Sinister: Rimini: A Situation Report or, if you just want a set list, scroll down

[sgazzetti]

Friday, 12 April:
Rimini is a pleasant though uncertain seaside city
whose economy appears to be based entirely upon beach
tourism and lingerie. I am standing on the broad beach
in the dark with my feet eased into the Adriatic,
looking forward to tomorrow, a day free to wander the
town, recon the gig venue, and then bathe in the music
that’s just 24 hours away. Although it’s night, the
flat expanse of sand is well-lit by the light from the
thousands of bars, hotels, and lingerie shops lining
the beachfront, the glow reflected off low clouds that
promise rain. I walk back to my hotel along the sand,
down where the falling tide has left the sand hard and
easy to walk on, until the oily-blackness of a canal
not named on my map forces me to move up the beach to
where the sand is soft, and therefore hard to walk in.
It strikes me as interesting that something as
impassive and timeless as sand can be so perverse as
to be both hard and soft, easy and hard, at the same
time. To bed!

Saturday, 13 April: Rimini is a pleasant though
imprecise town that can’t help but make me recall
seaside resort towns everywhere. In places, this could
be Delray Beach, Florida, if Delray Beach had the
ruins of a Roman amphitheatre and a Renaissance temple
designed by Alberti (Gordon? Yes?) and they spoke
Italian and had Vespas.

I decide to locate the venue, called the Velvet. I
have asked at the hotel where Via Sant’ Aquilina can
be found, and Andrea, the night desk clerk, thinks I
am quite mad to want to go all the way out there.
Andrea doesn't know the half of it. “It’s practically
in San Marino,” he says distastefully, naming the
world’s oldest and smallest republic, or so it claims.
He shows me on the map, noting that where I want to go
is actually OFF the map. Advises me to go sempre
diritto and count semáfori and then bear right when I
am nearly to San Marino. His directions are perfect,
and I find the club far out a winding, gently climbing
road in the middle of green country planted with vines
and fruit trees. I am glad that I am researching it
early. The show’s not really IN Rimini at all. It’s
practically not in Italy. I can see the wee republic
which the Velvet is almost in gazing down on the place
from its eyrie. I am also glad that I have a car, and
wonder how those arriving without are supposed to
locate Belle & Sebastian out here in the bush. I am
vexed that I was unable to make arrangements with
those from the list who wrote me about meeting up, and
don’t know whether they are independently mobile or
not. Hope so.

Since I’m halfway there, I decide to visit the
Republic of San Marino. Pity they don’t stamp your
passport. It’s a dramatic town/republic, though,
beetling above the plains below on a craggy jut of
yellow rock. Fortress towers grow organically from the
cliffs. Tourists buy duty-free counterfeit perfume and
truffle liqueur. I spend the day crawling around the
13th-through-17th century fortifications and admiring
the tenacity of the wind in its efforts in still
trying to knock these towers down after all these
centuries of abject failure in that department. From
the highest point in the republic, a tower raised in
1253, I can see the Adriatic sparkling under a springy
blue sky just tinged with sea haze out towards
Dalmatia. During my brief visit to the republic, two
out of the three people with whom I conduct business
either try to or succeed in swindling me--I later
realise I am shorted two Euros in my purchase of an
entry to the castle, and when I tank up, the petrolero
tries to take me for ten, but I am too canny. This
might explain why Struan’s mention of the San Marinesi
a few hours later at the gig draws forth vehement
booing from the largely Bolognese crowd.

The Velvet is a complete disaster, from a liability
underwriter’s point of view. But it is a small place,
and I am delighted to be there fairly early and so I
get very close to the stage, which is low and small in
any case. I am about three metres from the edge of the
stage, directly in front of Stuart’s microphone, when
the band take the stage. I am shocked at Struan’s
appearance; he has aged sixty years since I saw him in
Edinburgh less than two weeks ago! Though elegant and
dapper in a neat suit and tie, he is bowed with age,
and his grey beard reaches to his chest. He is so
frail he can barely hobble out onto the stage as the
band plays “The Green, Green Grass of Home.” Can this
possibly be the same man reportedly spotted jogging
through Rimini this very morning? But it IS Stuart
Murdoch. He is attended tenderly by a lovely blonde in
a nurse’s uniform, a striking young woman who bears a
certain resemblance to Isobel. She supports his right
arm, as the cane in Stuart’s left hand shakily seeks
purchase among the cables and gizmos duct-taped to the
stage. She gently maneuvers him to the piano bench and
he wearily takes a seat as the band round out their
sentimental old-age ballad.

