Sinister: MTV/ Stockholm gig/ Hefner

[Miche�l O'Dwyer]

Firstly, did anybody else happen to see MTV Nordic's alternative Nation
on Tuesday night? Because they showed THREE B&S videos IN A ROW (Is It
Wicked, Dog On Wheels, Century Of Fakers). Followed by Arab Strap's new
video. It all seemed to justify my habit of watching crap tv well into
the night. Now if only I had a video recorder.

Secondly, my weekend in Stockholm. After overindulging in a bottle of
Pimms the night before, I was in no fit state whatsoever to participate
in the sinister cricket game, so I had to give it a miss and crawl back
to my sick bed in order to get the energy levels up. Otherwise I'd have
never had a chance in the mosh-pit. We arrived at the venue mid way
through the support act, and the place was already packed from the stage
right back to the bar. By the time we had greased ourselves up and
negotiated our way to the front, we only had a few minutes to wait
before they came on stage to rapturous applause. That went on. And on.
And on. Stuart did comment during the night on the fact that the Swedish
people were the longest clappers in Europe. Between songs, the clapping
lasted so long that by the end of it, all the individual clappers had
synchronised into one big loud clap, like menstruation cycles in a
convent. We even had rather irritating clapping five seconds into the
songs, when everybody recognised what song was being played. It was all
very Stars In Their Eyes.

The set contained material from all three albums, concentrating mainly
on Sinister, which was a bit of a surprise, 'cos when I saw them a year
ago they played hardly anything from Sinister. Professionalism was the
order of the day, and you could tell that the band had been through a
few practise sessions. It was refreshing though to see that Stuart could
still make a complete balls of the lyrics to A Summer Wasting. We were
treated to three non-StuartM songs - Isobel's Is It Wicked Not To Care,
StuartD's Spaceboy Dream (which, despite the fact that I don't care for
it much on the album, was excellent live with the whole band wigging out
like true rawk muthas at the end) and Stevie's Wrong Girl, which is the
new title for Wrong Love. Stuart M played bass on this, which prompted
Stevie to comment that he was the Phil Lynott of his generation, making
us all chortle reverentially. As we did for all of the between song
banter (my favourite being the time Stuart asked a mortified couple in
the balcony to refrain from kissing as they were putting him off).

Highlight of the night for me had to have been the storming version of
The Boy With The Arab Strap. Stuart had another of his crazy mix-ups in
his lyrics at the very end, singing "You're constantly updating your hit
parade of your ten biggest fags / He's a waitress, and he's got piles /
Sunday bath time could last for miles". Ahem. The duelling recorder bit
during Judy was quite special too, with Isobel and Sarah seeing who
could play most like the way I used to play when I was forced to learn
it in primary school. That'd be all feeble and out of tune, in case
you're wondering.

All good things have to come to an end though, and after playing I Don't
Love Anyone (their only Tigermilk song), the band left the stage, never
to return, despite the fact that everybody hung around shouting for
more. Pah, don't they know anything - every TRUE FAN knows that they
don't do encores. Oh, but we wanted them to come back so much. I have no
idea how long they played for, but it seemed way too short. The setlist,
in no particular order ( and I'm doing this from memory, so forgive me
if I left anything out / added anything) : Simple Things, Beautiful, Is
It Wicked Not To Care, A Spaceboy Dream, The Boy With The Arab Strap, A
Summer Wasting, Century Of Fakers, Seeing Other People, Like Dylan In
The Movies, Get Me Away From Here, The Boy Done Wrong Again, Judy And
The Dream Of Horses, Wrong Girl, I Don't Love Anyone. Apparantly the
same set they played at one of their UK gigs.

After several post gig pints in the Big Ben (I don't think there were
any listies there, but I could be wrong), I made my way back through the
streets of Stockholm in the rain, heartily singing B&S tunes in a style
not too unlike my recorder playing in primary school.

So it's back to Gothenburg and down to earth for me now. There were a
couple of more things that I wanted to write...Oh yes - there was a post
recently about Hefner and B&S's connection (and I apologise if this has
been answered recently - I still have a wad of digests to get through).
Stuart M is thanked on the Hefner album, but did not play on any of the
tracks. His contribution from those recordings can be found on the
Hefner Soul 10" on Too Pure - he plays keyboards on More Christian
Girls. Richard is also thanked on the album for loaning some drums to
Hefner.
And has anybody else seen the new Fortuna Pop! website. Not only is it
the best UK label in existence, but it also has a rather spiffing
reference to B&S in their list of likes. Unfortunately, I don't have the
URL here with me, and I got no joy when I tried to do a search for it,
but you'll find it at the back of any of their recend deluge of singles.
What do you mean you don't own the new Airport Girl single? Shame on
you.

That's it for now, folks

Mick

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