Belle and Sebastian, Newcastle, Sat 28th Jan

Went down to Newcastle to (a) see Belle and Sebastian playing and (b) celebrate Soft Paul's birthday. He and a couple of mates came up from Doncaster to N'Castle. The band started well with 'State I am In', it sounded really good, clean and pure. But the sound quality seemed to deteriorate as the night went. Usual Murdoch Monologues between songs, first one he was going on about goths in N'castle being rubbish compared to Glasgow ones. The other examples of intersong banter were unintelligible mumbles, you couldny hear a word he said. The sound seemed to improve a bit but it wisny the best. Whilst doing 'Wrong Girl' Stevie dropped in a nice nod to the locals, singing 'Ah, what happened to you, whatever happened to me.' This was the theme song to a Newcastle-set sitcom in the 70's called 'The Likely Lads'. I cheered but nobody else seemed to get it. Either I'm an old codger or the audience were thick. Evidence of the latter was provided by some daft Geordie who kept shouting 'Stewy! Stewy!' at the top of his voice. Perhaps he wanted to profess his undying for Mr Murdoch.
Bounced around a couple of bars after the gig before heading back to the hotel. Good nightlife it has to be said, one bar (Tokyo?) had a nice triangular outdoor terrace accessed from the first floor - it was actually the gap between the surrounding buildings, they had two huge sails suspended over the area to provide a bit of shelter. Nice touch.
Drove back up on the Sunday via the East coast, beautiful sunshiny day. Stopped at the Lindisfarne / Holy Isle crossing but the water was rushing in to cover the causeway.