Belle & Sebastian

Oh wow. The Belle & Sebastian gig last night was one of the best I've ever been to. Definitely in the top 10 - and considering how many gigs I go to, that's really saying something.

To begin with, there was the line-up - B&S were supported by speedstar*, one of my favourite BrisBands at present.

Then there was the company - I went with the the Dendy guy and we got there early to have a couple of drinks before the bands started. He is such a nice person. And easy to talk to. *smiles*

And the crowd - this must have been one of the nicest crowds I've ever seen at a sold out gig. I was up the top balcony and I'm not sure what it was like down in the "mosh pit" down the front, but there seemed to be a lack of pushing and shoving which was nice. Even the crowd at the bar were nice. And, considering that the gig was almost sold out before speedstar* were announced as the support, so probably most of the crowd had never heard of them, there were plenty of cheers and prolonged clapping at the end of the songs, and attention paid to the band during their songs (no loud conversations happening).

speedstar* were a really good mesh for B&S - similar in the sense that they are both pop-based and the vocals are very pretty, but more guitar driven and less gentle. I decided last night that they remind me a little bit of Cordrazine. And the drummer reminds me of Huggy Boy, a friend of mine from ages ago - so named because he gives those great wrap around hugs, not the awkward pat-pat sort of hugs that most guys do. Anyway, off that and back to the band. They mostly did stuff from Forget the Sun and a couple of the popular songs from Bruises - along with a cover of a Smiths song that I just loved. The Dendy guy was impressed by them as well.

Considering that I only have 2 of B&S's fairly vast discography of CDs, I was pretty impressed that I knew maybe 80% of the songs and they played all of my favourites. They are so melodious live - most bands seem to lose a bit live compared with their recordings, but I think these guys are better live. They also have a lot of energy on stage, and are true entertainers - making jokes and telling stories between songs. And of course, those accents... mmmmm...

They got 3 girls up on stage to do the percussion at one stage and 2 girls up for the last song to sing the verses. Biggest surprise there was that the 2 girls at the end had Aussie accents as I would have placed bets that the first couple of rows in front of the stage were all Brits.

I ran into a couple of friends there, which was a bit of a surprise as I hadn't known they were going. Bought the shirt of course. There were actually two and I liked the black one best, but they only had boy's sizes and the boy's small was huge, so I got the white one instead.

I left the gig walking on air. Part of that was probably the 3 beers I'd had without dinner, but most of it was the gig. And I think the Dendy guy likes me. Danced around my room for about 1/2 hour like a teenager before I could settle down and go to sleep.

So of course, today I'm absolutely buggered. But it was SO worth it!

Mum

As I was writing my update to yesterday's blog entry, I hit a realisation about the arguments I've been having with my Mum lately.

Mum's not really been herself since she and Dad moved house about 14 months ago - they'd been in their old house for about 20 years, so it was a big change for her. She's a lot more disapproving of my sister-in-law for starters. And she's still not organised in their new place and seems to lose things on a fairly regular basis. These two points are the cause of most of our arguments - she complains about being so disorganised and I offer to help or make suggestions about how she might be able to fix it. She complains about my sister-in-law and I try to see both sides of the tale. What I realised though is that the reason it often ends in argument is that I feel that she dismisses my opinion without even considering it.

Intellectually, I know that this is probably not true. I know that my Mum values my opinion and suspect that the reason she's getting narky is because she probably just wants to complain and not hear solutions. But I feel protective of her and can't seem to stop wanting to help. And then, because she's getting narky at me and trying to shut me down, I feel that she's dismissing my opinion.

So anyway, thinking it will help to head-off future arguments if I explain my realisation (and she usually WANTS me to tell her these things), I whip off an email to her last night before I headed off for B&S. I thought I had worded it fairly carefully - this is how I feel, not this is what you do... that sort of thing. But apparently she must have got pretty upset, because I received a pretty terse little email from my Dad this morning basically saying that she is how she is, she's not going to change, and that I shouldn't be telling her these things because they upset her and then her Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (aka Lupus) flares up. And of course, it's all my fault.

So now I'm crying at work. And I hate crying. Especially in public. And most especially at work where I'm supposed to behave professionally. Thank god I don't have any meetings today and can just bury myself in desk work.

I've sent an email back to my Dad explaining what I was trying to do (i.e. not hurt her!) and asking that they don't phone me for a couple of days. I just don't think I could take it right now.

Listening to: 2 compilations R in London burnt for me of "catchy" and "lyrical" songs