James morgan explores with stuart murdoch about the eternal mysteries of the Belle and Sebastian album covers..........................

Sebastian was excited. He was planning a treasure hunt for a wee place up north, the townwhere his band were playing their next gig.. He'd found an old book of the local landmarks he might put in the trail. His mind was racing. The excitemenet consumed him so much that he was quite oblivious to the busy pub full of young west end hipsters watchinghim from across the crowded pub, and the eyes of the old portrait paintings staring down at him from the walls around. It was the pub with the gaelic name. styled like a foosty old man pub, which was why the hipsters liked it so much.

Suddenly, Sebastian's reverie was interrupted. One of the young hipsters bounced over to introduce himself. The boy grinned at Sebastian. He had a glint in his eye. His clothes were deliberately ragged: part charity shop, part jumble sale, and he spoke with infectious enthusiasm. He offered Sebastian a whisky. Sebastian couldn't say no.

The boys friends joined them and the drinking began. After their way along the row of whiskies, the conversation sparkled and the treasure hunt was quickly forgotten. By the end of the night, Sebastian found himself back their flat, drinking cheap whisky and listening to old funk records until the dawn crept up. Sebastian felt as ragged as the clothes the boys wore. He made to leave. The hipsters clamoured for him to stay but he made his excuses. The boys agreed to let him go, but as he left, they offered him a video. Sebastian glanced down at the cover. It looked completely ridiculous, but the boys insisted and it was the only way he could escape, so he reluctantly agreed. Just As he was leaving, a girl arrived at the flat. Immediately he was struck by how attractive she was. She smiled and introduced herself. Shantha. Sebastian grinned sheepishly and tried to hide the video cassette under his jacket. He lmade his excuses and left, passing the BMX bikes on his way out of the dim spiral staircsae into the bright morning air.

The next day, Sebastian awoke to find the video cassette lying on his bedisde table. He laughed in disbelief. The film was called 'The Erotic Witch Project.' He watched the first few minutes. It was about a group of students who went exploring in the woods, only to find their clothes started mysteriously falling off. It was funny for a moment, but when they turned into lesbians, Sebastian felt too silly to continue. He groaned as he tried to remember where the hipsters' flat had been. It was no use. He stuffed the video in a cupboard and struggled to the kitchen to make a cup of Earl Grey tea, wondering whether these sorts of things happen anywhere other than the West End of Glasgow.

Weeks passed. Sebastian forgot all about the porn video and the drunken hipsters. His band were about to begin recording their new album and he was getting excited. Of course, the album cover would need designing. He usually took the sleeve photographs himself and this time he had a specific idea in mind. It was all to do with one of the songs. 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress.' He imagined it over long cups of tea in his favourite café, the one with the windows

And the original catastrophe waitress?

"I never used to go the Grosvenor on Saturday. It was too busy: families and screaming kids. But I was there, one afternoon. A new girl had just started working and she was upsettign a lot of folk. She dropped a big tray of breakfast right over a group of old people. I was carnage: people screaming! I went to the toilet and wrote her this wee note, which became the words to the song. 'Dear catastrophe waitress, I'm sorry that you've got the weight of the world on your shoulders. But I like your style…' That kinda thing. I suppose it was vaguely a chat up note. I gave the note to one of the other girls to give to her. At least, I hope she gave it to her because I never saw her again. As far as I know, she quit the job right after that shift."I mean fuck it, sometimes you write someone a wee message and they kinda like it. Some people think that stuff's weird but back then I suppose I was fuckin nutty enough that I would do stuff like that. It's not as if I had much sorta going on.

The words from the note developed into a song, a collection of charming west end calamities. The catastrophe girfriend, the catastrophe grandson, or as Murdooch puts it "people who were not very good at what they claimed to be, which is kinda common in the West End. I the old days, the West End was wher people like me washed up, people who didn't have jobs and wouldn't have jobs. A real mad mix of people. It's less common now, people seem to have got their shit together" he fiddles with his laptop, drinking designer coffee and enjoyinng the wireless internet connection, Murdoch has washed up in a very good spot since the good old days of Tigermilk. But the progress is carefully hidden by the false modesty of the Catastrophe waitress album covers, which remain as curiously lo-fi as they were in the Tigermilk era.

In their nascent period, the band were raely photographed, creating a mystery as a charming as Murdoch's tour treasure hunts. The focus was drawn away from the band onto the strangely alluring girls on their Belle and Sebastian covers. Blurred images of WesteEnd girls, cropped and filtered to look more like early german cinema reels.

Doorway into Like the worried misfits characetrs in the songs, the covers told tales of Fogures who are very real, yet with enough distance to set a record colector wondering who they were and why they were gazing so melancholy. "I should bloody think so!The opposite of iconic? Murdoch agrees. Let's smash the icons right now. "With Tigermilk, at fiurst I t was Joanne, pi I think we'd broken up by that point.. We got a friedn to do it, but I thought this doesn't look much like a sleeve. We used to wander about thye west end together and I'd take pictures of her in lots of different situations. I thought, I could do better myself. So I stuck her in the bath. We thought we were being quite risque. I mean, you coiuldn't take that picture unless you had a level of intimacy with the person. It was fun collaborating - do a cheeky we sleeve and then stick ot on the album cover. She was up for it. But she always complained I never took a pretty picture of her, not even the album cover."

The sleeves became a chance for Murdoch to craft an identity for the group, through photgraphy and the stories hidden insid. LikeJim, the boy who liked to make posters for concerts that would never happen.and sleeves for records which never existed. By the time the second album If You're Feeling Sinister, came out, Murdoch could now live out a few of the creative fantasies he daydreamtedof in his lazy washed up years, with the friends who had seen him when songwriting seemed a hopeless pursuit.

"That one came about by chance. My best friend Keira, was upset one night, she's quite unwell so she's in bed most of the time, but there was something ABOUT THE light in the room, I just wanted to take a photo. I came back the next day and we shot it just the same, the copy of Kafka's The Trial that her Dad had boought her at the Barra's. She'd been with me when I started writing songs and felt it was hopeless