higherpowermoment.com

Yes, I know this blog bears less and less resemblance to what it set out to be, and now serves as a platform where I just bang on and on about my various obsessions. I could offer a justification, but I don’t have one. Last night my beloved Klaus & Kinski came to London for the first time, and I was lucky enough to be there. For all that was imperfect about the gig – the cack-handed promoters, the plodding self-obsessed limelight-stealing equipment-filtching support, the twattish photographer firing repeated flash photographs at mates & girls in the crowd, the plug being pulled half way through because the operator wanted the space to sell overpriced drinks to a collection of coke-addled hipster pant wearing dudes and Amy Winehouse wannabe chicas – I loved it. It’s the fourth time I’ve seen K&K in the last couple of years, and a lot of firsts for me. They were LOUD (previous gigs had been acoustic or low-fi). They are gelling together and grow in confidence. The new album is packed with great, new material. And, I think most importantly here live, the addition of La Pili on electric violin, which gives a very pleasing lush organic feel to Alejandro Martínez Moya’s orchestral soundscapes. So hurrah for La Pili! And for Klaus & Kinski, who notwithstanding the irritations foisted on them at last night’s gig, conducted themselves with typical charm, grace and good humour.

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Klaus & Kinski – La mano de Santa Teresa de Jesús

Yes, it’s more Wayne’s World quotes.

As our regular reader(s) will be aware, higherpowermoment.com is of course on the interweb’s top trend spotting cutting edge music blogs, responsible for making or breaking bands, setting the agenda, and defining the zeitgeist.

Longtime higherpowermoment.com faves are Spanish electro pop with indie guitar sensibilities band Delorean. See here and here. Now some obscure American outfit called Pitchfork has belatedly hitched on our bandwagon, seen which way the wind has been blowing, and given their latest E.P., brilliantly entitled “Ayrton Senna”, 8.4.

All I can say is welcome to the party, Pitchfork, higherpowermoment.com was here yonks before you, and we give this 11.0.

Please note the original Spanish 12″ artwork, not the pants they are flogging in the States. Wooo! We are so special and different! We were there first! I have this record. But no record player.

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Delorean – Seasun

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.

Dear Reader. I think you know the answer to this one.

The point, more generally, is how the unmanageability that results from our addiction causes us to engage in extreme acts of behaviour, and to encounter the consequences of that behaviour, without actually setting out for that to happen. We didn’t want to end up in police cells, divorce courts, prisons and the like. We just wanted to take the edge off. But our powerlessness results in unmanageability, and unmanageability takes us to places where the authorities end up trying to manage us for us.

More concert reviews. I’m not really sure how I got into the business of concert reviews. Maybe because I haven’t been to many concerts for a while, and now I’m going bonkers again, and it’s concert, concert, concert. Unmanageability, you see. And one of my two readers asked for concert reviews.

The chronology is completely shot too. Rewinding a week or so from Primavera Sound, I went to see St. Etienne in London. I’m afraid I didn’t like St. Etienne much, and in fact only lasted 2 songs, but to be fair to them, they had a hard act to follow: Birmingham’s Go Kart Mozart. Go Kart Mozart is the vehicle of former Felt and Denim vocalist, Lawrence. I write like I’m a staffer on the NME, but to be honest I knew nothing about any of these bands or people until I rocked up at London’s Bloomsbury Ballroom. My only ammunition was that I thought “Go Kart Mozart” was a cool name, and a friend said that I would be crazy to miss this concert in Glasgow. Lawrence is a doggedly eccentric individual, who was attired in a baseball cap with a clear plastic peak, a leather jacket with the word “KILL” spelled out in studs, a rainbow coloured knitted tank top, and a courier bag. The guitarist was dressed like 1950′s vet. And the keyboard player was like an over animated Mike Read. The effect was amazing, and, for me, rather took the wind out of St. Etienne’s sails, not only visually but musically as well. For me their polished lounge pop didn’t stand a chance against the eccentric bubblegum glam synth rock (yes really) we had previously been treated to. Here’s a snap I took, and a song about criminal acts down the docks.

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Go Kart Mozart – Sailor Boy

Next topic: Have I ever done anything I could have been arrested for if only I were caught? What have those things been?

Well, I had this topic not very long ago, as it’s one of the “official” slogans of my main fellowship.  But here it crops up as a chapter heading of Living Sober, the book I’m ploughing through for recovery themes to set to a tenuous musical background.  And repetition, repetition, repetition is fundamental to recovery because addiction is a disease that tells you you don’t have it.  So I need to be reminded, again, and again, and again.

Last time, I was inspired to post a song that was the opposite to “Live and Let Live” – Soko’s “I’ll Kill Her”.  This was on the basis that songs about being tolerant and accepting were rather boring compared to songs about intolerance, over projection and festering resentment.  I remain keen to avoid “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” territory.  So, ratcheting back ever so-slightly from musical death threats, but no less dangerous to your continued sobriety, this is Sweden’s Pelle Carlberg using the sweet gift of music to prosecute some resentments against a bad review, Ryanair and a Swedish music show.

The closing line of the first of my trio, “Go to Hell, Miss Rydell”, quite neatly summarises the futility of resentment.  Like taking poison and expecting the other person to die, as the slogan says it.  Although it doesn’t stop Pelle making a very lovely Swedish cottage industry out it it.

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Pelle Carlberg – Go to Hell, Miss Rydell (from 2005′s “Everything. Now!“)

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Pelle Carlberg – Fly Me to the Moon (from 2008′s “The Lilac Time“)

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Pelle Carlberg – Musikbyrån Makes Me Wanna Smoke Crack (from “Everything. Now!”)

Next topic: “Getting Active”