Sinister: Les stars et les espoirs

[Anna Higgins]

Glasgow Saved Me From My Own Ears, or: A Narrative of
Musical Revelation and Redemption 

I’ve been working so hard plotting the Ultimate
Mixtape for the tape tree that I figured it wouldn’t
be such a huge leap to actually contribute to the list
for once instead of lurking around and silently
admiring you guys.

I just moved from Chicago to Northern California to
start an anthropology phd program, not too long after
the Berkeley show.  Since I found Belle and Sebastian
in 2000, I have moved to a new town every summer,
missing the B&S tour by one month or less each time. 
To this day I have never seen them perform.  This is
madly appropriate because of the way I first
discovered the band.

I was spending a semester abroad in Nottingham in
winter 2000.  My boyfriend, a
sexy-librarian-in-training, was in Glasgow during the
same time.  I spent more time in Glasgow than
Nottingham because I was besotted with him and
besotted with the city.  The sandstone, the gentle
light, the ring of mountains around the city, the
green moss on the old gray stones, was searingly
beautiful.  I couldn’t spend enough time walking the
city, sitting in parks, riding the underground. 
Glasgow looked to me like a city had grown from the
ground all at once of its own will like a plant, and
if I kicked the dirt away would be revealed as one
organism underneath it with roots and tubers and
underground colonies of carnivorous sheep (no..
wait... that was an Alisdair Gray novel... ).  
On the walls of these tenements around the corner of
Byres Road and Great Western, only a few blocks from
my boyfriend’s dorm, there were posters showing twins
bathed in a sickly yellow light, one wearing eyeliner,
one not, holding a book.  “Belle and Sebastian,” I
thought, “Who’s that?”  I was too busy riding the
underground and sitting in parks and being in love to
go to a record shop and find out.   

That had to wait until the following summer, after
going home, when I was about to embark on a road trip
in Northeast Georgia.  Remembering the poster on Great
Western Road, I picked up FYHCYWLAP in Atlanta and
listened to it driving around in the Appalacians.  It
didn’t leave the cd player for a week.  Over the next
month I bought the rest, and was shocked to discover
that FYHCYWLAP wasn't even their best.  

I had come to buying music late, and never really
developed good taste.  After Belle and Sebastian came
in through my ears and rearranged my heart, I couldn't
go on listening to the crap I used to like and had to
go about developing some kind of musical aesthetic of
my own that didn't involve . . . well, never mind.  My
cd collection was pretty ugly.  The less said, the
better.  

The new album is in the mail right now.  For all I
know it could already be in the mailbox.  I’m a little
frightened, and very excited.  Hearing a new Belle and
Sebastian album is like moving to a new town or making
a new friend, I never know what to expect and I always
keep a little shell of resistence around my heart at
first in case it isn't as good as the rest.  
Anna

PS Are there any sinisters in the South Bay--San Jose,
Santa Cruz, Watsonville, etc?  Just curious.  I know
there's a few in San Francisco.

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