Removing their disguises, Isobel and Stuart take their
places as the band launch into a rollicking “There’s
Too Much Love.” Stuart dances like a maniac. Great
start to a fantastic gig. 

Set List in its (I think) entirety; please bear with
my comments:

Green, Green Grass of Home as indicated above
There’s Too Much Love (ditto). Here I develop some
misgivings about volume level problems as reported
following the London show last week; Isobel is
gesturing frantically for more microphone volume. Her
cello is not producing at all, and she waves the bow
above her head, pointing, ‘up!’ She gives up, and
slouches on the piano bench, petulantly banging a
tambourine against her knee.
Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie--Volume issues resolved.
Pete Townsend leaps from Stevie. Isobel not sulking. 
I’m Waking Up To Us--beautiful strings.

Interlude while Stuart reads prepared Italian
greetings. Stevie manages an unscripted “Buena Sera”,
to which Stuart remarks, “I think that’s a bit more
like Spanish.” Stevie replies, “yeah, well I heard
there might BE some Spanish in the audience tonight.”
Sorry we didn’t manage to meet up, Maria Sierra
Florez. 

String Bean Jean (restrained, but not quiet)
Seymour Stein
The Spanish-sounding one from “Storytelling”, fandango
handclapping. (This audience is VERY into handclapping
along, by the way, even preventing Bob from properly
doing the actual handclaps later when they play
TWATTYBUS.)
My Wandering Days Are Over
The Model (which Stuart jokes, over the harpsichordy
beginning, “this is a song by Kraftwerk.”) SOARING
strings.

Improv bit with Stevie wailing on a harmonica and Bob
yanking reggae-esque chords while Stuart chills and
drinks water. Then Stuart asks Stevie if he thinks he
could sing “Rock Me, Baby.” Stevie seems taken aback,
but Stuart points out that he did a fine job with it
doing karaoke recently. Question: can the collective
you think of anything more entertaining than doing
karaoke with those two? Let me know. So Stevie puts
his whole soul into this turgid seventies dreck,
transforms it, rocks it, writhes like Robert Plant.
For any who can’t quite place this song, I’ll sing a
bit:

TAKE me in your arms,
And ROCK me baby
Oooh, rock me baby

That’s about it. Recognise it now?

Continuing:
Simple Things
The Boy with the, well, you know
Fox in the Snow. To the audience: Fox in the Snow is
NOT a clap-along-friendly tune.
Family Tree
Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying
Lazy Line Painter Jane, also restrained, low-key--but
nice
The Wrong Girl--this song always makes me think of
Buenos Aires, where my listee friend Carlos took me to
see a band called Bristol, who played this as an
encore (also Bigmouth Strikes Again) Ah. Nostalgia.
Carlos, ¿te has perdido, por donde andás?
Dirty Dream #2

If my notes are correct, what happened next was:
(Pause)
(Then)
WALL OF SOUND, face-slammingly loud and energetic
out-tro from LLPJ, completely making up for the
restrained muted Monica-Queenless version a few
minutes before.

At this point Struan expresses the plaintive wish that
some fans could come up on the stage and dance. He
selects one Francesca and pulls her up, and the band
close, as in Edinburgh, with a LOUD, BRIGHTLY LIT and
super-psychedelilicious version of Legal Man. This is
indescribable, so I won’t, but it is a wonderful
closer. There are no encores, but I leave highly
satisfied, passing within two metres of Isobel as I
exit the venue. I leave her alone. She looks spent. 

To the short girls I gallantly helped to the front at
Stuart’s behest. You’re welcome.

Here ends the content portion of this text.

