Sinister: Your Life Is Never Dull

[P F]

On Saturday's beautiful morning I stuck "Tigermilk"
on. It is the first record by Belle & Sebastian. Some
of it sounded callow to me - 'Expectations', for
instance. Murdoch' bid to write songs to make wee
timorous beasties  feel better; was it flawed, was it
strained, did it work?  I don't know - yet even at
those moments I could feel an authority, a sense that
it would have worked at the time, for those people,
because of some kind of assurance, some kind of faith,
in where the voice was coming from. The LP improved. I
marvelled at the distant sound of the piled-up guitars
of 'You're Just A Baby'; a kind of magic that record
has, a conjuring of time, rock authority. I thought of
the old ilx thread about 'I Could Be Dreaming', and
thought for the nth time of the comic tweeness of its
bids for violence. Then I switched it all over to a
better stereo. And 'We Rule The School' rustled and
breathed - I could hear the air around the microphone,
the dust-motes drifting past the piano. It seems a
miraculous wee song, as it did in July 1999, when this
LP first started making sense to me. 'Wandering Days'
was almost a come-down after that, somehow not as
fantastic as it was on Steady Mike's gear, in the
early hours of 1.1.2000 and provoking me to exclaim
about its Bowieisms. 'Mary Jo' seemed almost best of
all. I guess I don't need, here, to explain what it
sounded like, or why I might have liked it. But when
he started singing 'for night to follow day' I could
see the shadows and light of the gone years, the sun
setting over ATP 2000, the bottles of gin we never
finished, the promises some of which we  never
fulfilled, the ways the time wound up. Some of it all
made me want to see Dot To Dot again, at times. Well,
maybe not all of Dot to Dot.

Garth Crooks reported. Then I went out, and walked the
old way alone past Cecil Sharp House, which the wee
kids and me among them always used to marvel or
chuckle at, its curious proximity to our folksy
picnic. The hill was claimed, today, by so many. The
picnic in the shade, under trees. Archel handing me a
can of stout. Stout giving me his raspberries. Ian A.
is correct, really, about naming names - you might
always name the wrong ones, or not name enough. A few
highlights. The names have been removed to protect the
absent. Talking about poetry, with a poet. Talking
about Brussels, with a Eurocrat. Talking about our
back catalogue with an ageless Joe Meek fan. Talking
about long-gone band plans with LA's finest
expatriate. I am struggling to remember her slogan -
'Gama Gama Go' / 'Hey Ho / Gama Go'? Maybe it was
Rama, or Dhama, or Llama. Oh, yes - talking about
writing books, not something I do a lot of really ,
with a Foxgloves collector. Listening to the Yorkians,
the Yorkies, the Jorviks, making their own acoustic
soundtrack. Watching the Goth Frank Baron try to take
pictures of footballers. Listening to Visitors #1
singing behind a branch. Staying out alive till the
last of the sun. An actual request for a solo Lloyd
Cole number, no daily happening this.

The slow hill down into patient sunset; the smog
smudged over the skyline, the gauze cooling the pastel
houses. The paving stone where my editor chalked 'Are
You Feeling Sinister?' for others to follow in May
1998 . The uncanny menu connaissance of the waiters at
King's Cross noodles, the streets feeling darkly
metropolitan. Entering the disco to nothing less than
'Wandering Days'. The Studio 54 DJ starting his set
with, what less than 'The Boy With The Arab Strap'?
The folly of the boos over his hardly premature
ending, obscuring the magic of 'Do You Believe In
Magic?', the great cry of 2003, 2004. The better
quality disco than any other disco I have been to in a
while. So good that they then played 'The Boy With The
Arab Strap' again. Yes - that good.

That reminds me - I got Sylvia Plath to compose this
the other day:

Here is my honey-machine,
It will work without thinking,
Opening, in spring, like an industrious virgin

To scour the creaming crests
As the moon, for its ivory powders, scours the sea.





       
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