Review of Belle & Sebastian: Fans Only (2003) by Christopher C — 23 Apr 2012

FANS ONLY is a celebration of Belle and Sebastian's years signed to the Jeepster label, 1996-2002. For committed fans of the Scottish twee rock group, this offers a glimpse of their earliest efforts. The frustrating part is that so much of the DVD consists of handheld camera footage shot by band members themselves of things like parks, city streets, etc. which have no relation to music. Still, there are a number of clips from the studio, and of band members introducing themselves. Chris Geddes turns out to be a lot more of an anorak than I could have imagined, while the grandmotherliness and humility of Sarah Martin never fails to warm my heart. While I've always preferred that Stuart Murdoch stay in the spotlight as far as songwriting is concerned, it's nonetheless nice to see them here as individuals and not just instrumental parts behind Stuart's voice on a record.

The professional footage only comes fairly late in Belle and Sebastian's career, starting with the 1999 Brit Awards where the band infamously won Best Newcomer due to campaigning by their small but avid fanbase. The band were so sure they weren't going to win that only two of them went to the award show, and Mick Cooke is caught on camera afterwards saying that he only came to get autographs from some more famous people. There's a long clip, the longest on the DVD, where the band appears on a Brazilian late night television show for an amusing interview and musical performance. The band is also showing performing a song in French in Paris in 1998, "The Boy with the Arab Strap" at the 2002 Coachella Festival, a song in Portuguese at Rio's Free Jazz Festival, "I'm Waking Up to Us" from UK television, and "The State that I'm In" from Glastonbury 2002. Besides this, there are somewhat disorienting successions of 2-second clips from various live appearances.

A number of the band's music videos are shown: "A Century of Fakers", "Dog on Wheels", "Lazy Line Painter Jane", "This is Just a Modern Rock Songs", "Legal Man", "Is It Wicked Not to Care", "The Wrong Girl" and "Jonathan David". However, this DVD is emphatically not a typical compendium of music videos, as not all are shown full-length.

If you don't know anything about Belle and Sebastian already, you'll be lost watching this DVD. It really is for fans only. Still, in spite of its flaws I'm happy I watched it.