Sinister: b&s! sheffield! riot girls!

[Kieran Devaney]

jackson dancing to her jazz

two badly dressed people got up on stage and sang 'don't you want me baby?' 
- murdoch said that sheffield is "[his] kinda town" apparently he went 
running the previous evening and composed something in his head. they didn't 
really know the words to 'don't you want me baby?' though it's worth noting 
that TONITE the human league are playing at the city hall, which is also 
where b&s played. perhaps they'll do a b&s song. there were seats in the 
venue, but as soon as the band came on everyone in the whole place stood up 
and stayed stood up and it went like this (setlist stolen from the bowlie 
site, kerpow):

Passion Fruit

in which our boys go all dick dale and rock out and such

Expectations

in which our boys rock a lot harder than the album version and prompt me to 
think 'when we had that list of stuff that had never been played before, was 
this on it?' and so on, nobody has really addressed this issue, though the 
song has been turning up on setlists all over the shop of late - am i 
getting it confused with something else

Step into my office, baby

in which our boys play their recent chart hit, competently

Wrapped up in books

in which our boys play a surely future chart hit with gusto. i like this 
song a lot, the lyrics are great, though quite why we're going to find 
stuart murdoch out in the country is beyond me

Womens Realm

in which our hero thought this was 'there's too much love' until the lyric 
about 'a torch and woman's realm' right at the end. afterwards murdoch sez 
that one of the bits of it sounds a bit like a song which i didn't know, the 
themetune to something from too long ago for me to remember. jackson and 
murdoch have a brief onstage discussion about being old. do you think they 
plan these in advance?

Waking up to us

in which murdoch frees himself from the shackles of the mike stand and does 
that quaint, kind of constipated dance that he premiered (maybe) on jools 
holland. our hero is reminded how good a song this is

Beautiful

in which our boys bust out one of their more melancholy numbers, complete 
with low level lighting and a hushed audience

Travellin' light

in which jackson has something of a crisis of confidence before playing this 
ok song ok - does he feel bad it wasn't on the record? does he feel inferior 
to murdoch? is he aware of how crap the lightshow is? all this adds a touch 
of melancholy to the proceedings - for what thought do we give to those who 
surround genius? are not their pains equally worth our time? does the gasman 
really love to drill?

Photo Jenny

in which we are reminded why we liked b&s in the first place

You Dont send me

in which we are prompted to wonder once more quite what 'you don't send me' 
actually means - this song more than most makes our hero think that anyone 
who has commented on b&s' more 'upbeat' new sound (and i think there have 
been a few) are wrong though

Audience Participation - Dont you want me

in which a long time is spent arsing about for a quite rubbish cover version 
of a great song. people who can't dance or sing and don't look very good 
aren't pop stars for a reason you know (it's because they can't dance or 
sing and don't look very good - i'll admit there are flaws with this) and in 
which the annoying man standing next to me who has been talking to his mate 
quite a lot actually decides he's enjoying himself and starts clapping right 
next to my ear, our hero turns the other cheek

Dog on Wheels

in which we all contemplate just what 'anything goes' would constitute and 
in which our hero imagines, if only for a second, a blow up dog on wheels

Dirty Dream #2

in which our boys continue with the innuendo-laden ditties and our hero 
wishes they would do the fusion bit off the end of 'a spaceboy dream' as the 
intro, but still enjoys it

Piazza New York Catcher

in which our boys are reduced to just two and murdoch sings about eloping 
and running off and such - but with who stuart? and why?

Asleep on a sunbeam

in which our boys play things in the same order as they appear on the new 
album - clever that huh? and in which martin's voice is actually amplified 
so that you can hear it(!)

Like Dylan in the movies

in which our hero thinks if he has ever seen dylan in any movies, and 
concludes that he hasn't and in which our boys remember the red coloured 
album which isn't the soundtrack one

If you find yourself Caught in love

in which our boys rock the christian rock, sort of, and lay the diss on the 
war in iraq, sort of

Roy Walker

in which murdoch asks the stage hand for 'an occasional table'

Stay Loose

in which a strange effect is added to murdoch's voice, which our hero 
initially thinks will botch the song because he sounds too high, but 
actually works really well once he gets used to it. and in which our boys 
ROCK OUT - chu mentioned a city with in a city in nottingham which is called 
THE ROCK CITY and if there was really a THE ROCK CITY it would probably 
sound like this (i recently spent one of the worst weekends of my life in 
nottingham, including a visit to THE ROCK CITY and it sounds nothing like 
this, it sounds more like your mates sister's bedroom and looks a bit like 
laser quest but without the guns)

Sleep The clock around

in which our boys triumphantly play their best song ever and don't even mess 
up the words

ENCORE

Judy and the dream of horses

in which our boys plot their entire career trajectory in their one 
emblematic song, starting off all faint and twee and with out of tune 
recorders and band members learning their parts on stage just before the 
start of the song and steadily build it all up to some sort of lush pop 
FIASCO with probably gun noises and a big fuck off twee prog ending which 
last about two hours

afterwards there was an offbeat after party which murdoch and jackson and 
probably some of the backing musicians we don't care about were at and 
jackson was dancing to huggy bear and he was wearing a spotty tie and i was 
wearing a spotty tie and just for one second i glanced over at where he was 
dancing and he looked so content and i thought "stevie, you're alright"

_________________________________________________________________
Use MSN Messenger to send music and pics to your friends 
http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
        +---+  Brought to you by the 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
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper           +-+
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+
 +-+    "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000     +-+
 +-+  "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000  +-+
 +-+  "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001   +-+
 +-+               Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa                 +-+
 +-+               Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut!                +-+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+