Sinister: You must be a fanboy if the unreleased songs are your favourites

[FP]

I came home today, opened my front door, and picked up the post on our
doormat.  Top of the pile: tickets to see Belle & Sebastian.

Now, there was a time when I'd have known weeks beforehand that B&S
were planning a tour.  I'd have been down my local ticket emporium the
very morning they go on sale - in fact, I can remember that happening
a few times.  This time, though, we were lazing about on the sofa
surfing the net, when K - my partner - spotted B&S in the upcoming
acts playing the Colston Hall.  She gets a discount at the bar there,
so we were rather tempted.  And by the wonders of the internet: today,
we open the door, and B&S tickets are waiting on the doormat.

(Sadly, the other thing we bought at the same time - the new, final,
Scott Pilgrim comic book, was not there too.  Which was a shame, as I
was looking forward to seeing how the plot ended.  But I'm digressing)

I spent tea-time today telling K about some of the B&S gigs I've been
to in the past, before I met her, and the various different things
that made them special.  The gig at Carnegie Hall where Stuart played
the first two lines of "Fox In The Snow" then froze cold.  The gig at
the QMU where Richard sang "Cool For Cats", disguising the lyric sheet
by hiding it inside a porn mag.  The Barrowlands gig where Stuart
pretended to get himself arrested; the tiny political benefit gig at
Nice'n'Sleazy's where "Suspicious Minds" was the encore; the Red Cross
benefit with an anti-war speech from Alasdair "Scotland's greatest
living writer" Gray which most of the audience ignored.

"You're such a fanboy," said K.  "Actually, you're a lapsed fanboy.
They're worse."

(Digressing again, am I the only person who thinks it's funny that
Nice'n'Sleazy's, the bar, with a name like that, is directly opposite
a "dungeon" where perverted-but-well-off middle-class men pay
perverted-and-like-the-cash middle-aged dominatrixes (dominatrices?)
to tie them up and beat them?  You have to admit, the coincidence of
names is a happy one.  I say "dungeon" in scare quotes because it's on
the second floor, and, well, to my mind a dungeon isn't a dungeon
unless it's under a castle, or a mansion at the very least.  If you
stand outside Nice'n'Sleazy's on the right nights, you can see the
dominatrices (dominatrixes?) hanging out of the window, puffing on
their cigarettes, watching the Glasgow nightlife below.)

I tried to make my name as a B&S fanboy, a year or so back.  There's a
game show on the telly here, called Mastermind, a very simple idea
with few tactics, where contestants are grilled on subjects of their
choice in the manner - explicitly - of a prisoner-of-war
interrogation.  I had nothing to do one day, and K had seen an advert
for an audition.  I turned up, proposing the few subjects that I'd
managed to think up on my walk to the TV studios.

"There's a band I'd like to do, Belle & Sebastian.  They're not *that*
well known, but they've been around over a decade now, they've
released six full-length albums, and they've got a pretty big cult
following."

"That sounds good - there should be plenty of material to do questions
on" said the researcher interviewing me.  Better mug up on lyrics and
tour schedules, I thought.

When the producer phoned me a couple of weeks later, to tell me I'd
got on the show, they still sounded very enthusiastic about "that band
you mentioned, Belle & Sebastian."  But when the BBC called back again
a while after that, to tell me what I'd be answering questions about:
no B&S.  They'd been quietly dropped - presumably they already had
enough band-themed subjects to feature, and as I'd suggested other
things, my band were the one to get dropped from the series.  So I
never got the chance to prove my fanboy (or otherwise) status on TV -
instead, I appeared to know startling amounts about French
Revolutionary history and 1930s steam trains; and I would have
answered questions about my favourite misguided poet, Robert Graves,
if I hadn't been beaten by a shrewish woman who enters every quiz show
going (according to my mother, who watches every quiz show going).
Shame.  (It's all a trick, incidentally.  The questions aren't nearly
as deep as you, not knowing the subject at all, might think.)

Do B&S still do a cover in the middle of each set to let Stuart's
(Struan's?) voice rest?  Do they still have the same eclectic taste in
support acts - I'm slightly sad that I never got to see any of the
shows supported by Graham Fellowes.  Do they still take requests?  All
this, and more, will be answered in December, in our little local
concert hall that's a cross between, well, a concert hall, and the
device Archimedes invented to destroy the Roman naval fleet.  And I'll
be the chap standing near the front, alternately saying "how much for
a pint of Stowford Press? Are you sure they gave you the discount?"
and shouting "PLAY HURLEY'S HAVING DREAMS! I'LL TELL YOU THE LYRICS IF
YOU CAN'T REMEMBER THEM!"  All together now ... "Hurley's having
dreams / Little Hurley's having dreams / And he kicks and then he
screams / And I can't get to sleep / Oh Hurley, I could weep"

--
http://www.symbolicforest.com/blog/
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