Hi all,

I think we should all be thankful to Andrew for posting the interview. It was a
curious interview, probably because there wasn't much of an interview
actually. 

I'll just try to encourage a little debate about the parts that caught my eye:

>>> NME Interview <Andrew.Dean@bull.co.uk> 17 April 1998  9:45 >>>
>They know that they are a rarity: a band who owe their progress almost >
entirely to their own efforts and to the fact that their songs perfectly mirror
> the tribulations of a long-neglected section of the record-buying public.
> Stuart Murdoch's songs are a rallying point for the disaffected. For
> the most part his characters are burdened with awful clothes and
> physical deformities, they've been bullied and spent their lives as victims
> and yet in these songs they're treated as heroes. And for many people
> that's undoubtedly their appeal.

In a way I kind of like the way Stuart's songs are described here (the heroic
feeling one finds in our personal life, however boring or victimised), but
perhaps songs about the disaffected aren't interesting only to the
disaffected...? I guess I can like it even if I don't relate to the characters in
the songs personally - I don't always feel they're me, sometimes I just feel I
could be friends with those people...

The people in this list don't (all) seem disaffected to me... they seem
like the sort of people who could find human interest in many apparently
boring, empty characters. Am I right?

>>> NME Interview <Andrew.Dean@bull.co.uk> 17 April 1998  9:45 >>>
> we're left wondering what we can make of a group that write
> such poignant and heart-wrenching songs, but act with such incredible
> self-indulgence.
>    From afar, their success looks like a triumph for principled actions,
> up close it looks like an accident of bad behaviour. After all, here is a
> band who seem to object to doing interviews and photographs simply
> because they can't be bothered rather than because of any radical
> manifesto. It's hardly punk rock. is it? Still, that's their prerogative.

What do you listees think? Artistic statement of principles or self-indulgent
bad behaviour? A careful mix of both?

I'm going away for the weekend so unless somebody replies in the next 30
minutes, I'll be reading it next Monday morning (a nice way to start a
"working" week :-).

Pedro
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.             Listen, this is pish, I think I'll leave
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