Sinister: Careful with those boots, Sergei!

[Nick.Dastoor at xxx.uk]

Brian says his life is laughing children and zippers.  Cripes!  I knew this list
was full of freaks, but isn't that a bit beyond the pale?  Did you know that as
late as the early 80s there was a fairly high-profile paedophilic lobby in the
UK, campaigning for consensual sex between children and adults to be
decriminalised?  Several left-wing and libetarian figures lent their support to
the cause.  I found this out recently, looking through an old cuttings file and
was rather taken aback at the pace of attitudinal change.

The Russians have invented petrol powered boots!  Have a look for yourself at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/820000/video/_823846_duncankennedy1325_7jul_vi.ram

Only the high risk of broken ankles and irreperable knee ligament damage can
stop them revolutionising life as we know it!

The unspeakable mindmonkey's identity is indeed intriguing.  More intriguing
still is that they have had to choose 'mindmonkey1' as their excite username.
Someone has already nabbed 'mindmonkey'??  Crazy times.

> What is the opinion of Stephen 'I used to be called Tintin' Duffy

I dunno.  I would imagine there is more than one. People used to talk about him
in the 'earlier, funny' days of Sinister* (~) quite a lot, when they were taking
a break from being earlier and funny.  Following my disgust at being invited to
kiss him with my mouth, it somehow seeped into my consciousness in about 1989
that Duffy was now to be taken seriously, and I made a note to buy the first
Lilac Time album.  But then I didn't and it was soon deleted and I refused to
buy any later ones on the grounds that I had meant to buy the first one and I
wasn't going to settle for some johnny-come-lately second or third one, even if
they were better.  I looked on the excellent http://www.gemm.com * for a
second-hand copy recently but discovered that about $30 was the going price.
There, admission of residual, bloodyminded, misplaced music snobbery over.

I like the idea of Steve Kado refusing to talk about the Floyd anymore.  For me,
it's the tired old thing of pop fandom involving drawing fairly arbitary lines
in the sand and saying 'no, I will not investigate this any further'.  No matter
how many times people tell me that 'Dark Side of the Moon' is a heavy influence
on 'The Virgin Suicides' I won't be buying it.  I want Air in my life but I
don't want 1970s Pink Floyd.  It's got a lot to do with where I perceive a
fanbase to be.  If all those boring 50 year olds and geeks at school tell me
something's great I don't want to have anything to do with it.  Unless there are
a significant number of people I respect also like it.  Call me childish.  Call
me a sheep.  Call me a childish sheep.   Just call me, OK?  On a more reasoned
point, I suppose I do categorise Radiohead and Pink Floyd as attempts at the
epic and grandiose, and that immediately turns me off.  Yes, Radiohead may well
be concerned with representing the complexities of Thom Yorke's emotional
existence, but he does it in such a way that just makes me feel embarrassed at
the idea that someone might catch me listening to it and imagine that I'm
'feeling his pain'.  If I want grand emotions on a record I'll listen to soul.
And if I want an investigation of life's complexities I'll read a novel.  Just
save me from 'deep' indie music.

Colin wrote:

> I've been thinking a lot about Struan's distaste for
> If Your Feeling  Sinister.  His discomfort with the
> album's effect has denied us live versions of "Dylan in
> the Movies" and "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying",
> and all the other good tracks. I've noticed that there
> aren't even any videos from Sinister.  I wonder what
> the big deal is...they are good songs.

They surely are.  In that piece, Stuart said he thought the songs on IYFS were
the best he's ever written.  What he *didn't* like was the way they were
recorded.  I blame Tony Doogan. I guess the reason for the lack of videos is
that no singles come off the albums.  It's only since TWATTYBUS that they've
started doing the odd promo for album tracks.  And they played both the songs
you mention on their last tour.

> Wish me luck!  I'm auditioning for survivor.  If I make
> the cut then I'll do my best to advertise Belle and
> Sebastian by humming their tunes in the Australian Outback.

God help us if there's a war.


N. x

* a fantastically simple example of what e-commerce should be about, linking the
stock lists of hundreds of second-hand record shops together to one searchable
database, much like http://www.abebooks.com does for booksellers.


+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
    +---+  Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list  +---+
    To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
    send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
    majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students"  +-+
 +-+  "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list"  +-+
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper        +-+
 +-+   "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000   +-+
 +-+       "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named       +-+
 +-+           Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000           +-+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+