If you had such a dream, would you get up and do the things you believe in?

Way back in the mists of time, before there was ever an Arctic Monkeys, oh, just under a decade ago, there was a Brit Award for Best Newcomer that didn't turn out quite as expected, thanks to a bit of fan-rallying on the interweb. The hot favourites for 1999 were Steps, who were protegés of Pete Waterman, the 'Hit Man' himself who'd introduced the world to Rick Astley, Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue. But the winners on the night were an obscure (ish) indie band from Glasgow called Belle and Sebastian.

Waterman cried foul, perhaps not without some justification: at the time of the awards, the winning 'newcomers' were in the studio working on their third album. They were so sure they wouldn't win that they sent their drummer and trumpet player 'down' to London, so that they could at least have the chance to schmooze a bit and maybe guzzle some free champagne.

With a bit of hindsight, a marketing mind as adroit as Waterman's must have seen the demographic inevitability of this: B&S were an indie band, beloved of students, who would have been more likely to have internet access (especially back then), while Steps fans were probably out buying clothes, or alcopops, or sitting around in tanning salons, or something.

The indie kids went online and voted en masse for their favourites, and lo and behold: an obscure band on a minor independent label were surprised in the studio by a Scottish news team looking not so much like award winners as maybe small furry nocturnal animals who'd been spooked by a flashlight. The violinist lamented that her mum would be mad at her for not going down to the ceremony and putting on a nice dress; the keyboard player expressed utter bemusement, and the guitarist kept throwing things at the TV, on which the awards ceremony was playing. A nice, refreshingly ordinary wee bunch of boys and girls.

It all turned out okay in the end. The following year, the Brits introduced a new award for Best-Selling Most Awesomest Popstars In The Universe Ever, or some such, and Steps won hands down. Such was the enormity of their achievement that the award was immediately retired after that, so that history will remember Steps as the only ever winners. (And that's about all they'll be remembered for.)

A few years later, Belle and Sebastian signed a major label deal and decided that they'd make an album with a Real Producer at last.

Someone with a real proven pedigree in the pop charts.

Someone who'd produced guaranteed, epoch-defining smash hits.

Someone who wasn't Pete Waterman.

So Trevor Horn, the man behind Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Propaganda, tAtU, the man who gave us Seal, the man who'd made "hip-hopera" fusion records with Malcolm McLaren, the man who Replaced Jon Anderson In Yes forcryingoutloud... the man who gave us The Buggles... manned the boards for Belle and Sebastian's major label debut. (Well, it was Rough Trade...)

In some quarters, the indie kids wept and gnashed their teeth. What were they doing, making proper sounding pop records when they should have been enabling the lifestyles of arrested adolescent hipsters everywhere? They were even sticking in Thin Lizzy bits... what was going on?

Belle and Sebastian were growing up, is what was going on. They were playing the same music, but it now sounded much brighter and punchier, as though a fresh pair of ears was subjecting every note to careful scrutiny and putting everything in the right place so that it worked more effectively, which was exactly what was going on.

Not so long ago, I was browsing the racks of the local emporium when I came across the band's DVD. It looked interesting, it was reasonably priced and I had enough disposable income (that weekend) to spring for it. The cover of the DVD said "Fans Only", though, which gave me pause. I liked some of the band's stuff, but did that really make me a fan? I mean, fans are people who play records over and over again. They sit in coffee bars with other fans talking about the band incessantly. They nick setlists after gigs. They choose their friends according to who likes "their" band and who doesn't.

Unfair of course. That definition of "fan" is based on my own stereotype. And the fact is, even though I never considered myself a "fan", over the years I've found myself defending the music of Belle and Sebastian to anyone who puts them down. But it's not as though they haven't produced music that I can't stand. They have done this, and they have done it, oh, several times. When I'm Waking Up To Us came out, for instance, I figured that B&S were finished as a band, and that they knew it. Why else would they put out a song with a bright, snappy arrangement, a catchy melody, and what sounded like the most whiningly adolescent, self-pitying post-breakup lyrics ever?

It was almost as though they were trying to sabotage their career, to take themselves apart in public as a final self-destructive statement, much like the Beatles did with Let It Be, or the way drag artists smear their makeup when they finish the act. (I was wrong. IWUTU is a fine track, and you just have to take the lyrics with a pinch of salt. It's a pithy and funny examination of the bitchy and ill-considered things people say when they break up, is all.)

The truth is, it took me many years to stop worrying and love the Belle and Sebastian band. Bear in mind that most people I know who like the group like their newer stuff, the post-Jeepster, post Trevor Horn, "frog in my throw-it" stuff, and are glad they grew out of those wispy-sounding old indie records that I sometimes play them.

