OK, I’ve fallen a bit behind with all this blogging lark, and I’ve completely failed to write about some real primo blogging material that I’ve been experiencing or thinking about in general. One such subject was the Sparklehorse gig I had the pleasure of catching at The Royal Northern College of Music (or The Royal College of Northern Music as was suggested by Ian, and which I can’t stop thinking of it as since he mentioned it). The gig was weeks ago (20th October as a quick glimpse at the ticket still magneted(?) to the filing cabinet next to me reveals), and I’m no reviewer even when the events are still fresh, so I won’t be able to give an objective and insightful criticism of the gig here, but I will say that it was fucking great. I’d been reading some live reviews of the latest tour before we went, and they’d been widely slated as being lack-lustre with poor sound, but that’s not the impression I got. The sound was great (as you might expect for a gig at the Royal College of Northern Music, for fuxsakes), and the gig seemed to be over before it had really got going, which is only a good sign if, in fact, it had actually got going. A time check showed that they’d probably played for a good hour and a half, giving a wide range through the back-catalogue plus a good chunk from the latest album.

The thing which struck me most about the music was how different the songs were from the recorded material in most cases, with the possible exception of the new songs from Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain. In some cases, the only way I recognised the songs at all was from the lyrics. Anyway, I’ve been a huge fan for a very long time, and couple that with the fact that I love a live gig but don’t get out much, and I’m bound to think it was great, which I did, and it was.

There’s a long story behind why we didn’t catch the support slot at the gig, but it’s quite embarrassing and the short version is that we’re incompetent at many things and in this particular instance it was cartographical incompetency which was a major contributory factor, although inability to follow simple instructions also helped (or hindered, whatever). To give you a flavour, we started badly by failing to follow the AA route which really should have taken us directly to an NCP car park about 100 yards from the venue, and ended up parking in the NCP at the MEN Arena. Ian was confident that this was the best plan, as we could then easily hoof it to the venue using his intimate knowledge of the rain-swept streets of happy town to get us through the city centre, whereas we may never find our way off the ring-road ever again if we didn’t take our chance and park there… As anyone reading this, even those who’ve never even heard of Manchester or the MEN Arena (whatever that is) will already be very aware, the NCP at the MEN Arena (the what?) is as far away from the RCNM venue on Oxford Road as it’s possible to be and still be considered actually in Manchester City Centre, so this was a bad start. Then, it turns out that Ian’s encyclopedic knowledge of the city centre is actually more wikipedic and based on a handful of unlikely adventures around Canal Street whilst, presumably, poppered off his ample tits and pretending to be a gay lord. Anyway, even once we’d found Oxford Road, which, to be fair, didn’t take any longer than about an hour and a half, could we find the venue? Obviously not. Oxford Road actually goes to Oxford, it turns out. It is the longest road I have ever seen, long enough to reach the moon and back twice. We know this because we traipsed up and down it’s length probably 4 times or so. Our friend, Dan, whom we were meeting at the venue in the original plan, was having similar troubles and had also ditched his car *somewhere*. After several phone calls and asking a police man the way, we agreed to meet him outside the BBC near the city centre end of Oxford Road, a rendezvous to which we trudged wearily after stopping for a fortifying rest-and-whisky at what I’ll loosely describe as a pub, about 4 miles from the town centre (actually, I suppose it was more like 1/2 a mile, but, you know). We’d eventually reached the BBC and waited for a few minutes (now approaching the time that we happened to know the band, that is, Sparklehorse, were due on stage) when Dan called back again.

• Dan: I’m at the venue!
• Me: Oh, right, well, where is it?
• Dan: I don’t know…
• Me: Huh? Well, how did you get there?
• Dan: I got fed up and got a taxi!
• Me: WTF?! You were supposed to be meeting us! OK, so, what can you see?
• Dan: Nothing.
• Me: Oh, Christ. Well, can you see… [runs through a list of obvious local landmarks, such as fuck-off massive hotels with blazing neon signage and gargantuan and vulgar nightclubs with slappers stood nearby - Dan never misses slappers]?
• Dan: No
• Me: Well, is it near the BBC?
• Dan: I dunno. Oh, the band are starting now!

