This is less straightforward than the Wedding Present post the other day.  Getting into Yo La Tengo was a longer and more uncertain process than getting into the Weddoes.  I suppose that any group with fifteen minute-long songs called (and sounding like) Mushroom Cloud of Hiss is always going to be a trickier proposition.

After graduating from uni I went to the States for a while and ended up working as a restaurant manager, of all things, for almost a year on Cape Cod.  During that year one of the only pleasurable shopping experiences to be had was a regular trip to Newbury Comics in Hyannis.  Hyannis itself is a dreadful town – no charm, no soul, nothing going for it at all – but Newbury Comics was great.  The staff were inevitably a little snotty, but they knew their stuff and the selection was fantastic, even for a pretty small shop.

Amongst a great many things, I tried to get into Yo La Tengo while I was there.  Like the Wedding Present, my friend Strath was mad on them, so I felt there must be something there I was missing, because the two of us agreed on most things musical.  So I bought Ride the Tiger and Little Honda during my stay on Cape Cod, but neither really grabbed me properly at the time for some reason, although I find that a little odd in hindsight.

Yo La Tengo – Be Thankful For What You Got[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/YoLaTengo-BeThankfulForWhatYouGot.mp3]

What actually did the trick for me at long last was the early 2000 release of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out.  I bought in a little record shop in Manchester, but I was living with my Granddad at the time so the only times i could play were when he was out of the house, at which point the stereo went on, loud.  Why loud with such a breathlessly quiet album?  Because some quiet music needs to fill the room and swamp you, and this is just such a record.

For some reason I found the belligerently still atmosphere of this album more accessible than more obvious pop records.  Electr-O-Pura, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, and even Painful are more obviously catchy, so maybe it was related to mood.  I was pretty depressed at the time, having come back from Canada for a job offer in Milan that was dangled and then withdrawn, and thus found myself working in a gangster-riddled nightclub in Manchester.  It was so shitty I found myself right beside someone who pulled a gun on another customer on the eve of the millennium, no-one ever bothered to clean the blood from a previous stabbing off the DJ box, and the place was smashed to bits by an Irish travelling family a couple of weeks later, on another night I was working.  So maybe in that environment the quiet of this particular album was just about what I needed.

Duly enlightened I bought Fakebook, and then went on to the others.

Yo La Tengo – Cherry Chapstick
Yo La Tengo – Last Days of Disco

So, when I confessed to Strath that I had finally seen the Yo La light he looked at me somewhat askance and said with heavy sarcasm “Oh really.  Even songs like Big Day Coming that you said were just the same thing repeated endlessly for ten minutes?”  And the answer was an enthusiastic yes.  Brilliant song.  How the fuck it took seven years and three false starts for this particular penny to drop I have no idea.  A better band, and a better live band, I would struggle to name.

Yo La Tengo – Big Day Coming[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/YoLaTengo-BigDayComing.mp3]

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Ruth (Chestie La Rue – what’s not to love about a name like that) from Modernaire has replied to my rambling nonsense about copyright and freebies, although she did so in a comment, so I thought I’d move it up here for your perusal:

Hello all. It’s Ruth here from Modernaire and The Moulettes. Sorry for the delay in responding but we’ve been touring and driving a lot and today is the first proper bit of time I’ve had to get something written down. I apologise for my clumsy way with words but I’m extremely tired and verging on mid-tour tonsilitis.

As Matthew explained earlier, the problem was in fact just with one song and one particular site (the Kruger website). In fact all of us love blogs and bloggers. To be honest Hannah and I aren’t particularly technically minded but we still browse blogs from time to time to find out about new and exciting things. I know that you were expecting us to come back with an adversarial response but really we completely support the use of our songs by people on the blogs. After all, it’s about the music and it virtually pointless to write about music if it can’t be simply heard. I honestly do not believe that blogs are taking money from our pockets, if anything they are helping a huge amount. So many people have discovered us through blogs and then gone on to come to gigs and buy cds. This may be a vast generalisation but I would say that the people who are interested enough in music to spend their time discussing music in fora such as these are the kind of people who go out and buy/see the music too. For small bands like us gigs are the biggest potential sources of income and without internet hype nobody would be booking bands outside their local area.

