Yes indeed, people. In a few hours I shall be making my radio bow on Edinburgh University’s Fresh Air Radio, which I am sure will be a suitably terrifying experience.  No matter how piss-easy I’m sure this stuff is (I mean, one button to play, one button to talk – hardly rocket science, surely) I nevertheless find myself completely certain I will manage to locate the self-destruct button somewhere on that array of knobs and levers and so on.  And you’ve heard my podcasts they are hardly the most disciplined of ventures, so god knows what sort of a fiasco we could be in for.

Nevertheless, it seems like fun and they have been kind enough to give me a slot, so here goes.  I’m on from 20.30 – 22.00, Tuesdays for the next four weeks, until the studio closes down again when the students are on holiday.  Click on the listen live button on this page to tune in.

And, by way of jollying you along, here’s a song that I was intending to put on the playlist but couldn’t quite find the room for.  Splendid track though.

Fishboy – Half Time at the Proper Name Spelling Bee

I am writing this one quick, because that unemployment rant needs to be shunted down the page pronto! Christ, sometimes I really need to remind myself that this site is supposed to about music – music you fool!

It’s rare that a simple acoustic troubadour manages to avoid sounding a little thin, but this is something Mr. Godwin achieves with considerable aplomb. You may remember him from my recent Jacques Brel post – well Next! was great, and the rest of his music is rich, deep and comforting as well. I know it has the aspects of a drunken, careworn barfly, but this is clearly manifested as a theatrical device rather than any sort of implication that it embodies the identity of our singer.

This EP manages to be arch and witty without ever actually seeming arch and witty. There’s nothing of the superior irony in which a great many groups tend to wrap themselves these days. If ever artifice and cleverness can seem really sincere and uncontrived it is here, which I suppose is an odd concept and a somewhat concealed compliment.

He cites his heroes as the likes of Jarvis Cocker and Jacques Brel and the like, which makes good sense, although the pace of the music never really pushes out of third gear unlike some of their stuff. Tracks like All-Stars and Josie are still growing on me to an extent as well, so I am not wildly in love with the whole EP, but the Brel cover Next! and songs like Variety and One of Many are absolutely superb straight from the first listen. The other two are making better friends with my ears on every listen too, so I really recommend you pop over to his MySpace page and buy yourselves a copy, because I really doubt you’ll be disappointed.

Richard Godwin – Variety
Richard Godwin – Next!

A friend of mine is suffering from an appalling time trying to find a job, and it’s hard to offer sympathy in that kind of situation, but I have been through this before, so I do have some idea. It took me almost a year to get my first job in what I trained to do and in that time I went through all sorts of stages of despair, vitriol, depression, rage, apathy, grim determination and all sorts of others.

At first I couldn’t even find where to even apply for jobs I could do so I ended up applying for dozens that I was neither all that equipped to do nor all that interested in, and I think it showed badly in the interviews.

Even when I eventually did find places I was qualified to work they would invite me to interviews, tell me how brilliant I was, and then say ‘Oh well, really we need someone with at least one or two years’ experience’ to which I just once replied ‘Well that’s interesting, because it says on my CV that I am a graduate with no experience, and just imagine – if you’d read it then you could have saved yourself all this time’.

Then, when I did get my first job it lasted only eighteen months, during which the 11th September attacks took place and the dotcom bubble burst. The result: redundancy. It took a further six months to get a job after this one, during which I was offered interview after interview and showered with compliments and never given a job. Worse, it was always ‘yes, really loved your stuff, we’ll be in touch some time next week’, then they never were and I ended up having to spend two weeks chasing them for the inevitable ‘thanks but no thanks’ that I by then knew was coming. Often it would be accompanied by ‘well we really need someone who can use Pro/Engineer software’. Again, even cursory glance at my fucking CV would have told them that I couldn’t use fucking Pro/E so why the fuck were they interviewing me in the first place? ‘Recreational interviewing’, I came to call it.

Then, whilst I was trying to move from London to Edinburgh so Mrs. Toad and I could be together, similar stuff started to happen – for almost a year. There are so few jobs in what I do up here that I ended up applying for a few too many that, although I could have done them, I didn’t really want. Again, the compliments flooded in, but no fucking job offers. And I developed a new hatred: recruitment fucking consultants. Honestly, what the fuck fucking use are these parasitical cunts? They’re like fucking estate agents in slightly more dingy suits. They have no understanding whatsoever of any of the jobs they are trying to fill, they have not the slightest shred of basic manners, they are fucking vacant as an empty barrel, and they seem to have the memories of fucking goldfish because they never, ever do anything they say they are going to. Burn the fucking lot of the cunts.

HR departments are no better. Name me a single place that couldn’t just take its HR department, fill it with angry bees, seal up the doors, and in doing so signally improve the efficiency of their business. They are worthless fucking leeches who achieve nothing, have no skills, not a fragment of understanding of the business in which their company is engaged and do absolutely nothing but hold regular meetings to explain to everyone what a crucial job they are doing. Burn them; all of them.

Frequently when job-hunting you have at least two layers of these vacuous fuckwits in between you and the person actually doing the hiring – the one who actually has the faintest idea whether or not you can do the job in question. I actually applied for a job once where the department doing the hiring went to their HR department, who went to an outsourcing consultancy, who hired a recruitment consultant who put an ad on a website, whose ads were aggregated by another website, via which I applied. Do the people who purchase products from this company know what an incredible number of worthless, talentless, pointless paper-shufflers the price of their medicine is supporting? I doubt it. Thank goodness for the efficiency of the free market.

If you think I am being harsh on HR people, try this quote from Luke Johnson, writing in the Financial Times earlier this year:

“HR is like many parts of modern businesses: a simple expense, and a burden on the backs of the productive workers”

Random internet ranter? No, he is on the Times Power 100 List and apparently masterminded the acquisition of Pizza Express before the age of 30 and is now in charge at Channel 4.

So Lizzie, I have every sympathy, really I do. I do have a pretty good idea what you’re going through, and believe my I would flay, fillet and barbecue these self-important, parasitic whores in a heartbeat given the chance. Nae brains, nae skills, nothing to offer; just fucking pointless the lot of ‘em.

The Dead Kennedys – Take This Job & Shove It

This is one of the reasons I am adamant that as long as I possibly can I will read, listen and respond to anyone who emails me with a copy of their music. People seem, when they are in a position to give or deny someone something they want, to turn into patronising, arrogant cock-smokers. They come out with shit like ‘Well, what you have to understand is..’ or ‘Well, I’m just so busy…’ or they just seem to take masturbatory pleasure in ignoring you, condescending to you and generally treating you with such completely meretricious attitudes of superiority that it makes me want to urinate in their ears while they’re sleeping.

I am not doing anyone a favour by listening to their music, and if I ever start acting like it, please someone punch me. A polite email saying thanks is not beyond anyone. Delete the emails from PR companies by all means, but if someone takes the time to contact you themselves with their stuff listen, decide and get back in touch. Show some fucking graciousness, and some manners. Being in a position of power over anyone says nothing about you as a person, and it does not make you better than anyone. And just because you’re finally in that position does not under any fucking circumstances mean that it is in any way ‘your turn’. You do not have to teach anyone ‘the way it works’ and being a cunt to someone is never a favour because ‘that’s just what they’ll have to get used to in this cut-throat industry’. I am not suggesting you should necessarily lie to someone, and I am sure that there will come a point where I can’t answer everyone personally, but if you are unnecessarily unkind or impolite or hurtful to someone who is asking something of you, then you are cunt, pure and simple.

Did I miss anything?

Frightened Rabbit – Be Less Rude