Lazy Line Painter Jane

Dear James,

I was just thinking about Belle and Sebastian the other day. I thought of posting something on here, but when I did a search for them on youtube I didn't recognise any of the songs they offered me. Of course, the last album of theirs I bought was Boy With The Arab Strap in 1998. I didn't get the feeling I'd missed much in the meantime. Then just now I saw an article in the usual place about Stuart Murdoch's new girl band project. No doubt you've already seen this, I know you go the Culture pages first while I make a self-conscious attempt to read the politics before sloping off to the football pages, making my way to the Culture only come the evening, when I've run out of other things to do and remembered such pages existed.

So the girls' voices on the interview bit sounded nice so I thought it might make a nice post. Sadly, the finished effort, Como Monday Night, strikes me at times as a mix of the same old charty gush and something that sounds like it would sound worse if Belle and Sebastian recorded it. It has some nice notes, but nothing can relieve the 90 seconds of cheese that precedes the song and other cheesy tricks in between. So I'm posting Lady Line Painter Jane instead, and remembering when it used to instantly remind me of my bedroom furniture in fourth year, but now no longer does, but now probably will having written that. It has a cheesy video too.

Suffer For Fashion

Of Montreal - New Music - More Music Videos

Dear Daniel,

Since you posted before The Christmas Of Barbeques, I have been mulling over my songs of the year. And, well, I have a shortlist. But it all exists in my head at the moment and since I've promised to write to you in this way tonight and not delay delay delay I shall have to do something different with the songs of 2008 and spread them out over various messages to you. Everyone's a winner.

Well, it's the new year. I don't usually put much effort into resolutions (neither the construction of nor the subsequent crashing failure to achieve) but this year I've decided to get out to some more gigs. More bands than ever are getting into vans and driving up and down the country (which is one reason we decided not to in 2008) but I've seen fewer than ever before. And so to Of Montreal's Suffer for Fashion which I think may have been one of my tracks of 2008 (time is passing really quickly - it may have been a track of 2007) and which I would very much like to seek out live in 2009.

Something you may not know about me is that I'm a big fan of the Elephant 6 collective. Ever since you left me for a year and I had to set up a radio station to fill my time. That's when I discovered and played the Olivia Tremor Control's Jumping Fences to everyone eating in The Park. Unfortunately for them, I didn't know how to operate the studio desk and was also playing bits of Dog On Wheels by Belle and Sebastian to them as I tried to line that song up, ready to play next. I'm better than that now. Of Montreal have strong links to those 90s psych fellows and it shows.

Dear James,

It's growing on me that one. But reading Bill Drummond has had a similar effect on me as listening to Coldplay for the first time: is this all we can do with guitars and drums? Maybe the rest of The Scroops songs should avoid using all these things, but then we'd be left with a very twee album of ukuleles and melodicas.

Do tell us more about Elephant6. Last year I went to a grand total of one gig (or three if I include friends' bands), so I'm obliged to say that Kaiser Chiefs was the best band I saw live last year. Maybe I should get out more too.

Mad Dogs and Englishman

Dear James,
Let it not be said that this blog is a sad 70s throwback by two middle-aged men trying desperately to be ironic by pretending to like dodgy MOR tunes which they actually do like because they crossed the fine line of irony many years ago and are now clinging onto a vinyl copy of Tigermilk as their last shred of musical credibility. I've heard people say that about this blog.

No, this blog can also be a sad 50s throwback too, and who better for our first glimpse of the days when people wore dinner suits for light entertainment television and talked proper than that staunch heterosexualist, Noël Coward. I'm only pretending to like him because Freddie Mercury was compared to him so often. But look at how fast he sings! He's like Eminem in a tux.

Some interesting facts about Coward I cribbed off Wikipedia:
-He was a spy and in the Nazis' Black Book. That's their book of people to kill, not to be confused with their Red Book of hot flings from their decadent Weimar days.
-His chum George VI tried to knight him but Churchill blocked it because he thought Coward was a bit of a whoopsy. Has Graham Norton been knighted yet? No. And it's all that homophobe Blair's fault.
-Peter Collinson, Italian Job director, was an orphan at The Actors' Orphanage, of which Noël Coward was president.
-Noël Coward's neighbour in Jamaica was Ian Fleming.
-The Doctor Who novel "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" features a version of Coward who has allied himself with alien poodles and gained time travel technology. I wish I'd made that up, but apparently it's true.

Dear Daniel,

You'll have to shoulder that confidence-crisis yourself. I take no responsibility for the massive splurge of 70s nonsense for which Genesis was the, er, genesis. And bearing in mind I'm pretty sure something's going to get me by the time I'm fifty, I was middle aged at 25. I'm currently sliding pleasantly towards dotage.

I know virtually nothing about Noel Coward, beyond him being wonderful in the Italian Job. And the chorus to this. I didn't realise it was quite such a performance piece. It really only just manages to stay clear of rampant xenophobia, tricking you into thinking it's a harmless, self-effacing jibe at the niavity of Imperial toffs and at the same time slipping in a few stereotypes and ubba-jubba laffs at African dialects like a street magician with a charming smile who's secretly going for your wallet.

Eminem in a tux indeed.