Sinister: Looking backwards

[FP]

So, Sinister still works. And I still have the same phone number. I
can prove it, too.

I found myself in a sticky situation the other month.  In the office,
taking a toilet break.  I sat down, but, too late, realised there was
no paper left.  Oh.  Too late.

Incidentally, I heard the new B&S single the other day, inadvertantly,
on 6 Music at 7 in the morning, opening the Mary Ann Hobbs show.  And
it was...well, interchangeable.  I can't help feeling as if up to (and
including) DCW, B&S albums always had some sort of memorable moment,
some sort of touching chord change; and since DCW, everything they
have produced has been blandly interchangeable, all produced in just
the same way, all with the same orchestral parts behind it, all much
of a muchness.

There are only two toilet cubicles, and there was someone else in the
other.  I'll just sit it out, then, wait for him to go and sneak my
arse across.  Hmmm.  He's not moving either.  He's very quiet, in
fact.  Almost as if he's run out of paper too.  Oh.  We spoke: it was
one of my staff.  He was, indeed, also out of paper.  Bugger.

I haven't listened to much B&S for a while - in fact, it must have
been a year ago they last popped into my life.  Sitting in a random
Midlands motorway services, feeding warm milk to one of the kids,
Stuart M's face appeared broadly across the News 24 coverage bracketed
up on the wall.  Aspect ratio problems, maybe.  God Help The Girl at
Sundance.  I haven't seen God Help The Manic Pixie Girl either; I'm
not entirely sure I want to.  The trials of a young woman with issues
seen through Stuart's lenses?  Ho hum.

My phone was in my pocket, because it's always useful to have
something to keep you occupied on the toilet after all, isn't it.  My
own phone, not my work phone, but it still had the numbers of some of
my staffers programmed into it.  I tried the first one: no answer.
Tried another: bums.  The first again.  Ring ring ring.

Weird to think that I should have staff working for me, that I should
have kids, indeed.  I tried to play Fans Only to them when they were
younger but they didn't seem particularly excited.  My daughter,
though, does rather enjoy dancing to Bauhaus and The Cure, good
choices for a toddler.  Her twin brother prefers to run around
randomly screaming, which I understand is rather more traditional for
the age group.  I only discovered today, thanks to Mr Casarotto
(formerly of this parish)'s Twitter account, that there's a Duplo
Trains phone app.  It's amazing what you learn being a parent.  Mind
you, if you want Lego trains, I randomly found some by Ben Apps on the
internet the other year.  Ben, if you're reading: I'm impressed.

Sinister life events.  We've covered all of the traditional ones off
now between us as a list, haven't we?  All three.

So we escaped from the toilet eventually, as you've probably guessed.
However, although I had my staff's numbers, it turns out, they didn't
all have my not-work one.  So they googled it.  And what comes up if
you google my phone number?  The Sinister archive, apparently: the
phone numbers of me and GEA, letting everyone know them ready for a
meetup in Embra.  I have the same number still.  I don't know if GEA
does.

Back when I first discovered Sinister - 17 and a half years ago, in
the fourth floor University Library computer lab because you didn't
usually have to queue there - it led me into a world of music I didn't
really know about, and didn't know I had been missing.  Sarah Records,
for example.  Everyone was saying that B&S were like a Sarah band,
that if Sarah had still been going they would have signed them.  I
couldn't even remember hearing of Sarah, although - I worked out many
years later - I probably bought the NME in which they announced they
were closing down.  The closest I'd come to such things were bands
like Lush on the rockier side, or Stina Nordenstam on the quieter
side.

Nowadays, I'm a mature grown-up.  I have children, a responsible job,
I commute to work every day from a station that appeared on a Sarah
7", and I go to see art exhibitions explaining the history of Sarah
Records.  And, all of a sudden, I got it.  I saw straight away that
Sarah would never, not in a million years, have signed B&S.  B&S,
after all, put Stuart's ideal girls on their album sleeves, the sort
of girls he wanted to write songs about and make films about.  That
just wouldn't wash.

Back in '99 I spent my summer away in the Scottish islands.  I was
away there whilst TBWTAS was released; I had someone post it up to me.
I heard Tigermilk for the first time, courtesy a girl called Cat Toms
who had it on tape with her.  I was deeply sad at the time, surrounded
by beautiful, wild moorland, and by night darkness, black lochs and
wild Atlantic winds.  I lay catatonic on beaches when I was supposed
to be working, and I was never brave enough to throw myself into the
dark, inky, mirrored nightwaters for the seals to bear me away.  I've
never been a brave person.

If I'd waited twenty years, I was thinking the other day, before going
to university, I'd probably have done a lot better at university.  I'd
have seen through the bullshit, got all the work done, organised my
arguments more effectively and generally done better at all of it.

But if I'd waited twenty years, I wouldn't have been the same person
now.  Would I have liked the same music, though?  I'm still touched to
the core by the first few B&S albums despite all that I've learned
since then.  Which led me to think: I went to see them again the other
year.  A bit different to the first time I saw them, at Carnegie Hall.
What surprised me the most: Mr Jackson's afro.  Do B&S, now, still
like the same music that they did themselves 20 years ago?  Do they
think themselves they're at their peak, now they're invited onto
national radio to sing things out of tune?  Or do they wish they were
still writing songs as good as the songs they wrote back in time?

Stuart David, of course, is kind of outside of it.  I must try to get
hold of his book.  At the book group I occasionally go to, we read an
Ian Rankin crime thriller a while back; and Stuart D - or rather his
alter ego Peacock Johnson - popped up in it as the villain.  The other
book groupers were mildly amused to discover I'd met one of the
characters from the book that month, especially as he was fictional
after all.

I'm going to try to make sure the children like B&S, even though they
probably won't.  I'm going to try to make sure they like making music,
more importantly.  And I'm going to try  to make sure they appreciate
serendipity, and quiet corners, and the fact that things fade and
wither.

Maybe they too will find a band, and discover something magical.
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