Belle And Swells

At the Ward Park concert a few weeks back, I fell into conversation with Bobby Gildea, guitarist with Belle And Sebastian and former resident of Bangor. He was back in his old haunt to see Snow Patrol and to hook up with Terri Hooley - another member of the Good Vibes home for wayward boys and girls.

We didn't really know each other well and so we chatted about local music and then riffed a little about the NME. The music mag had not been particularly kind to B&S. In particular, the writer Steve Wells had called them: "self-loving, knock-kneed, passive aggressive, dressed-up-in-kiddy-clothes, mock-pop-creepiness peddling, smug, underachieving, real-pop-hating no-talents celebrating their own inadequacy with music so white it's translucent".

We mused on the fact that Swells had been dead almost a year and that at a memorial service in London's Monarch Bar, we had watched a filmed tribute by Chumbawamba. They had read out the Belle And Sebastian critique, slowly and with feeling. It was a lovely moment and even Bobby thought this was amusing.

All this week, the Guardian online has been running unpublished blogs by Swells. I would send you a link but the language is a bit racey, y'know. But search the stuff out if you will, and marvel at the humour, the word contortions, the grandstanding, the bile and the beauty. The more we recede from such writing, the more remarkable it appears.