Dear Nick,
Indiepop is an international affair.
I didn't just realise that, though it would have been fitting if I had.
Then I would have been able to tell you it all happened last Friday in London. More specifically, in a restaurant in Shepherd's Bush which serves mostly Portuguese chicken, where I sat for three quarters or so trying to concentrate on my food - and failing. Rachel laughed at me as I stared out of the window, spotting people from Sweden that I know from bands and people from Scotland that I know from mailing lists and getting more and more excited as time went by. The dark and wet street that happens to be between Shepherd’s Bush tube stop and the Bush Hall suddenly seemed like the most interesting place, ever.
And when a little later I bumped on the Pipas Girl (Lupe) on my way out of the toilet, well, that convinced Shepherd’s Bush is a magical place. Or at least that it was for that night. See, earlier on the same day I had fallen asleep with the last Pipas record playing, and ever since that moment 'Golden Square' had been stuck in my head - and suddenly there I was, standing in front of the girl who sings on it. And, see, where I come from such a thing would almost never happen, because it's too far away from most of the things I like, so I felt like I was in a different dimension - even though I remembered that all it had taken to get there were a few buses, trains and a plane, and I had always thought of dimension-skipping to be harder than that. You might find that silly, but I'm only an excitable young girl with an overactive imagination and a fondness for travelling, so bear with me.
Like all stories, this too could start in at least a dozen different ways but I have decided to start it with an overnight train journey, not only because it sounds exciting but also because it was when I first listened to your mixtape. This might seem irrelevant but it is not, because two hours into said journey and halfway down the second side I fell in love with the Lucksmiths. And it was all because you had put 'Under the Rotunda' after a long series of songs that sounded more or less the same to my sleepy, untrained ears. I will never forget the moment I heard Tali launch into 'It's already Friday, and soon it will be Friday night' for what might not have been the actual first time, but certainly was the first one to make a difference. It was one of those moments when a song seems like the most perfect thing ever and like it has only ever existed for you.
It was also the reason behind me spending a big part of last Friday evening wishing I got to hear it live. And when I did - and it might have been the place's new-found magic or maybe just that it was a Friday - my heart jumped and I smiled at the perfect circle of the story I've just told you.
But things would never have happened this way if you hadn't made me that mixtape (which you called 'a tape for a Belle and Sebastian fan') if we weren't going to meet for the first time on the day of a Belle and Sebastian gig - and we could have well never got to meet at all even though we live in the same country, if it hadn't been from the boy from the Philippines who introduced us to each other and I only met him in a Belle and Sebastian chatroom anyway...
And yes - my life does revolve around Belle and Sebastian, but you know I'm trying to change this. That - and not the fact that I had booked my flights already when Belle and Sebastian announced their tour dates, no – is the reason why I decided to fly to London for the Strange Fruit Festival instead of some Belle and Sebastian concert or other. It was a tough decision and I’m trying not to regret it. Here’s a list of the reasons why. (You can also call it a list of the bands I managed not to miss.)
| This article was originally page two in the 58th issue of the Friends of the Heroes. Go to the current issue or the archive index |