Sinister: Where're the Hardy Boys when ya need 'em?

[Reid]

I love the album, of course, but I just thought I'd get this out of the
way before I write back and gush:

MYSTERIES OF THE BOY WITH THE ARAB STRAP

--All three Belle and Sebastian albums start out almost identically.
Stuart singing a line as fragile as possible and a barely audible piano
or acoustic guitar in the background.  Intentional, or is this just the
best way to start an album?

--Why, after ten months work, are there so many bum notes (think of the
violin solo and every other bass note) in "Ease Your Feet Into the Sea"?

--How come, in ten months, no one noticed that the s's in the spoken
part of Dirty Dream #2 are so pronounced and hot as to render your
average human immediately deaf?  "In a town SSSo SSSSmall..." AAAAGGGH
FUCK!

--The biggest mystery: the Sinister masses, long ago, ask "Where did B&S
get their name?"  "From a French cartoon", most sources say.  "No",
official people say, "They got it from a piece of fiction that Stuart M.
wrote.  The cartoon is just coincidence."  But we've all read on the
back of the album now that Belle and Sebastian officially announce that
they DID get it from the French children's book/cartoon.  ????  What's
going on?  Were they afraid of getting sued, so they made up the story
about Stuart M's fiction?  Or did they really get it from the Stuart M.
story and just figured that it'd be better to just *pretend* they got it
from the book to avoid legal wrangles?  Or were they just yanking our
chain as usual?  Or ARE they just yanking our chain as usual?

--Once again, the band witholds all mentions of songwriting credit,
leaving listeners to wonder...if that IS Isobel's song, why are her
lyrics so eerily similar to those of one Stuart Murdoch, Glasgow?
Stevie's songs aren't very mysterious.  But who wrote the music to
"Spaceboy Dream"?

Just a few things to keep you up at night...

By the way, I'd just like to interject my feelings about the whole
"Seymour Stein" controversy (okay, it's not very controversial).  I
really like the fact that Stevie writes about the events of a highly
sought and cherished band as though they were everyday, normal
occurences.  Why shouldn't he write about such things?  And just because
they didn't sign with Sire, why should we assume that the song is
"scathing"?  I don't think that Belle and Sebastian necessarily *didn't*
want to be rich and famous, but they had enough smarts and foresight to
see the shit that you have to go through in order to get to that point,
and they didn't want to do it.  Most bands don't have that sort of
self-restraint.

Point being that having dinner (or missing dinner) with Seymour Stein is
a pretty damn cool story.  I knew a couple of the guys in the band
Athenaeum...they used to come into the record store I worked at in
Greensboro, NC, and they were being courted by major labels (they're on
Atlantic now).  Their music is okay...didn't really twirl my
ticket...but Nick (drummer) and Mark (singer) are about two of the
nicest guys around, and it was fascinating to hear their stories of
being flown to LA or going out to dinner with label heads, etc.  Seymour
Stein is appealing to me in the same way those stories are appealing.

It's also interesting to not that Athenaeum's Atlantic album hasn't sold
much, which kind of points that much more to Belle and Sebastian's
smarts.  You can get wined and dined and promised the moon, but that
certainly doesn't guarantee that you'll be rich and famous.

Enough already!
    Reid

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
      +---+  Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list  +---+
 To send to the list please mail "sinister at majordomo.net". To unsubscribe
   send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
 "majordomo at majordomo.net".  For list archives and searching, list rules,
   FAQ, poor jokes etc, see http://www.majordomo.net/sinister
          +---+   "legion of bedroom saddo devotees"  +---+
 +-+  "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list"  +-+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+