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Belle and Sebastian

Posted: December 21st, 2001, by Marceline Smith

hullo. I’m pished. ha. I’m still wearing a yellow plastic hairclasp that I got in a cracker at work christmas lunch today and I’m eating a finger of Fudge. I saw Belle and Sebastian last night at their Christmas Charity Do. I arrived while some people were playing cheesy keyboard covers of popular tunes while all disguised with big fluffy hats and fake moustache/glasses/nose combinations. it was fairly amusing. then this girl got up to do a speech on behalf of the anti-war campaign [one of the recipients of funds raised] and completely messed it up. Then Suckle came on. They were shambolically under-rehearsed and did all new songs but it was sounding like there was some lovely stuff going on. Once they get it together a bit more it should be fantastic. Must dig out their album on Chemikal in a minute. Then we got Alasdair Gray talking about politics again and he was even worse than the girl. Cringingly bad actually. It’s this kind of thing that gives politics a bad name. No-one’s interested in politics when some guy goes on about the collapse of Russia in the 1930s, especially not in the middle of a christmas gig. You want short sharp exciting politics. Aye.

So Belle and Sebastian finally came on and played for at least two hours. by about half way through I was feeling very old and wishing for a seat. and some slippers and a cup of tea. They were fab fun though. Most of the members did a little solo spot, singing a cover version and there was lots of fun and frolics including someone dressed as an orang-utang appearing during Isobel’s song about orang-utangs and wandering around the audience with some mistletoe collecting kisses. We also got a bunch more covers, some christmas songs [including a beee-utiful ‘Come O Come Emmanuel’] and a few top B&S hits. All jolly good fun. They also did a raffle half way through, giving out gifts donated by Chemikal Underground, Mogwai [“5 tenners in a brown paper envelope! Not much thought there!”] and B&S themselves including Isobel’s orang-utang and Stuart’s box full of extremely rare B&S stuff. Nice touch. Then they shouted for Monica Queen and she came down and they did Lazy Line Painter Jane. Aye, that was it. I might have some coffee now…



Marceline Smith

Marceline is the fierce, terrifying force behind diskant.net, laughing with disdain as she fires sharpened blades of sarcasm in all directions. Based in Scotland, her lexicon consists of words such as 'jings', 'aboot' and 'aye': our trained voice analysts are yet to decipher some of the relentless stream of genius uttered on a twenty-four hour basis. Marceline's hobbies include working too much and going out in bad weather.

http://www.marcelinesmith.com

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