kontextmaschine:

The Welfare State They Were In

Huh, that’s a point, while American “alternative” was significantly a shift to music by college graduates for suburbanites, Belle and Sebastian came out of the Scottish welfare state.

You will remember Trainspotting was a movie about a bunch of petty criminal heroin addicts who always have somewhere to sleep, even if there is a dead baby hallucination on the ceiling. Thatcher cut back but she left the “dole” as a buffer for the surplus population, even as gestures were made towards a future of new leisure careers.

On the other hand I don’t think it’s possible to write a better dismissive summary of that whole milieu than “Micah Uetricht attempts to hitch the welfare state to fondness for Belle and Sebastian”. Maybe if it had run in n+1.

Just got how Belle and Sebastian’s “Piazza, New York Catcher” was really burlesquing the idea of Mike Piazza being for New York City queers what Sandy Koufax had been for New York City Jews

In the 2000s Belle and Sebastian was

1) kind of my icon of past used-to-be cool, like in the 90s I read SPIN and even knew they were a thing and before Pitchfork that used to be enough

2) the first touring band I’ve seen live twice, both in LA, once at the Wiltern and once at the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Phil