Apologies to anyone who wanted to, you know WRITE, about this subject. We couldn’t find anyone on the internet who was interested. In fact, for the life of us we’re not even sure how this entry managed to get this high in the list. We suspect an orchestrated internets campaign on USENET.
What’s the deal with Belle and Sebastian? Loads of people idolise them, perhaps as many despise them. I’ve always just heard pleasant but inessential indie-pop with catchy-ish tunes and fairly lame vocals (though I get that it’s kind of the point), sometimes merry, sometimes wistful but never, to these ears, exciting. “Like The Beatles if they’d all been Paul” is how I once, snidely, dismissed them. This isn’t a ‘why bother with wimpy indie-pop’, I get why people dig that, but why their wimpy indie-pop over anyone else’s?
2 May 2008
#389, 2nd June 1976 I was aware of this song long before I heard it – as a young boy it was quoted at me by my Dad should I ever object to tidying my room. Since my room was rarely tidy, I became very familiar with the central notion of “No Charge”. Like my Dad, I […]
24 Dec 1999
Low’s Christmas tree is a simple one, with eight plain wooden baubles. The band write four tracks themselves, offer interpretations of two carols and crooners’ favourite “Blue Christmas”, and nobody’s bothered to take credit for “Taking Down The Tree” (but it sounds like one of Low’s own). The record is packaged – beautifully – like […]
12 Mar 2010
People in the Popular comments boxes are talking about “the canon”. I’m always quite curious as to which bits of the canon have ‘taken’ with a broadly pop-positive audience such as we have here. So here’s a poll, very easy to fill in, just say which of the Top 50 albums OF ALL TIME EVER […]
24 Jan 2010
Here at Freaky Trigger we have realised that January has been a bit slow with output. A new year can put new strains upon our writers and what with Tom’s Guardian column and me embarking on a year without cinema, pickings have been slim. What was needed was something that would galvanise all the writers, […]
21 May 2012
#1976, 21st May 2012 Huge weepy thanks to Bob, Pete and Sarah for immortalising us in song. And thanks to commenters past and present for making it worth immortalising. 10
1 Jan 2002
British Bubblegum Pop 1968-1972 “Sunday morning, up with the lark, I think I’ll take a walk in the park, Hey hey hey, it’s a beautiful day …” Daniel Boone, “Beautiful Sunday”, 1972 British bubblegum pop, circa 1968-1972 – as distinct from its more worldly and sophisticated American equivalent – is a pure insight into a […]
30 Dec 2005
#222, 20th August 1966 DIGRESSION: For Christmas I got Never Had It So Good, the first part of Dominic Sandbrook’s huge new history of Britain in the sixties. Here’s what he says about the project: “This book seeks to rescue ‘from the enormous condescencion of prosperity’…the lives of the kind of people who spent the […]
Best post ever.
Apologies to anyone who wanted to, you know WRITE, about this subject. We couldn’t find anyone on the internet who was interested. In fact, for the life of us we’re not even sure how this entry managed to get this high in the list. We suspect an orchestrated internets campaign on USENET.
This song is great, I’m sure I voted for it. I last heard it playing in Starbucks and they cut the song just before the word “wanks”.
Presumably they don’t know what an arab strap is otherwise they’d forego the whole song. FWIW this is my favourite Belle & Sebastian song.
No, Punka was robbed.
What’s the deal with Belle and Sebastian? Loads of people idolise them, perhaps as many despise them. I’ve always just heard pleasant but inessential indie-pop with catchy-ish tunes and fairly lame vocals (though I get that it’s kind of the point), sometimes merry, sometimes wistful but never, to these ears, exciting. “Like The Beatles if they’d all been Paul” is how I once, snidely, dismissed them. This isn’t a ‘why bother with wimpy indie-pop’, I get why people dig that, but why their wimpy indie-pop over anyone else’s?
Which Steps song was in contention?
It was the Best Newcomer award wasn’t it? Rather than an award based on an individual song? Or is my memory playing tricks on me?