Sinister: B&S Newts

[Honey]

Fluffy little christmas chickies,

I do like the tinsel in your beaks!  You look so cute.  I want to
nestle you all in my arms and sing you christmassy songs about the
farmyard.  Interestingly that's the name of the next B&S album, the
whole sentence.  But it's only a working title.

Below you'll find the latest B&S diary entry from the Guardian,
written by the lovely and fragrant Mickolas Cookulas.  He's probably
put it on his band site by now, but a few people encouraged me to
keep shoving it into your boxes so here it is.  Thanks Katrina. 

Katrina also wished me to alert you to a very sad fact: the proposed
Peel session by the band didn't happen - again go to Mick's site for
the lowdown.  Apparently Stuart David had a runny tummy, how freaky.
What a bummer, in fact.  For details see:

http://www.myspace.co.uk/belleandsebastian/news.html 

I was much disturbed by Jason's mail about finding an old man dead in
a cafe!  My goodness, that's hardly a twee thing to find is it,
little chickies.  It reminded me of when I got back from the Bowlie
extravaganza and found our newt Bobbie (or Thelma, we could never
tell which was which) dead in our kitchen - he (/she) had made a
brave attempt at freedom and crawled out the newt tank, across the
kitchen floor and dried out and died by the kitchen door - I imagine
the poor little thing getting slower and slower like Charles Hawtrey
in the desert in Carry On Follow That Camel (Bowlie link, trivia
fans).  Amazingly the cats hadn't eaten Bob/Thel, which is odd
because they eat everything, including raw pasta and earwax.  I cried
and cried after finding the newt dead honestly, you can ask Linda or
Michele, I was a real pain.  I imagined Jason's old man like the poor
little shrivelled newt leaning over a bowl of newt soup, only in a
suit and tie and possibly a newt hat, and then I thought that's a bit
insulting because people are supposed to be more important than
newts.  You can see an artist's impression of Bobby and Thelma on the
"things" photo page if you want.  There's lots of other new photos
too, some rude.  Next week: newt bodyparts.

Finally a Christmas plea.  I know a make a pain of myself on this
list, so I daren't do it on another one too.  For two years I've
jealously lusted after a copy of the Marbles list's double CD
"Dustbin" and sent off three sets of blank CDs to people who've not
sent me a Dustbin back and my heart is wilting from disappointment.
If anyone HAS a copy and the ability to do me one, I'll be your
friend forever, and you can meet Jesus in our kitchen. See, we have a
baby newt now, born posthumously after Bobbie/Thelma died, so it's a
sort of mysterious virgin birth newt thing, and when it grows up
might well be Jesus of the newt world, which brings us back to
Christmas and makes me think of the lovely Low EP, even though Jesus
Newt might come to a sticky end, if newts are as cruel as people.  So
if anyone can send me a Dustbin set, you can be a newt Wise Man or
Shepherd and bring bloodworm, frankincense and myrrh and be a star in
the Newt Estament.

Finally finally: for all of you going away over Christmas and the
Milleniummm, or just intending to turn off your computers and
contemplate celestial peace and goodwill PLEASE remember to suspend
your list subscription over the holiday period.  It's dead easy, you
just send a mail with "set sinister nomail" in the body of your
message to "majordomo at majordomo.net" and then send a "set sinister
mail" when you get back - "set sinister-digest nomail" etc. if you're
a digester.  If you do, you won't get put back in the nursery, if you
don't and your mail account runs over quota, I get a deluge of error
messages and the list software suspends your account.  If you want to
see more details, refer to a mail of mine from ages ago at:

http://www.mail-archive.com/sinister@majordomo.net/1999-month-03/msg00254.html

which I see is poignantly titled "Sinister: Bobby and Thelma doing
fine".  I think I'm going to cry again.

Sorry for all the newt stuff.

Honey x


*************

DIARY OF A BAND
8th December 1999
Belle and Sebastian's trumpet player takes his turn to write for Guardian

So we all trooped down to Newcastle to record for The Apocalypse Tube. It
was not quite what we had expected. More than half of the 'live' show was
pre-recorded. And much to Stevie's dismay, Paul McCartney was no longer
recording on the same day as us, as was planned.

The train broke down ten minutes outside of Edinburgh, so we waited an hour
and a half before a new engine arrived. Richard and I got chatting with a
really nice old lady, which passed the time. We ended up an hour late for
the soundcheck. Stuart David had driven down with his brother, so was
already sitting there on the vast stage (complete with 12 foot catwalk- it
was the same stage as Robbie Williams was using) when we arrived.

We had to go on quite late, because Carl Cox was late arriving. He just
shuffled in, did his fifteen minutes, then pissed off again. Business as
usual for him, I expect. The only other band being recorded on the Friday
was Underworld, so the audience was somewhat different from the audience
we're used to. Most of the women looked as though they were auditioning for
a part in a dramatisation of Sid the Sexist, and one guy was even wearing
see-through PVC trousers and Ali G shades. We had to tell them that this was
the chill-out part of the evening. That seemed to go down okay.

We recorded two songs. We did two takes of one, 'The Loneliness of a Middle
Distance Runner'. We asked if they could show the first. They showed the
second. All I can remember about that second take was me playing the wrong
chord at one point, and Stevie turning to me and shouting, 'Play the right
chords mate!'. Although said purely in jest, I went to pieces, playing a
succession of wrong chords after that.

Afterwards, in the hotel bar, our manager Neil and Tony (Doogan, our
producer) did us proud by humiliating several members of Chris Moyles'
entourage. Neil poured gin into Moyles' pint when he wasn't looking. Tony
challenged one of them to a Riverdancing competition, and proceeded to wipe
the floor with him. Comedy Dave, my arse.

Mick Cooke
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