And they have a point. By some trick of time, or of the marketplace, or a bit of both, or maybe just inevitable maturation, Belle and Sebastian have become a very different band since they left Jeepster Records. Some fans welcome this, some don't; some would sooner sit around and listen to Tigermilk over and over again. (Personally, my own choice would have been If You're Feeling Sinister, but then I'm not a "fan", am I?)

At whatever stage of their career, though, the band has made the most of the fact that they're a unique blend of different, equaly cardinal, personalities. The band's titular leader, Stuart Murdoch, does most of the singing and writes (or originates) the bulk of the material, but in terms of the group he is merely playing the "singer-songwriter instrument", in the same was as Stevie Jackson plays the "rootsy-guitarist instrument", or Sarah Martin the "quiet but effective multi-instrumentalist" instrument.

Fans Only, anyway, is a DVD retrospective of the band's Jeepster years, from the Dog On Wheels EP (when the band consisted only of the two Stuarts, trumpeter Mick Cooke and some session players) through to the Storytelling album (which was nominally a soundtrack album, though most of it was never used in the film). And you know what? It's quite a lot of fun. You get the snappy pop singles like Legal Man and you get the early, funny stuff - flickery, studenty looking films with a lot of gooning around and acting silly. In those far-off early days, Belle and Sebastian didn't do interviews or press photos. People assumed they were a male/female duet or maybe just a bunch of students having a laugh.

The official tracklisting of the DVD gives you the impression that it's a roughly chronological compendium of the band's videos; this is a cruel and callous trick. What you really get is a deftly put together cut-and-paste documentary of the band's career, including bits from an early BBC documentary, TV appearances (that Brit awards thing in full) and vignettes from the band's various tours, all in between (yes) the promotional videos. Sometimes there's a rude, home-movie feel to it, or even (gasp) the very occasional song you may not like, but overall, it's a film to sit down and watch all the way through; it tells a tale.

Before your very eyes, watch keyboard player Chris Geddes transform from a gangly bespectacled chap into a fully fledged Monster Soul DJ! See cellist Isobel Campbell change from a cute indie schoolgirl with a floppy dog into a self-assured and capable arranger, performer and filmmaker (she directed quite a few of these vids). Tremble in amazement as Bowlie bard Stuart Murdoch transmogrifies, before your very eyes, from a bookish church warden into a gunslinging groupie magnet, while managing to look Exactly The Same! Thrill as snooker ace Richard Colburn swaps his cue for a pair of drumsticks and a bowl of pasta and chicken soup surprise! Most of all (in my own case), yelp with delight as guitarist Stevie Jackson makes an amazing job of the Beach Boys' Darlin' in front of an ampitheatre full of sundazed Coachella concertgoers...

Fans Only follows the group from their earliest incarnation as a self-described "product of botched capitalism" to a bona-fide hit making machine in their own right, and by the time the closing credits roll you realise you've been following the story of this band for almost two hours. Depending on your temperament, you may even want to do it again. For a band who've never really been too concerned with pushing themselves out in front or drawing too much attention to themselves, they've managed to carve out their own niche in the world of popular musicianry, and good on them for it. Watching Fans Only feels like cheering on your local team, even if you come from half a world away.

The Void on celluloid...

Control, the movie about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, who took his life in 1979, came out last year, and guess which lazy blogger is only getting around to writing about it now?

As befits a film with photographer/video-tician Anton Corbijn at the helm, Control looks fantastic, especially the "live" footage. Musically it's something of a (pleasant) surprise too. The actors actually play their instruments reasonably well, and while they're no Joy Division, they come as close as you could ever get to evoking the spirit of the band in performance. Some of it is based closely on clips of the original band, playing live and on TV, and a lot of work obviously went into these very impressive sequences. And yes, it is in black and white, like many of Corbijn's great rock photos were back in the day.

Control is based on Touching From A Distance, Deborah Curtis' memoir of life with her late husband. The book itself was guileless and honest, and the movie has something of that tone. Unlike the book, though, Corbijn also draws on others' memories of the Joy Division years, so the portrayal of all that boys-on-the-road stuff, as well as Ian Curtis' affair with Belgian journalist Annik Honoré, is a bit better fleshed out.

It's interesting to compare this with the first half of 24 Hour Party People, which treated of the rise of Joy Division and Curtis' untimely suicide with less depth but great economy, and a certain amount of black humour. Control for its part tends to focus on romance and relationships. It reminds me more than a little of Walk The Line, which was more love-story-told-with-real-characters-and-based-loosely-on-real-events than straightforward biopic, but quite effective for all that.

