickets in hand, climbed the fire escape in
her go-go boots to join the merry men on this merry evening. We departed
on the windy walk to Commonwealth Avenue, all the way, wondering who we
would be able to share our extra ticket with. A pair of very grateful
lads accepted the ticket at cost (we're really nice people).  While Todd
was waiting in the out-of-towner credit card line, we proceeded to look
for seats. Being the laid back, jaded concert goers we are we hadn't
bothered to show up till the start of the show. We opted for the church
pews in the balcony, since all the good seats were taken, and since none
of us frequent the halls of Babylon the Great. The churchy feeling was
quaint, and rather disorienting since it appeared that the auditorium
doubled as a synagogue. We sat mildly amused watching the opening act,
Containe, somewhat restless for the fact that we saw no well stocked bar
in view. About half way through the set, Carrick started looking at his
watch, wondering if we had enough time to skip out for a quick pint. Not
wanting to appear rude, Carrick didn't voice his thoughts till after
Containe finished. When the suggestion was voiced, nall nodded in
agreement, and off we went. We found what appeared to be a lovely little
pub down the street called Cornwalls, yet were turned out onto the
street, since Larissa did not meet some requirement for sitting in their
drinking establishment. Silly town. So we were forced to buy alchohol
from the old man next door. And we wandered the streets with our brown
bag of cider, and wee drams of Jameson's, trying to look discreet and
avoid the unwanted solictations of various dodgy looking characters
requesting donations for various "charities". We were forced to abandon
the cider to avoid any trouble with the lone constable waiting out front.

Back to the show, greatly refreshed, we settle back in our pews just in
time for the sermon to begin. We sat in rapt attention as the band took
the stage, Stevie looking quite dandified with his Edwardian velvet coat
and Isabelle, adorable in her crinoline and starched skirt and mary
janes. We expected her to start singing Edelweiss, but no, the set began
simply.  With Simple Things, in fact.

Carrick and Todd each got quite emotional during the rendition of
Beautiful, for various unrelated reasons. At one point, Carrick decided
to get a closer look at the band and situated himself right above the
band stage left, or was it right? Anyway, his timing for his move was
impeccable since he was one of the few people who had a view of Stuart
during his keyboard playing set of songs. Unfortunately the price paid
for a good view was that sound was rather pishy. Drums seeming to be
louder than anything else. The others benifited from a more obstructed
view but a nicer sound. Stuart was the top. He was the Colosseum, the
Louvre musuem, and when he sang, he was cellophane, he was chirpy chirpy
tweet tweet, the bee's knees (two lumps please!), a turtledove was heard
in the land, there were angels dining at the Ritz, and a nightengale sang
in Kenmore Square.

The show went on. Behold! it was very good.

We walked out a side door, thinking ourselves very wise, convinced we
were going to get back stage and engage our heroes in a bit of
conversation. We wondered around outside thinking up all sorts of
elaborate schemes to get back inside. "Look a door!", said Shilough. We
approached the door cautiously, the knob turned, and we were in. To be
instantly greeted by Stevie Jackson, who mistook us for friends of
friends. When we corrected his mistake, he was still happy to chat with
us. After commenting on the Yellow Submarine/Paul McCartney pin which
Stevie wore on his jacket lapel, we embarked on a lovely conversation
about Beatles' movies. Stevie said the dialogue in A Hard Day's Night was
"pure poetry".  And he and Shilough quoted their favorite lines. ("I'll
bet she would be a great swimmer") ("She's a drag, a well known drag") We
offered him a night out on the town, but he courteously declined. 

We next noticed Stuart Murdoch chatting up some lady friends, and
wandered over to introduce ourselves. We had a chat about C.S. Lewis,
recording techniques, the Tetragrammaton, and the frequency in which they
play in Jewish places of worship. We had felt that we had kept him from
his lady friends long enough and bid him farewell. We told him our names,
and he replied that someone should write a book about us, or in the very
least we should form a gang. 

We finally left for good, in search of a friendlier pub in which we would
be welcome with open arms, and eventually returned to our abode on the
fire escape. As we watched Larissa disappear into the cold dark autumn
air,  the rest of us found some solace in the Scottish whiskey that Todd
had thoughtfully brought along to keep us warm.


That's the story of our first night with Belle and Sebastian. (Carrick's
second) 
Sorry about the silly story from last night. We had just finished off our
last bottle of 1995 Chateau Guibon and thought of revolution was in our
hearts.

"This is the disciple which testefieth of these things, and wrote these
things:  and we know that his testimony is true."

"And there are also many other things which Belle and Sebastian did,
which if they should be written everyone, I suppose that even the world
itself could not contain the books that should be written."


Yours truly,

Carrick Fox in the Snow
Larissa We Rule the School
Shilough Boy Done Wrong Again
Todd (who unfortunately is off in New Jersey presently enjoying the
company of 	Jenna. Beautiful, only tempermental)


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