Sinister: And we'll be making solo records, this Christmas...

[Greg Pallis]

Hey hey hey he's back, the boy G, the Enthusiastic Young Lad, the Strange
(though  never Strange Strange) Child, the teenage poster in waiting,
leaving a trail of exclamation marks, naff twee smut and of course much
playing of airguitar, making you all feel old with his infectious
infectiousness, laydees and gentz, boyz and girlz, we give you... Zak
Hanson. Mmmyep.

Monsigneur Moore requested a Baxendale gig report, so I shall shall now
declare that I don't care about thousands of satisfied audiences and
thigh-rubbing film critics, Billy Elliot was, and is, a terrible movie.
Thank you. I no longer have a Nirvana poster on my wall, either.

[Note to readers, there is quite a lot of back-story prior to the gig. If
you wish to skip Greg's bizarre ramblings, please pagedown to the sign of
the lollipop. Thank you.] Our story starts as our intrepid hero goes out on
Friday, and ends up in the Camden Society Charity Shop (not, actually, in
Camden, but in moderately distant Kilburn, wot is near where I live). For an
utterly insignificant eight miniscule ones, he slams down on the till not
one but two leather jackets, the second of which is a sexy baby-blue colour.
Result!, especially as Greg's dress code does not permit him to own two
non-under garments of the same colour, which is why he will pay top dollar
for purple, orange or pink jeans. He then stays up all night playing a
version-of-dubious-legality copy of Call to Power II, because he's secretly
a geek, and if you tell him I said that, he'll kill me. Or at least beat me
up a bit. The next day he invites all his friends to go and see the band he
is unable to express the furkling fantasticness of without swearing
profusely, and tells them all to invite their friends, except almost all the
girls are skiing somewhere, his oh-so-nearly-girlfriend wants to come but is
busy throwing up at home, and so the group ends up really testosterone
heavy. Like the jackets, this is important later. At this point there should
probably be a paragraph, but I don't like paragraphs, nyah. He then goes to
Tower Records to buy a Britney Spears poster because he's just realised he
needs one, and while there sees a cyute 'lil Tina S Club doll that has
T!W!O! outfits, "sexy eveningwear Tina" and "Althetic live Tina", and it
plays a bit of Don'tStopNeverGiveUp when you push a button on the back and
he is reminded of the fact that Tim Benton is a very scary man who is far
too old to have crushes on members of manufactured pop bands. So he buys it,
but the guy at the counter seems dissapointingly unfazed, which is a pity.
Anyways, our hero wraps all the lovely Tina goodness in wrapping paper (is
anyone else thinking of the episode of Dexters where they get trapped in the
Barbie convention, and people chant "Never Removed From Box! NRFB! NRFB!" a
lot? And to think that wasn't even among the top episodes. I miss Dexter's
so much. I never saw Rainbow Brite.) and somehow arrives an hour early, and
on the train sees a boy wearing a genuine B!&!S! badge which is
Up!Side!Down! so he comfidently strides up in his black leather jacket and
red jeans (Have you seen this man? 56p reward. Not a joke, but you'd have to
pay postage on the money. It's a fun whimsical thing to do, though, no? *)
and inquires to his Sinister status, and it turns out the dashing young chap
is the very Strange Strange David Strange Strange, who is most dinky, and
they converse for about half an hour about Walrusses and Edam. And then all
of Greg's friends arrive, and Greg talks to them in non-Sinister-type-talk
about Nat being a ferkling ferkler and always being late, and kind of
ignores David, for which sorry sorry sorry, I meant no harm. Sorry. And then
they go in after waiting outside for twenty minutes because the RoTa staff
are incontinent or something, and Greg gives the present to Baxendale (using
a sheet of official D&C U.G.L.Y notepaper as a label, too) and everyone sits
and drinks cheap Turkish booze for two hours. And Greg also buys a Vodka an'
Red Bull, because Ken knows his stuff and they are GRATE, and is charged 5
pounds 80 for it, which is ferkling scandolous, butontheotherhand it is an
extremely good V&R. And then Greg drunkenly wobbles up to Erica, who has
great shoes, and says hi, and introduces himself, and then staggers off to
see if Phonograph are a) Still playing (yes) and b) Still shit (oh god yes).
So he sits back down and Rota is a nice venue, and considering I haven't
even got to to Baxendale yet this is quite probably going to be longest
Sinister gig report ever, F!A!M!E!, yayayayay, and so he sits down and slags
off Phonograph for a while. And the lollies start playing, and they're quite
good, in a kind of: "3 girls? In a band? Riotgrrrrl attitude and inept but