This movie is clearly aimed at a younger audience, the sort of people who buy records by modern bands who've been namechecking Joy Division and Curtis as an influence. And why not? Control tells the tale with exactly the right balance of sympathy and objectivity, humour and honesty.

I really didn't expect to like this, but it was well worth watching. Like I say, it's a seriously good-looking film, with enough substance to justify all the pretty pictures. And if it gets a new generation into the music of Joy Division, then I for one will be very happy indeed.

I was not so happy about Once, directed by former Frames bass guitarist John Carney, which is only just out (though I managed to get hold of a preview copy last year). It features Frames lead singer Glenn Hansard (who first appeared on cinema screens as Outspan in The Commitments) and Czech songstress Markéta Irglova in a sort of musical romantic tale set on the streets of Dublin's fair city. I expected to like it - I've seen it several times now, and really tried to like it, but I'm sorry, it just left a bad taste.

I'm not a big fan of the Frames' music, though I do admire them for the fact that they've survived as a band despite all the begrudgery and sheer malice they've had to endure in their native land. The kind of spite that would be more properly levelled at, say, that other Dublin band, the one whose name consists of a letter followed by a number...

Anyhoo, Hansard plays a street busker and Irglova a flower-girl (awww) who also turns out to be a pianist. They bond over her broken vacuum cleaner, which he mends (that's his day job, y'see). Then they get to know each other and help each other out musically. And, well, that's about it.

Maybe I'm being too hard on this movie, but what is all the fuss about? Do Seppoes think they have, like, totally cute accents and stuff?

It's not that Once doesn't have some good qualities - Hansard and Irglova are both fine musicians, and though not 'proper' actors, they have a pretty good onscreen chemistry. Their friendship develops believably. The music isn't my cup of tea, but it's worked well into the movie. Director Carney clearly knows his stuff. The ending may be a bit of a cop-out but at least it's not standard boy-gets-girl schmaltz. It's just that I couldn't find anything in this that actually added up to, you know, A Movie.

Joy Division were a band whose music was associated with despair and alienation but actually had its own cathartic, uplifting power. And some of that came through in Control. Whereas Once, for all its celebration of the joys of music and the virtues of friendship and (tentative) romance, just leaves an empty feeling. As though one had just been watching an adaptation of Notting Hill for raggle-taggle groupies.

So much to answer for...

I finally saw 24 Hour Party People last night. It was good fun and I especially enjoyed seeing Steve Coogan playing the part of Tony Wilson (he also plays the part of God, but Tony Wilson doesn't need quite so much makeup). If you didn't know better, you'd swear Coogan had made Tony Wilson up himself. A lot of myth and legend abounds about the growth of Manchester's alternative music scene, but if this movie had a message, it would probably be something like "truth really is stranger than fiction".

Needless to say, a lot of history was necessarily telescoped in order to fit into a movie, and a few tweaks given to the corpus of truth, but the story of Manchester's music scene from the seventies to the early nineties is told well and with flair. Plus, a few real Manc musos turn up in the course of the movie - Mark E Smith, Howard Devoto, Vini Reilly and Paul Ryder among others.

Much is made of the importance of Joy Division in the early days, and that band would have made for a movie in itself, but the great A Certain Ratio are fobbed off with a few jokes about scout uniforms and fake tans. It's a pity, because ACR had a lot to do with galvanising Manchester's early dance scene. They blurred genre (and racial) distinctions, mixing up garage punk, funk, and Latin music long before Talking Heads cashed in on a very similar strategy. If not for A Certain Ratio, Manchester music may well have remained in its industrial ghetto (and there probably wouldn't have been a Remain in Light, come to think of it). You could even go so far as to say there wouldn't have been a Happy Mondays without them.

Tony (or, if you will, Anthony) Wilson has been variously described as a charlatan, a genius, a mug, a poseur, a visionary, a bumbling dilletante, a Machiavellian manipulator, a postmodernist before postmodernism became cool, and a pretentious git - the Malcolm McLaren of Manchester. Coogan's portrayal manages to get all of this in to great comic effect, as well as hinting at greater complexity in the man's personality - he quotes Boethius and Yeats, goes out with Miss UK, and wishes the rest of the world would wake the fuck up.

Anyway, what I liked most about the movie was the way it refused to mythologise or sentimentalise. What happened happened, for better or worse. The people involved are historical figures now, but they were still ordinary folk prone to the usual foibles, and all the warts are on show here along with the wonders. There's a healthy irreverence at the heart of the movie, as well as plenty of dry Mancunian wit.

And would you believe, not a single mention of The Smiths or even The Stone Roses. Or even Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds. Because they weren't on Factory records, you see.

And when is the Durutti Column going to get that much needed revival?