Gee, thanks. Why the fuck didn’t he pick us up in his taxi en route you and I are asking ourselves.

So, we got a taxi, too. It didn’t quite drop us off 20 yards along the road from where we hailed it, like something out of the Simpsons, but it wasn’t far off. It turns out that the main entrance we needed wasn’t actually on Oxford Road at all, although the building certainly had one side on the road. It turns out we’d walked past it and the large sign on the side several times, but the whole Oxford Road facia was completely shrouded in scaffolding, utterly obscuring the sign to us as we walked below it. Also, and here’s the cartographical balls-up previously alluded to, as we’d been walking down Oxford Road there were the occasional local maps on the side of bus shelters, with the RCNM clearly marked – just keep going along here, past the university campus and on the left. No problem, easy, we were on the right road and everything. Erm, except that the map was upside down. Yes folks, at 33 years old, we haven’t got a fucking clue.

So we missed the support band. I have however bought their album, The Bells of 1 2, and it is frankly ace (there I go again with my skilful critique). There are one or two tracks which sound a little immature, if I was being really critical, but there are also several really strong and catchy songs in there, too. Lyrically, the feel is quite close to the Sparklehorse domain, and some of the musical techniques are quite similar too. As the MOJO quote on the postcard I picked up at the gig has it, “Sparklehorse… fans are in for a treat” and they are. Don’t let the Goldfrapp comparisons put you off, it’s very listenable. Comparisons are odorous, but here’s mine for Sol Seppy – this had niggled me since I got the album: who does it remind me of? The Delgados. They don’t sound alike, really, it just reminded me of them…

edit: I’m just listening to the album again now. You should buy it even if it’s just for the track ‘Slo Fuzz’. Seriously. Buy it.

Well, fortunately for me, the whole christening-in-Porto thing has migrated across denominations, obviating the need for me to "Fetch a Priest" after all. So I’m off to Porto at the end of October to become, weirdly, a Godfather.

I’m not really sure how the thing morphed from being a Catholic christening to being whatever-it’s-going-to-be-now, but I do really hope it wasn’t anything directly to do with me. I mean, it might have been, I suppose, but there must have been other reasons not to do it the Holy Roman way. After all, my friend married a catholic, from a catholic country, in a catholic church, in another catholic country, and now lives in that original catholic country, but his wife (I count her a friend too, you understand) is not now having her first-born christened a catholic.

I won’t pretend to understand it, as I don’t know the imperatives behind it, and I don’t even know what it’s going to be now… But it seems like it will be Anglican, just because in a Google Talk chat my friend (doing his Professer Farnsworth) said

good news. Anglicanism seems promising.

Whatever. Flights booked, time off work booked and a few nights in a hotel pretty near to Pete’s house (see the picture he sent me from Google Earth), also booked. I just need to work out how to get my self there with my christening outfit intact, whilst still keeping my luggage down to a comfortable size. Christ, I hate hauling suitcases around, particularly as I’ll be coming back via Stansted and a train journey from there via Euston to Bare is in the offing. Last time I went over there (Porto, not Bare) I got away with 1 small piece of hand-luggage. This time I’ll also need to carry a suit, a tie, and probably a warm jumper, since it’ll be November in Portugal, and quite possibly in England, too.

But the catholic thing is a whole new world – it will be a catholic christening in a catholic country (Portugal) and, until today, I just assumed me being a god father just wasn’t going to happen, and that would have been OK, and I’d have gone over anyway and would still take an interest in the child and care about his upbringing and buy him presents at christmas and birthdays and generally look out for him, so actually being a god father officially, like, wouldn’t really matter. I got to assuming all this because it seemed that, to qualify, I must be a catholic and have taken (done? eaten?) my (the?) sacraments and have one of those big gold things with incense billowing out and, you know, believe in God and stuff. Today, though, I’ve found out that I don’t need to be all that (unlike Rachael Leigh Cook) – all I need is a simple letter from my ‘local’ catholic priest to say that I’m a reliable person. And that’s the main point of this post, really:

How am I going to get one of those?

I’m expecting this to go all sitcom on me.