Sunday, 14 April: like Belle & Sebastian concerts,
long weekends must end, and so I must head back to
Slovenia. But Sunday is a gorgeous day, warm, sunny,
with enough lofty sea clouds to keep it interesting,
so I spend some daylight time on the beach, watching
ornate kites spar and sailboats sail. Quitting Rimini,
too cheap to buy a map that extends this far south, I
am left to follow signs to find my way back onto the
map whose southern limit is about two hours north. I
am determined to avoid the road I came down, a clogged
artery, and head for the autostrada instead; longer
distance, but surely quicker.

Memo to myself: do not follow signs in Italy. With all
due respect to our Italian listees (non mi odiare,
Silvietta), following signs is the surest way of
guaranteeing that I will NOT end up at the place
indicated on the sign. Maybe it’s me, but I generally
have a good sense of direction and am an attentive
driver. The signs promise Ferrara. They deliver
Ravenna. They offer Padova; I find myself in Marina
Romea, and on the bloody SS309 again, the road I’d
vowed to avoid! I’ve been driving for two hours and am
not even back on my damned map yet. The scenery is
good, though. Throughout my efforts to locate the main
route north I am sailing through fertile farmland in
the full embrace of spring. Intensely green fields of
young grain, immense orchards of blossoming fruit and
nut trees, and vines vines vines, planted with such
design that looking sideways at them as I speed by
creates a strobe effect, looking down intersecting
corridors between the rows, an effect increased by
pressure on the accelerator until I worry about an
epilectic seizure and think I might keep my eyes on
the road. I want to pull off and accost some ancient
on a bicycle: what are these crops? Are those
apricots? Is that wheat? It makes me think of
Saskatchewan, and how the farmers put up signs so you
know what kind of future foodstuffs you are bypassing.
CANOLA says a small placard dwarfed by an endless sea
of yellow. In Alberta you can drive for hours and see
nothing but sunflowers and signs that say SUNFLOWERS,
somewhat unnecessarily, actually. Here there are no
signs indicating cash crops, but decaying stucco barns
house barnswallows who joust with my windshield. Few
things can put joy in my heart like watching a swallow
swoop, particularly the morning after a B&S show, I am
finding.

But in the end, it’s back to the SS309 for me.

Elated and defeated, I stop in a café/fueling
opportunity and drink a coffee, looking out toward the
sea and the clouds growing anvil-heads. Though the sun
is hot, it is snowing here in Marina Romea. Closer
inspection reveals that the snow is actually massive
amounts of spring tree-stuff; not pollen, but that
cotton-wool stuff that some trees seem to send out
into the breeze as some sort of bid at asexual
reproduction. Is there a term for this material? Any
botanists on Sinister? The air is full of it, and the
stuff collects in drifts against the sleeping café
bulldog. I inhale it, and it bothers my throat for the
rest of the ride back to Nova Gorica. But before I
continue north I must make a decision regarding
disposition of my dwindling supply of Euri; a proper
meal or enough cash-on-hand for essentials, such as
more coffee, a newspaper in a language I can decipher,
tolls, and Red Bull. In the end, I opt for the placebo
effect of the chemical strawberry tang. P.T. Barnum
was right.

The SS309 is a schizophrenic road; it can’t decide if
it is autostrada or Main Street of a thousand little
towns. Teutonic engineering marvels bear down on my
rear-view mirror like they want to emboss my bumper
with the Bavarian coat of arms, Mercedes stars, or the
four linked rings of the dreaded Audi. My Golf can
move along, but the situation is not helped by a
speedometer stuck forevermore on 140. Caught up in
this German slipstream, I come upon surprise traffic
lights Christ! is that thing RED and pedestrian
crossings in the middle of nowhere.

Crossing the gigantic Po I feel the air temperature
drop noticeably. Clouds build and consolidate toward
the head of the Adriatic. Eventually Venice appears,
and after that it’s all autostrada to the border
crossing. I am miffed that the Slovene police, so
recently my nemesis, wave me through without even
looking at my passport, let alone the gigantic
hologramatic new visa which finally allows me to enter
their country legally. Back. Every Euro, every
kilometre covered, well worth it.

JDS


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