stylish punkrawk, right? Well, no, actually, just some quite good, well
crafted pop songs. Oh" kinda way, and on the way to the stage I see Erica
again, and say drunken things to her, and possibly introduce myself again,
and then Alex Baxendale comes along and chats to her, 'cos she's a popstar
and so's he, so I bumble off again, and observe that no-one is dancing to
the Lollies, even though they're quite good in the aforementioned way, so I
barge my way to the third row and jive like an electrocuted monkey for a
bit, and they were glad that they are approved of by a drunken young hipster
like myself, and let me pick the next song from a hat, I pick Boycrush
Pusher, and it's a really good song, actually. So that was good. I am not so
good with tenses but oh, to see my Tommy Wrathmell impression! And then the
lollies went away, and someone gave me a lollipop and smiled at me, and I
said thanks, but it was a yukky lollipop, *sigh*. Then Baxendale came on,
and all my friends finally left our hard-won seats to see Baxendale, and the
B!A!X! proceeded to play. ~~@ <--This is not a sperm, but a lollipop.
Puh-leze, no thanks, we're twee, don'tcha know? They started by saying some
stuff, which was cool I'm sure, but I'm too drunk to remember what, and it
led to them throwing a Christmas pressie into the crowd, and it was opened,
and held up, and revealed to be a Craig David poster! Which led nicely into
the opening song, wot was Pull-out Posters, and wot was GRATE, even though
it's not one of my faves my any means, so that was good. And then they threw
another pressie, which was some microwave popcorn, which of course led to
Heat Activated, which is just a ferkling glorious song, and all the friends
who liked Gang Starr and Hefner and *ugh* Travis were totally and
irreversibly converted to Bax. And then Tim pulled out my Tina box,
unwrapped but unopened, and thanked me, and said "Normally I'd unwrap this
here, but I wanna get Tina home intact", and then the perviest grin I have
ever seen anyone do. And they did Tina Dreams and it was fab, and he sung
lots of it to the doll, and you wanna know something really twee? Alex has
these little notes on a label on his keyboard, which read something like
"Vanessa, joanna, sussana, TINA!" etc so he doesn't forget the lyrics.
Mmmyep. And then there was The Beginning of Everything Else, and that was
good, too. Mmmyep. I'm getting bored with this level of detail, and I
suspect you are too, so I'll just say:
    Song I Can't Remember
    American Friend
    Ghetto Fabulous (Before which they declared that this pressie should go
to the boy who'd given them "the Tina Dreams" and gave me an unbelievably
cool little keychain thing which plays the whole (yes, the WHOLE) of No
Scrubs, when you push a button. Which I love dearly, and will keep on my
keys forever.
    Another Song I Can't Remember
    Music For Girls
    Yet Another Song I Can't Remember
    A Song They Decided Not To Do, As The P.A Was Crap
And then the last song was called Christmas Is Great, and here's the twist,
it was Summer of Hate, but, ahhhh, changed, so it was this GRATE posistive
song, and it rocked. And they gave out these CD-written, all individually
hand-autographed by all three of them, CDs, with a touchingly lo-fi take of
Christmas is Great on the A-Side and this lovely sadsong that's all the more
lovely for the fact that about 50 copies of it exist, called Solo Records,
on the B-Side, and everything was generally fab. And a random girl grabbed
me, asked if I was the boy who'd made the jacket on the website, and when I
admitted I was, she got her Dad to take a photo of us. And I decided not to
go to the Sini meetup, 'cos I'd already offended two Sinies, and I didn't
fancy offending them all. Yet another sorry to Carsimile and all the rest,
wot I missed seeing. So I went and saw The Sixth Day, instead, which is the
new Arnie film, and it truly is the worst film I have ever seen. This is not
an exagerration, neither was it So Bad It's Good. It was just dire. Want to
know know how dire? In the future, the world will be run by evil
corporations, who will ban tobacco. Mmmyep. Arnie now looks around 70, as
well. I am tired.

* Send to:
        41 nojunkmailmail.Canfield Gardens
        London
        NW6 3JL

What else? I used to be Not Listening To Much B&S, but now I'm listening to
lots, 'cos I made a B&(k)S compo-CD for a friend, and realised that the
Sebby were a sodding mervellous band, and made a copy for me, and it's
GRATE. IYFS is winter, and FISCHYCLAP is autumn, definately, but is
Tigermilk or TWATTYBUS summer? Discuss [1 mark].

Sinfest ist BLUDDY GRATE. Today's fave is http://sinfest.net/d/20000318.html

Still lovin' your sushi...
Wassat Boss? Issa...
G!R!E!G!

And that's a wrap.

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