Belle & Sebastian

Haha... yes. Sorry, for some reason, this story makes people jealous, so if you're prone to enraged jealousy, I'm warning you. And it's quite long...

My sister, two of my friends and I went to the first ever Melbourne concert on July the 24th this year, all hyped up and what not. It was the best concert we'd ever been to (well, for me anyway) and, being the stalkeriffic fangirls we are, we decided to lurk around the stage doors afterwards. We'd been there about twenty minutes, watching the people with after show passes going through, when my friend Lisa went and asked the security guards how you got them. She said she didn't know, and we started walking away when a fellow lurker called out to us. She said that she had four extra passes on her, and would we like them? Obviously, after I came to (just joking, I didn't actually pass out. Well, not quite) we thanked her profously and went through the stage doors.

So we found ourselves up in this narrow landing just outside the dressing rooms, where there were about fifteen people milling around. I spotted Stevie first, just standing at the top of the stairs talking to some people. When I looked at him, he caught my eye and smiled *swoon*. So we just stood there looking at him for about five minutes, before I said something like "we loved the show!" and the conversation started. We talked to him for about forty five minutes, mainly about the Beatles and other bands we all loved (would you believe that Stevie's a Strokes fan?) and just about nothing really. When I first told him that my sister and I were huge Beatles fans he got really excited and shook my quite enthusiastically (I guess he doesn't meet that many 17 year old Beatles fans) and we foudn out that his favourite Beatles song is Ticket To Ride. Somehow, he managed to coerce my sister and into singing Nowhere Man for him, though we absolutely do not sing at all...

After forty five minutes, Stuart bounded up the stairs energetically and disappeared into the dressing rooms. He reappeared a few minutes later with a drink and came to join the conversation. For about five minutes, I just stood next to him staring at him, but too shy to speak to him. We eventually did, and then he asked all our names and shook hands with us. I pointed at my sister and said "She really loves you!" which made him go red, and made Stevie cackle. After a little while, Stevie was like "Stuart! You missed it! The girls gave us a rendition of Nowhere Man. It was great!" and Stuart said "Well, if you do it again, we could do the harmonising "la la la" parts, if you want." so naturally, we started singing, with Stuart and Stevie harmonising with us... Then we asked what Stuart's favourite Beatles song was, and he was like "Well I'm not good with words, but it goes like this" and started humming Got To Get You Into My Life (this was funny because a) isn't he supposed to be the singer of band - wouldn't that mean you should remember the words? and b) he'd stuffed up so many words of the songs all night that it really didn't surprise me) and suddenly, everyone in the room was singing along.

Before Stuart went, he grabbed a pizza from the dressing room and walked past us cackling and saying "you can't have any! It's all mine!" and pointed out that it said "cheeseless" because he's allergic to cheese. I was all like "me too!!!" in a ridiculously squealing manner, and my friends, quite randomly, told him that before we came to the concert, I'd had a vegetarian pizza with no cheese. He was like "That's what I always have! Go on, have a piece. Just you. go on, take it." and force fed me his pizza (not that i really minded!). When we had to leave, Stevie gave us all hugs, and was all "Thanks for coming!", like we were doing HIM a favour... haha.

So yeah, it was one of the best nights of my life... spending an hour and a half with Belle & Sebastian. I still can't quite believe it! Throughout the whole thing, they were just treating us like we were exactly like them, which was *so* strange. They offered us alcohol and all that and it was just PERFECT. They're wonderful guys and I'll never forget any of it.