There’s one small thing that would possibly cause a little resentment but I don’t think blogs generally do this. If you were to put up a band’s songs for download without their permission I think that would be a bit cheeky. Essentially a band’s material is theirs to do what they like with but if other people want to talk about it, play it to their friends and even give it to their friends then that is fine as long as we don’t forget to support the music scene in a physical as well as a virtual manner by going to gigs and buying the music too

I just think it’s such a shame to see talented musicians, such as Hannah, wasting their potential creative time working in crap jobs to pay the bills. I could slip into a little rant now about the evils of greedy promoters (they’re the guilty ones not the music fans) but I won’t because i don’t have time, got to get ready to play the sold out Astoria this evening!

Hmm. A few things to think about there, if you ask me, as well as thanking Ruth for taking the time to write back. I really do appreciate it.

Firstly, I don’t always ask permission to post things. In fact, I rarely do. I know blogs that do but I, erm, am just too lazy I suppose. It would be a nightmare and would rub out the spontaneity of the things I write here. That’s not a justification exactly, nor an excuse, more of an admission of culpability I suppose.

Secondly, I have some doubts about the following statement: “Essentially a band’s material is theirs to do what they like with”. I know it makes sense on the face of it, but I am not sure if it’s true. Culture is a shared enterprise and, as Campfires & Battlefields has eloquently pointed out on this site before, once you release things into the world you kind of relinquish ownership and spill it into the sea of things that we share between us. I know it sounds crazy to say that someone’s artistic output is not entirely their own, but art of all kinds is an interaction, not something that is merely delivered to you and I think that once you put it out into the world you do have to surrender a degree of ownership. I am not sure how much ownership you have to surrender – I am still thinking about that one – but I don’t know if you can claim anything to be entirely ‘yours’ once you ask other people to listen to it. That doesn’t change the fact that failing to get permission to post people’s songs is not entirely okay, of course.

The most crucial point, actually, is the last one. You can make a justifiable argument for giving anything and everything away for free. Take this site for example: I give it all away. The writing, the sessions, the podcasts, all of it. Given the effort, what do I get to charge for? I really don’t know. For musicians it’s similar. They do not make money touring – don’t let anyone tell you this because it’s bollocks. Touring is an arduous and expensive business for virtually all bands, so don’t let anyone tell you it will make up for lost album sales because it won’t (touring, I mean, not just playing live, which is a different story).

So at some point, after you’ve raised all the publicity you can and received all the critical acclaim you can muster, you have to decide that some things need to be paid for, but what are they? As Ruth says, it makes sense to allow blogs to talk about things because I would agree that the word of mouth is important, and it can even be argued that it makes sense to allow some file-sharing as well, because it too spreads the word far and wide. But where does the money come from? Ultimately, if you are to avoid having great musicians sweating away at shitty jobs, they need to be paid. Money needs to be coming into the system from somewhere, and at the moment I really don’t see where that is coming from.

I think that trying to drive traffic, as Kruger have done, by trying to insist on exclusivity or trying to restrict or own dialogue as many are trying to do in the internet age, is just not the way to do it. I can see their point of view, in the same way I think I would be justified in trying to make the Toad Sessions exclusive, but I still pretty much think it’s the wrong approach. Then again, I am not paying my bills with this.

At the moment though I think the best plan is not to worry about that sort of thing: build an audience, build a fan base, get out there and get some loyal listeners and trust that somewhere, somehow, this will end up being something that will create its own opportunities. How the fuck you manage this as a band without losing all faith in the dream is beyond me though. How and when do you put your foot down and say ‘No, not this time. Now you need to put your hands in your pockets, people.’ I just don’t think anyone has a good answer to this question at the moment.

These two songs come from the brilliant Velvet Never Dries, which can be purchased from the Modernaire MySpace page here.

Modernaire – Bloodshed in the Woodshed One of my favourite songs of the year, this one.
Modernaire – Rain

And here is Hannah and Ruth’s other band, the wonderful Moulettes. Do me a favour and buy something from both bands because it’s not expensive, and I really appreciate them making their contribution to this page and being so patient with my nonsense. And, of course, they’re both fucking brilliant.

The Moulettes – Pirate Song

Watusi wasn’t the first Wedding Present album that I bought for myself – that was Mini – but it was the first one I was really aware of.  The Wedding Present, like Yo La Tengo, are one of my favourite bands and one I owe entirely to my friend Strath who played them constantly over the space of about four years, despite a constant hail of abuse from my good self, until such time as I finally gave in an admitted that they were brilliant.  I think Yo La Tengo required more persistence.

