Sinister: B&S go pop? You mean like 'popular'? Wow

[Nick.Dastoor at xxx.uk]

To come back to what honey said,  this seems to be a rather bizarre paper man
argument.

As far as I can make out...

The duke is sorry that the band don't mean so much to him anymore.  I don't
think he ever used the phrase 'selling out'.  He just liked it when their
aesthetic was a little different.   That's fine.  Personally, I think bedsit
infamy is a good trap to escape.  It's how you do it that's the tricky thing.

No one has suggested that 'Legal Man' was musically conceived as a cynical
commercial exercise.

Some people (myself included) think that editing the CD version of 'Judy is a
Dick Slap' so that completists need to but the 12" too stinks.  No, it's not the
most heinous crime in the world by a long stretch, and yes loads of fuckers do
it (although you usually get more for your extra money than a few extra minutes
of an instrumental).  I just thought B&S were better than that.  This is the
only thing that fits in with what you might call a 'sell out'.

Not re-releasing Tigermilk (although they took their bloody time about it) would
*not* have been appreciated, Reid.  Deliberately under-distributed wanky limited
edition vinyl releases are just as bad as double-CD single sets.  Not selling
out is not equivalent to subscribing to some stupid indie elitist (some
'elite'!) ethic.  Not selling out means not just doing things for the money and
not screwing your fans.  For all the moronic flak it got, making the first 3 EPs
available in a set (making for easier distribution and cheaper prices abroad),
and making the slipcase separately available at cost price was a recent sign
that the band/label are not intent on doing the latter.  I hope that the 'Legal
Man' format thing is just an aberration.

What I'm trying to say is that two separate arguments are getting mixed up under
the unhelpful heading 'selling out'.  Some people don't like strands of the
band's new musical direction, not because they are too commercial, but because
they seem 'fake' in some way, lacking in heart, indicating a band that has lost
its way.   Other people are pissed off with the fact that completist fans will
have to fork ou twice for the new single.  That is all.

I knew things had got confused when Denise suggested that the duke was moaning
that they were 'going pop'.

On the subject of the troubled Denise, I wasn't overly keen on the idea of the
'list hate' votes, until someone suggested that it should be banned on the
grounds that it's 'not very twee'.  Too bloody right it isn't.  Let's institute
it immediately and make people cry.  *Only* joking.

One questions to those who insist on using the word 'twee' without irony as some
kind of self-evident badge of authenticity for B&S fans:  Are you happy for
Belle & Sebastian to be pigeonholed as 'twee'?  You see I think that's pretty
faint praise.  I'd say that an example of a song that is 'excessively
sentimental' (Collins Dictionary) is something like 'Tomorrow' from 'Annie'.  Is
this the kind of music you see as B&S's musical antecedent?

God I'm grumpy today.

Nick x

PS.  I missed a few words out of my last post.  I meant to say that when *I
thought* that's how the line from 'Half a Person' went I liked it more.


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