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… is on the way, and it’s called “Shadows”. Here’s a taster, “Baby Lee”, originally recorded by Norman Blake for the Burnsong Songhouse (a project where songwriters are locked up in a house and not let out until they have a song), adopted live by the Fanclub at various gigs, normally with me in a state of delirious wonder somewhere in the crowd. The album comes out at the end of May, and I can’t wait.

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Teenage Fanclub - Baby Lee

I know I seem a little obsessed by The Cure right now, but don’t worry, I’m a pro - it’s just one of about a gazillion current obsessions. Wait til I get on to Faust. And the vintage drum kit I’m trying to justify buying because it was used on one of my favourite albums, notwithstanding no drumming ability, no space for a drum kit, and no money.

I like this cover of “Catch” by Art Brut, it sounds rather like some East End pub rock band decided to launch into a bit of goth pop. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Captures the nonchalance of Robert Smith’s lyric quite well, I think (strokes beard thoughtfully). I don’t know much about Art Brut - they have a song called “Alcoholics Unanimous” which I’m not going to post as I think it’s rather too obvious for this blog, as well as being pants.

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Art Brut - Catch

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.

Well, my musical mojo has been revitalised by a lovely weekend seeing bands in Glasgow and Newcastle, DJ’s in Newcastle, and friends in Glasgow, Newcastle and Cumbria. And I’ve been taking photos, sticking them up on “Facey”, and people have being saying nice things about them (although the trick seems to be to take about 250 photos and see if you get 4 or 5 good ones). And I think this blog needs a kick up the arse. At the moment, I’m ploughing through the Narcotics Anonymous “Steps Working Guides”, and it feels like a bit of a slog and a rather too-personal exercise, in a bad, navel-gazing sort of way. My intention was to go through the whole book, but at the current rate, we’ll be on it in 2011. So, I’m going to finish Step 1, maybe missing out some questions, trying to be a bit punchier, and we’ll review it at the end of that chapter. OK readers?

The Glasgow gig was actually a little outside Glasgow, in Darvel, Ayrshire, at the Darvel Homecoming festival. The theme of the festival seemed to be the niceness and warm-heartedness of the organisers, from the moment they personally emailed me and told me my ticket would be waiting for me, to the incredibly friendly welcome when I arrived, and then band after band saying how well they had been treated. Apparently there’s home cooking for all performers instead of a fiver and being pointed in the direction of the chip shop. The whole thing has an atmosphere of local friendliness and I can’t recommend this festival highly enough.

The name “Dropkick” is one I’ve seen floating around the Teenage Fanclub messageboards and other similar web places, but for whatever reason the band has passed me by until Friday night when I saw them play Darvel. Consisting of 2 brothers and 2 non-brothers, they are a Scottish alt-country power pop band and were just really rather good in that relaxed diffident way that very talented people are. Here’s a photo I took (for once!) and the track “Obvious”, which seemed be my thought about today’s question from the NA literature. I’ll be writing more about the festival over the coming days. Eager fans of factual accuracy can in the meantime read this speedily produced and handy review.

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Dropkick - Obvious

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Teenage Fanclub - I Need Direction (from the 2000 album “Howdy“).

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Teenage Fanclub - I Need Direction (Alternative Version) (from the 2005 giveaway CD in Scotland on Sunday).

Next topic: Getting plenty of rest.

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’

First Things First is a reminder that in any programme of recovery, the number one priority is total abstinence. Until I abstained, one day at a time, then none of the other problems in my life were even going to begin to get fixed. Not only is there are practical reality to this - it’s not going to possible for me to sort out (say) my money problems if I’m out there actively using increasing amount of intoxicants - but there’s a spiritual reality to it too - in this financial example until I have any sort of spiritual recovery, my whole attitude to money and the things it buys is going to be seriously affected by raging unchecked character defects. Abstinence comes before anything else.

So with the phrase “primary purpose” rattling around in my mind, I’m choosing for this post a song by The Primary 5. This is the project of former Teenage Fanclub drummer Paul Quinn, and it’s been something of an ongoing drama, obviously rather more so for Paul than for me. The band was under my (admittedly not very effective) radar until the third and brilliant album, “High Five“, released in 2008 on Neon Tetra Records. Until that point, all I had known of Paul was as the highly polished and effective drummer on Teenage Fanclub’s must-listen “Grand Prix“, who according to interviews of the time was interested in drumming, smoking dope, and not much else.

Paul in fact had never picked up a guitar until leaving Teenage Fanclub in 2002, let alone sung or written a song. And yet the 3 songs written then turned into 3 albums, with “High Five” for me being one of the best records of 2008. Whilst it’s chock full of sunny, melodic pop melodies of a type crafted by his former bandmembers, lyrically it betrays Paul’s massive ambivalence towards making music and the music business. In the first track, “I Wonder Why”, Paul does indeed wonder what he is doing making the record in the first place. The stand-out track “Lost and Confused” perfectly sums up the mixed up motives of a pop fan, the rather embarrasingly familiar opening gambit between a fan and an artist (”Hey man it’s so good to meet you. I love your records. I love your songs. I feel like I have always known you”) being tempered with a realisation of the escapism in such a relationship (”You are the sun. You are the moon. I love the things you do. Or, is this an excuse?”). But at least the question posed by “I Wonder Why” was answered in the following track “High Five”, where Paul affirms that despite his doubts, making music was just that, his “High Five”.

I wish that was the happy ending to the story. Let’s just say it continues. Paul’s current answer to “I Wonder Why” is now in the negative, and he recently announced on his Myspace blog that the band would fold after a trio of concerts in Spain later this month, and that he would retire from the music business straight after that. As I’m powerless over people, places and things, I’m not going to moan about this - I hope Paul finds happiness in whatever he chooses to do, and I’m very grateful for these songs, which of course without Paul’s self-doubt and self-questioning wouldn’t have been made at all. And for us in recovery, so long as we put our abstinence first, then questions of this nature become parts of a journey that we otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to take. But first things first!

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The Primary 5 - I Wonder Why

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The Primary 5 - High Five

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The Primary 5 - Lost and Confused

Next post: Live And Let Live

This slogan reminds us to think things through rather than to trust our immediate feelings. For a long time time, I felt that I couldn’t cope with my life and felt that some unspecified intervention (committal, incarceration, death) to take away the burden of making choices (made on the basis of feelings) was the answer.  For me, it was only when an intervention of that sort became a distinct possibility and I actually had a moment of clarity when I was able to think through what I wanted, that I got the right answer.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (officialsite : myspace) are 4-piece from New York who this year have been dishing out perfect slices of thrilling pop genius and wowing audiences (my ears are still ringing) with their blend of noise, melody, intense drums and boy/girl vocals. There are influences of The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, The Pastels, Teenage Fanclub, all good, better than good in fact, but this not simply another derivative indie band - they have it cracked, they have that indefinable it, and I’m so glad to have been around to hear it. From next year’s self-titled album (on Slumberland) this is “Stay Alive”.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Photo: Annie Powers

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The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Stay Alive

Next time: First Things First.