higherpowermoment.com

You want a report from Primavera Sound??  All the gossip, backstage stories, hot bands to watch??  Top ten lists?  Whacky anecdotes?  Well, buddy, I’m afraid you’re in the wrong place… for reasons far, far too turgid to recount here, my little trip to BCN for this festival was a bit of a disaster, and I spent much of the time hanging round airports, eating late “American Breakfasts” at the Philippino cafe, and just basically being a mopey dick.

So of course now I’m having my own, personal, internet based Primavera Sound post-festival, with no massive crowds of gap year Rahs (where did they come from) and Refrescos that were all ice and no Fanta Limon (gotta love the Fanta Limon).  My personal discovery (yes, I realise after 274,903 other Last.fm listeners) of the festival was Beach House, whose amazing album “Teen Dream” is on constant play on my Spotify, and this track, “Walk In The Park” is on constant play in my head, with its less-is-more combo of drum machine, pulsing organ, cascading guitar tremolos, and Victoria Legrand’s incredible husky, sexy, almost masculine vocal. I know I’m coming to the party late, obviously if you want to read a professional and knowledgeable review, I’ll hand you over to the good offices of my closest rival in the blogging trade, but if you haven’t heard of this band, I’m encouraging you to give them a go.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Beach House - Walk In The Park

Well, a lot of days have slipped past since the last higherpowermoment.com post. It’s so long that the banner wasn’t in my cache when I went to the site. My apologies to our regular reader(s). Life has to an extent got in the way. Perhaps amusingly, the site traffic has actually gone up since I stopped posting.

One day at a time, I’m going to try to devote a little more attention to this site.

In the last few months, my listening habits have undergone a big change as I get more and more addicted to Spotify (well, I’m not going to do things by half) and more and more interested in listening to albums. In some ways this is an attempt to rectify the wreckage that my active addiction caused to my listening tastes. I did have a collection of albums - but then, as I started drinking more, they got scratched, covered in orange juice and vodka, lost, borrowed, abandoned. There are none left. By the early 1990’s, all my funds were going on my drug of choice, and for some reason I only bought cassingles (Michael Jackson’s Black or White being one embarrassing example). My recovery coincided with the internet and mp3’s, and the portability of that format has meant that until Spotify came along, I was really listening to shuffled songs. Spotify (I promise I’m not on a commission from them) has got me into albums, and old albums, and in order to get a handle on them I’m working through certain artists in chronological order. Yes, I know this is OCD. And, I’m also buying vinyl. Except I don’t have a record player. Yet.

So, here’s God Knows I’m Good from David Bowie’s David Bowie, released (in the UK) on Phillips on 7 November 1969 (subsequently titled “Space Oddity” on its 1972 re-release). My ears pricked up when I heard the reference to a “cash machine”. I thought “hold on Guv’nor, surely cash machines weren’t around in 1969?”. Maybe Bowie had invented the cash machine, as well as nearly everything else. No, as it turns out. The cash machine was invented by one John Shepherd-Barron, and the first one in the world was installed at the Enfield High Street branch of Barclays Bank on 27 June 1967. Reg Varney, from the television series On the Buses, was the first to withdraw cash. And in fact, in David’s tale of witnessing the unsuccessful shoplifting of a tin of stewing steak (seriously), by “cash machines”, I think David meant cash registers. Presumably the blizzard of publicity that accompanied Reg’s first withdrawal from Barclays Enfield had not been enough for “cash machine” to mean what we understand it to mean today.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

David Bowie - God Knows I’m Good

More Wayne’s World quotes, more Spotify catching up on music I was too wasted to notice the first time around.

I chose this Pavement track rather lazily because it references a well known corporate entity. I’ve been thinking that it’s better to put out loads of brief posts rather than nothing for weeks because I can’t think of anything sparkling and exotic to say about the programme. But of course coming back to post it I realise that there’s a 12 step reference there too. Like much of recovery, my relationship with my sponsor has been something of a journey. Obviously, being a perfectionist maniac I had to have the best sponsor in the whole of my fellowship. And my Step 5 was going to be the most mind-blowing one of all eternity. And then everything he said was obviously going to be the purest wisdom in the world. So why not put him on a big pedestal? Turned out he was a normal, nice guy, with all the qualities and defects of all other normal nice guys. Ha. I should call him more often. Here’s Pavement’s “Date With Ikea”.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Pavement - Date With Ikea

OK… First I’ll access the secret military spy satellite that is in geosynchronous orbit over the Midwest. Then I’ll ID the limo by the vanity plate “MR. BIGGG” and get his approximate position. Then I’ll reposition the transmission dish on the remote truck to 17.32 degrees east, hit WESTAR 4 over the Atlantic, bounce the signal back into the aerosphere up to COMSAT 6, beam it back to SATCOM 2 transmitter number 137 and down on the dish on the back of Mr. Big’s limo… It’s almost too easy.

Today was a bit like that until I simplified it. Unfortunately it means I miss out on a really amazing sounding gig, but fortunately it means I also miss out on a whole load of unmanageability.

I lost my record collection by bits and bobs during my drinking days in the late 80’s and early 90’s. The nice thing about Spotify is that I’m rediscovering it. Today has been “The Cure” day :). I totally forgot about this brilliant track on 1985’s “The Head on the Door”. How about that for an intro? Don’tcha love the way everyone piles in and gives it all a good kicking? What a song. Push.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Cure - Push