The Wedding Present, brilliant as they are, are rarely what you would describe as musically or lyrically inventive.  Lyrically strong, yes, but not all that varied.  This album might in fact be their most creatively arranged effort by some distance.  The hiss and crackle of Click Click and the three-songs-in-one craziness of the superb opener So Long, Baby are both amongst the best The Weddoes have ever produced, but the overall rise and fall of the album really is perfectly judged.  Seamonsters and Bizarro and, I suppose, George Best may take most of the plaudits, but Watusi is chock full of great songs and is perhaps, as a whole album, better assembled.

I’ve never quite understood how it can take so long to get into a group you come to love, but sometimes things just don’t sink in.  Strath really tried his best to open my eyes but for some reason I persistently failed to twig.  I remember hearing this album repeatedly from student halls in Maryhill to a damp, cold basement flat in Arlington Street, to the flat on Great Western Road that was occupied by an ever-changing cast of our cronies for nigh on six years.

That flat was a pit, but it seemed brilliant at the time; a massive Victorian tenement building, with two huge bedrooms with massive bay windows.  Strath and I would do our own thing most of the time – play Championship Manager, watch telly, important stuff like that – and when we got bored we’d wander into one another’s room for a chat.  I would invariably make some comment about ‘the latest selection from Strath’s Shit Music collection’.  It never failed to irritate the poor fella, and it still does, despite the fact that three quarters of it is now in my very own Shit Music Collection.

Most definitely including The bloody Wedding Present.

The Wedding Present – So Long, Baby
The Wedding Present – Spangle
The Wedding Present – Big Rat

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I always remember the snivelling acolytes of the cool kids at school being so horrified when you showed indifference to the glowing aura of dazzling beauty emanating from the posteriors of their deities that there was only one response: you must be jealous.

Aye, right, spot on you fucking psychological genius.  Christ almighty, are you that heartbroken by someone showing a lack of respect for your personal heroes that you have to whine like a jilted baby?  The answer is yes, of course.  Yesterday someone left a great comment on my post about Scarlett Johansson’s merciless butchering of Tom Waits’ back catalogue which was pretty much in that exact same vein.  It was perfect – a little gem of spurned, wounded madness and I thought I had to share.  No rambling, no idiotic screed, perfectly concise and absolutely brilliant.  No need to mock the old dear any more of course, but I though you might find this funny:

I actually love Tom Waits AND Scarlet’s covers, especially “Falling Down.” There is absolutely no reason for you to bash someone personally because they didn’t cover a beloved song of yours to your liking or because you’re bitter about not being famous.

She’s quite right.  I am unforgivably bitter about not being famous.  Because I’ve done, erm… nothing worthy of fame really.  But then, that doesn’t seem to discourage many people. And it couldn’t possibly be because I think Scarlett Johansson can’t fucking sing and that our pathetic toadying to celebrity means no-one had the balls to tell her, could it?  No no, that would be entirely implausible.  Can anyone sense that I’m in a bit of a mood today?

And what better song:

The Magnetic Fields – Famous

There’s so much perfectly decent music in my inbox at the moment, that I find it hard to write about any of it.  Yeah, you know, ho hum, it’s all pretty decent but none is blowing me away.

Islands’ Arm’s Way is pretty decent, Bon Iver’s album For Emma, Forever Ago isn’t bad either, but I honestly don’t find it quite as brilliant as almost everyone else seems to.  The new albums by Half Man Half Biscuit and even The Wave Pictures are both pretty good but just not awakening much passion I’m afraid.  Ditto Fleet Foxes, Bowerbirds, Tindersticks and a few others.

I guess this happens, and this is why people have old favourites in the first place: occasionally you just need to go back to the cup of tea and a biscuit part of your collection – for Americans that might be the chicken soup with rice part – and just listen to the stuff so good and comforting and familiar that it always does the trick.  No thinking, no evaluating, no trying to pull comparisons out of your arse, just give the brain a rest for a bit and stop thinking.   How conscious a process is music enjoyment supposed to be anyway.

