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Well, in order to kick-start this blog after a few months in the doldrums, I thought I’d work through some non-AA (or other 12 step fellowship) approved literature. So I’m going to be choosing as topics quotes from one of my favourite films, the childish, immature, facile but nonetheless completely brilliant “Wayne’s World”.

Well, I hope this is going to work.

My concert going is not quite at the level of absolute mania it was last year, but looking back at the list of stuff in my last.fm diary there’s been some good ones recently, and one of those was the Indietracks festival at the Midlands Railway, Butterley in Derbyshire. This is a completely charming festival where you park up, wander on to a railway platform, get on a real live steam train, and sit in a Formica bar drinking lukewarm pop as you chug through a leafy cutting to a railway yard stuffed full of old engines, carriages, railway buildings, and twee indie pop bands. With the main stage sponsored by Madrid’s Elefant Records there was a healthy contingent of Spanish bands and Spanish people, who always seem to be the friendliest people I ever meet at festivals. So, to kick off the totally amazing, excellent discovery of the Indietracks festival, here’s Cooper, a Spanish band who had heard before but didn’t really *get* until I saw them there supporting the Teenage Fanclub set. Whilst not likely to win any awards for innovation, they were nonetheless a charming, competent and heart warming outfit, who even apologised for singing in Spanish and threw in some English covers to make up for it. Here’s a picture I took of Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub enjoying the entirety of the Cooper Set.

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Cooper - En El Sofa

The sharp-eyed amongst you might have noticed that this post has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with 12 step recovery. Well, I thought I’d try to ease back into that, the way I’m easing back into meetings (2 this week, an improvement). I really don’t feel like forcing it, I am sure I will think of something to say when I get the inspiration.

Sheesh, how about that for a cheerful chapter heading?  But it’s not all bad news.  If you can accept that alcoholism isn’t going to be cured, that it will get worse if you drink and, if you do, it will end up killing you (whether directly or indirectly), then that acceptance can be pretty liberating.  The alcoholism becomes a fact of your life, in the same way as any other illness or condition does: so long as you follow the directions you can still live many happy, productive years.

This blog is about the 12 step programme (and music of course) and not simply alcoholism.  Is this chapter heading only relevant to alcoholism and addiction to other dangerous drugs?  I don’t think so, it’s easy to see how powerless and unmanagability over any addiction might directly or indirectly lead to death.  When trawling the net for links to put on this blog I found “Clutterers Anonymous”, a fellowship I’d never heard of, and one that may seem a little leftfield, but in fact one where I do answer a worryingly large number of their “Is it for me?” type questions in the affirmative.  And since posting the link I’ve noticed in the last couple of weeks not one but two news stories of people being crushed in their own homes by clutter and stored shopping.  Frankly, an addict can kill him or herself directly or indirectly with an addiction to anything, whether it’s heroin or collecting pencils.  Why?  Well, I guess because addiction is incurable and progressive.  It doesn’t stop and it gets worse.  That’s why it’s fatal.

When I don’t remember that addiction is incurable, progressive and fatal, I end up believing I can control it.  Of course this is nonsense.  I can’t control anything - not people, not places, not things.  A song I’ve always had in mind when idly pondering whether to do this blog is Teenage Fanclub’s “I Don’t Want Control of You”, from the 1997 “Songs From Northern Britain” album.  Teenage Fanclub are, of course, my favourite band (although perversely not the best band in the world, which is of course Billie the Vision & The Dancers), and I’ve shown considerable self-restraint in not posting a song by them until now.  Why I have I loved this band from the moment I first heard Mark Radcliffe play “Going Places” from their 1995 album Grand Prix (ok, I know I was something of a Johnny-Come-Lately, but in my defence I was pissed until 1993)?  Hum, great songwriting, harmonies, sunshine, Glasgow, and just the friendliest happiest band I’ve ever seen.  “I Don’t Want Control of You” is of course about a long term relationship.  Are relationships incurable, progressive, fatal diseases?  Hum, maybe.  Perhaps all successful ones are.

I saw this band live 8 times last year.  Is Teenage Fanclub an incurable, progressive, fatal disease?  Quite possibly.  But what a way to go.  Here’s some classic Teenage Fanclub - birds at the beginning (my sound effects obsession kicking back in - see previous post on Tobias Froberg), harmonies, jangly guitars, audacious mid song key change, it’s just got it all.

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Teenage Fanclub - I Don’t Want Control of You

Next topic: ‘Live and Let Live’