oh...i did try and answer everything at once...honest..i'll shut up after this one. lesley:
NO you silly monkey. isobel does not give you stomach ache. i've never taken st johns wort. all i know is it's sposedta make you fuzzy and happy.
well, sort of. it made me manic too. and almost euphoric if i drank at the same time. perhaps that fits the metaphor better. i'll say nothing about isobel being covered in a thin coating of gelatin and put in a plastic container with a piece of cotton wool. oh..too late.
it probably doestn', but it's the thought that counts. and i CLEARLY said "or whatever" which, in that gen-x hipster moronic fashion, grants automatic er, flexibility to whatever it qualifies, leaving you free to withdraw anything stupid you may have said or anything you have doubts about, or if you're just too SOFT to make a flat statement boldly.
right. a clever conversational device which i shall endeavour to remember :) anyway. isobel does
not make sick. it makes you feel fuzzy, like sitting out on a grassy hill and making daisy chains and drawing pictures of horses. OR getting down to kinky love in a mirrored chevy van. either one.
can i get the cd cheaper on the internet anywhere? anybody know? and how much is the cassette? i ask because i bought TBWTAS cd for 13 quid from tower and then saw the tape for a fiver in hmv. not that i'm tight-fisted or anything :)
someone said Hesse should be read.
oh, that would have been me again :) and we have a fellow fan called justin out there. anybody else? i've only read uh DEMIAN, on
recommendation of a pseudo-lady love of mine, but it was bloody amazing. bollocks. it's totally fabulous. that should be on our sinister reading club too. it will blow your mind.
i want to be in the book club if it happens. i haven't read demian, but steppenwolf is one of the best books i've ever read. the man's writing style is amazing.
i hear Hesse is lumped with the beat(off) generation, but i found nothing in common >with bukowski orkerouac. very spiritual. or maybe he's supposed to have inspired >the beats? well fuck the beats. i'm sorry, but really.
i see no similarity between hesse and kerouac. hesse definitely inspired timothy leary. which makes him quite a sound fellow in my book. Well i'm not saying belle and sebby are vapid. but
these days--so much emphasis on cmoputers, and having messages, and conveying the brutality and nature of society. there's comment in their music certainly, but overall it just throws aside any seeking to be "modern" or avant-garde, or shocking. reactionary? i dont know.
no, i don't think they're reactionary. the insistence on a melody shouldn't be labelled as reactionary. or if it is, only in the sense that writing books in a recognisable language is reactionary. although they don't widen the scope of what can be defined as "music", and they aren't pushing back generic barriers (which frankly is a load of bollocks anyway..i mean "trip hop" indeed..."a fusion of rap, dance, jazz, whatever label you like to throw at it"...well, what exactly did that achieve then?) they're doing what they do damn well, without following any prescribed musical fashion. to me, there's only so far the avant garde can go. we've had yoko screaming her way through "plastic ono band" (twenty years ago)....we've had trent reznor and his clicking noises and scrapey sounds that he says constitute music (and i'm not denying the man's ability) and they're probably right. in the same way that manzoni canning his own shit and selling it as "art" was right. but they've made the point. after that, to a large extent, you're just going to be treading the paths of people before you. although there's nothing wrong in that. bjork seems to manage it without sounding hackneyed, but she's not as ground breakingly original as people like to paint her. to quote chumbawamba in their pre-sell-out days "pour me another double cliche you can't write a song that's never been sung" maybe that's a bit defeatist. although its an excellent excuse for sampling. but eventually you have to go back to music for music's sake...not to say that its got to vanish up its own arse...the swaggering anthems of the manics spring to mind ("yeah...its about the spanish civil war...how noone cared" really? i can't imagine why) that would be reactionary. and its worrying that the likes of catatonia, stereophonics and the manics are being pushed as some sort of example of innovative music with their made-for-stadium rock with occasionally observant lyrics. wow...i'm beginning to sound like i've vanished up my own arse, what i was really trying to say is that belle and sebastian seem to be exploring their own way within an established framework. they're not posturing as musical revolutionaries, but so often it seems that the musical revolutionaries were only posturing all along (remember the sex pistols' reunion?). what they are doing is turning out songs that connect with people. they are one of the few bands that can engage my mind whilst making me feel smiley inside. and just by doing so they're making a statement. add to this the fact that they make music for people who wobble somewhere between non-conformity and extinction (speaking solely for myself, of course :) ) and they're serving far more of a social purpose than any new romantic ever did. i mean, could duran duran really have staked a claim to being anything other than a bunch of posturing tossers? but maybe you're all thinking the same thing about me. and i have rambled somewhat and gone WAY off my original intention for this email. so i'll just go and have that cup of tea now and shut my face :) ian +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the reborn Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". WWW: http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "jelly-filled danishes" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+