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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.

Do bears defecate in the woods?

OK, well sometimes it’s more active than other times. Sometimes, it’s completely raging. Right now, today, well, there’s still a few addictions there, so I played “Hellhole Ratrace” on repeat for a couple of hours, but that’s perhaps heathier than when something can fill my every thought for hours, days on end. Those times can be pretty grim, but at least in recovery there’s a chance of some insight of our condition and the chance, by working a programme (and perhaps with some outside help) of moving on.

Whilst I try not to get too personal on this blog (it’s not meant to be about me) (honest!) and maintain my anonymity, there are going to be one or two autobiographical details that slip through the net. One of which is that I live in Newcastle upon Tyne, and so from time to time I’m going to try to post songs by bands local to me. This is Pale Man Made, and “Life Without a Car” from their excellent debut album “Oh, My Treasured Things”. Yes, the usual twee jangly C86 stuff that I like, but no worse for it. For personal reasons that I’m not going to go into, that was a subject around which my disease raged some time ago, and in fact I have a continuing problem with things car related today. One day at a time…

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Pale Man Made - Life Without a Car

Next topic: What is it like when I’m obsessed with something?

Much of the focus in this chapter of Living Sober is on the choice of being grateful. It’s an interesting way at looking at gratitude - and when I think about it, gratitude is an emotion that I can choose to have (or conversely, choose not to have). The techniques are pretty simple - listing things in your life that you can be grateful for; trying to look at the positive side of a “bad” event; handing over the things you cannot change.

Gratitude in my experience seems to be a prerequisite for long term sobriety. If I am pissed off and grumpy and negative, at first it won’t be about my sobriety, it will be about my job or my house or my relationship. But over time, as I store up resentments and negative ways of looking things, more and more features of my life will become affected by this way of thinking. If I don’t make a habit of being grateful, then eventually I’ll come not to treasure my sobriety, but resent it. And then I’m at a great deal of risk. There’s a choice not to go there.

For some reason I’ve got it into my head that this blog is a home for twee jangly pop and nothing else. Not sure where that came from. Sometimes the system needs a clear out. Something a bit more robust. So today, it’s in-your-face “Gratitude” with the mental distorted bass and the simple yet pugnatious and effective rhymes of the Beastie Boys (from 1992’s “Check Your Head”).

Good times gone and you missed them
What’s gone wrong in your system
Things they bounce just like a Spalding
What’d you think you miss your calling
It’s so free this kind of feeling
It’s like life it’s so appealing
When you got so much to say
It’s called gratitude
Good times gone but you feed it
Hate’s grown strong you feel you need it
Just one thing do you know
What you think that the world owes you
What’s gonna set you free
Look inside and you’ll see
When you got so much to say
It’s called gratitude

The video for this track is awesome, Spike Jonze’s homage to the Pink Floyd movie Live in Pompeii. Don’t those amps look utterly, utterly cool?

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Beastie Boys - Gratitude

Next topic: Remembering your last drunk.

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.