How weird- a Belle and Sebastian concert where we didn't spend at least half the time grinding our teeth in a simmering rage over the shambolic 'oops, I forgot to plug my guitar in' type of nonsense that has characterised their shows over the past ten years. That said, the thing didn't start off very promisingly when Stuart Murdoch forgot the second line of the first song- fair enough, can happen to anyone- and then forgot the fourth line of the same song. That augured badly for a show which went on to become one of the very finest things I've ever seen.
The idea was that they would play a couple of songs first off, then they would play the classic If You're Feeling Sinister (bad title for a truly great album) in its entirety- this formed the middle section of the show and was, as expected, fragile and shimmering: the Morrissey-at-his-greatest moments of lines such as 'You only did it so that/ You could wear/ Terry underwear/ And feel the city air/ Run past your body...' melting into the so-twee-you-have-to-like-it of 'Fox in the snow/ Where do you go/ To find something you could eat?/ 'Cause the word out on the street/ Is you are starving'. Special mention goes to the stomping 'Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying' and the majestic 'Judy and the Dream of Horses'- that last one turned the show into a rock 'n' roll show for the first time that night.
An early highlight was the naive dance music of Electronic Renaissance- a really rare performance for a wee belter off the first album. The last section of the show was a compressed greatest hits type thing, which kicked off in real style with the song that it seemed most of the English crowd were there to hear, 'The Boy With the Arab Strap'. My friend Chris had heard only one song by Belle and Sebastian before this night's concert, and it was this one, which he insisted on calling 'Teachers', after the dodgy Channel 4 show for which it provided the title music. Of course, after they'd played it, that didn't satisfy Chris, who spent the rest of the night shouting for 'Teachers' in between (and during any quiet bits of) the rest of the songs. It was a pretty amazing performance of a great song though.
Final highlight of the set was 'If you Find Yourself Caught in Love', an underrated piece of sixties luminescence. By this stage, the world was a wonderful place, especially when we'd realised that the bar outside the hall, which had shut soon after B&S had come onstage, was not the only one in the venue. Happy times with Mr Grolsch ensued.
That was not the end of the good times though- passes for the aftershow party had been procured, so we hung out with the sublime blonde sisters Siobhan and Maria from London until they had to go home, and we marched onto the Spitz near Spitalfield Market, where, imagine our delight when we realised that flashing an aftershow pass meant that you didn't have to pay for drinks- that was thanks to the beautiful Bob Kildea (above, right). As always happens in such circumstances, we took a tour of the bar via any exotic spirit we could pronounce the name of, and as the night turned into morning, we ended up in the band's hotel, in the keyboard player's room, trying to behave ourselves, but doubtless being a nuisance to the clean living Belles.
The night, we know, was made for living, but as Chris and I parted at Liverpool St station at ten am, we could only murmur a little sorrowfully how quickly the time had fled and hid his face amid a crowd of stars. The day, as so often, returned too soon, but the night runs continually in the concert hall of the mind.
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