Sinister: Survey results and why Napster is a great thing!

[David White]

Hello there Sinister!

--Results--
The votes are in and have been painstakingly counted. No need for Florida
style recounts here!

The winners in each category were as follows...

Best album of 2000 (nearly 90 different albums were nominated)
1. Belle & Sebastian - Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant
2. Radiohead - Kid A
3. The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs *

Best song from 2000 (well over 100 different songs were nominated)
1. Belle & Sebastian - There's Too Much Love
2. Belle & Sebastian - Legal Man
=3. Radiohead - Optimistic
=3. Belle & Sebastian - Waiting For The Moon To Rise
=3. Belle & Sebastian - Woman's Realm
=3. Belle & Sebastian  - I Fought In A War

Most popular band (based on number of songs nominated in Best song category)
1. Belle & Sebastian (8 different songs nominated)
2. Radiohead (7 different songs nominated)
=3. Sigur Ros (4 different songs nominated)
=3. Lambchop (4 different songs nominated)

Most popular band (based on votes)
1. Belle & Sebastian
2. The Magnetic Fields
3. Baxendale

Albums from 2000 which most people regret buying
1. Radiohead - Kid A
2. Coldplay - Parachutes
=3. Richard Ashcroft - Alone With Everyone
=3. The Go-Betweens - The Friends Of Rachel Worth

You may have spotted a bit of a pattern emerging there (B&S dominating
almost everything), so here are the results for the two main categories with
B&S disregarded...

Best album
1. Radiohead - Kid A
2. The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs
3. The Delgadoes - The Great Eastern

Best Song
1. Radiohead - Optimistic
=2. Yo La Tengo - Our Way To Fall
=2. Badly Drawn Boy - Once Around The Block

No major surprises there I guess, B&S were clearly everybodys favourites
with the rest of the vote fairly evenly spread between loads of bands.
Interesting to note that 8 different B&S songs were nominated, and those
were (in order of most votes)...

1. There's Too Much love
2. Legal Man
3. Woman's Realm
=4. Waiting For The Moon To Rise
=4. I Fought In A War
6. The Model
7. Don't Leave The Lights On Baby
8. Loneliness Of A Middle Distance Runner

That's more than enough statistics for anyone to handle in one sitting. I
have posted the full results on my website
(www.belleandsebastian.freeserve.co.uk). Go and look, see where your votes
went. Also you can see the best gigs list and the memories of 2000.

--Napster (my opinion)--
I love the whole Napster thing. I love the idea of being able to hear a
track before going out and spending money on an album I might not like. Far
from stifling music surely it encourages people to listen to bands they
would not normally listen too. For instance I downloaded a few Grandaddy
tracks off Napster having never heard the band but having heard good things
about them. I would (and probably will) happily purchase the album now. Also
somebody explain how am I costing anybody money if I download a tune or two
that I would never have bought anyway? Example: I downloaded the Supergrass
track 'Moving' off Napster because I liked it. I did not like it enough to
warrant spending 15 quid on the album and do not like any of the other album
tracks I have heard, so what harm am I doing? I'm not going to spend £15 or
more on an album just to hear a single track that I might have liked. If I
download it from Napster it's not costing anybody anything cos I would never
have purchased it anyway.
And even if Napster does go all commercialised, it won't stop people
listening to "illegal" music. Bootleg CDs or pirated CDs are hardly a new
thing (anybody who's been to the Barras in Glasgow will be well aware that
there are loads of stalls selling illegal CDs) but they've hardly destroyed
the music industry have they? And other file sharing software is freely
available which does exactly the same as Napster (Imesh for example).

That's enough of this nonsense from me, don't forget to check out the survey
results at www.belleandsebastian.freeserve.co.uk

Dave
david at belleandsebastian.freeserve.co.uk

*Sorry P F, I decided that it had to go in because it got so many votes,
even though it might have first been released in 1999 in the US.

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
    +---+  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           +-+
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+