I never participated in No Music day, but I thought it was a good idea, albeit not for the reasons suggested.  Not every moment of every day needs to be soundtracked.  We are not movies, and it is good for all of us to take the headphones off, turn off the stereo and just enjoy being peaceful from time to time.  Right now is that time for me.  I just need to go for a walk and listen to fuck all for a bit, and when I do listen to something it needs to be some Dylan stuff, or Tom Waits.  Or Calexico, or the Willard Grant Conspiracy, or Billy Bragg, or Belle & Sebastian or an old REM album or something like that.

Sometimes you have to stop processing music, and just enjoy it.  And sometimes I get to the stage where I need to be reminded of that.  Like today.

Calexico – Sunken Waltz
Bruce Springsteen – Growin’ Up
The Smiths – William, It was Really Nothing
Eels – Susan’s House
The Wedding Present – Gazebo

The Willard Grant Conspiracy are one of my favourite bands and I have now seen them play as a rock band, I’ve seen Robert Fisher perform solo and now I can add the Pilgrim Orchestra to the list.

Pilgrim Road, the new Willard Grant Conspiracy album, is the first to make heavy use of orchestration and, when I talked to him about it after the show, Robert said he felt that the tour needed to make a statement. His attitude is that if you’re going to do something really different it would be a waste just do a standard tour and I think he’s right. The impact of the new material would be, if not lost, diluted somehow by just doing a straightforward band tour.

It’s just a shame that, having heard older material in both the other two formats, that there wasn’t time to give more old songs the Pilgrim Orchestra treatment. Again, Robert has a response that makes perfect sense: that when an album is conceived as a whole and the songs live together they might lose something by being broken up and sprinkled across a Greatest Hits setlist. So other than Distant Shore, the truly gorgeous Fare Thee Well and Soft Hand all of which appear at the end of the set, there’s barely anything from the older albums. Distant Shore is an interesting one actually. It’s from Pilgrim Road’s incendiary predecessor and is presumably rather directly related to the US invasion of Iraq, but it’s actually quite an old song these days. Have we really been stuck in that humiliating debacle that long? Christ.

You sense that Robert Fisher has real pride in the new songs. The bold, risky step to tour with such a large band is one obvious result. Beyond a couple of big, shiny exceptions bands do not make money touring, contrary to popular myth, and setting off on a national tour with this many people is taking a risk that shows great dedication to giving the music the respect it deserves. Choosing the Queen’s Hall is another. Apparently the ageing, functional grandeur of the building has been in the minds of Fisher and his co-conspirator Malcolm Lindsay since they dragged this record out of gestation and into the workshop four years ago.

On the night, without knowing much about the financial success of the show, the muscial side is a triumph. The gentle lilt to a lot of the music makes a disarming juxtaposition to the anger in the lyrics. Musically it’s sadder than it is angry, and seems to comfort rather than twist you. Regard the End was grief-stricken, Let it Roll was raging, and this seems more resigned. For what was essentially a skeleton orchestra they managed to re-create the rounder, fuller sound of the album incredibly well, although given half of them actually play on the recordings that should not be a surprise.

But really, the core of any Willard Grant Conspiracy album is of course Robert Fisher’s amazing voice. If anything, irrespective of the arrangement of the music, what communicates the emotional core of the songs is his voice, and that is the reason I will always go and see them when they play here. Bloody marvellous.

Willard Grant Conspiracy – The Pugilist
Willard Grant Conspiracy – Soft Hand
Willard Grant Conspiracy – Distant Shore

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This evening is my last show of the term on Fresh Air, and I’ve managed to persuade Mrs. Toad to join in with me. So we will be co-presenting a selection of choices, mostly by her, from 8.30pm-10pm (BST). I haven’t managed to get myself thrown off the station by myself, so let’s see if my little nightmare can do it for me, eh?

Here, in no particular order, are a couple of songs that, althought they aren’t on the playlist, give a flavour of what might be. To listen to the show itself, just go to freshair.org.uk and click on the big green Listen Live button on the right hand side. Easy peasy!

Me First & the Gimme Gimmes – Rocket Man
The Clash – I’m So Bored With the USA
Dolly Parton – 9 to 5 (Don’t ask!)

Well we know that Andy – one half of the Nightjar songwriting team – is currently banjo-bothering in London’s finest satirical drums and banjo combo Celebrity Chimp, but what of The Other One?  The Other One is a certain Mr. Jack Richold and he was responsible for the more delicate songs on that album.

Well I met up with Jack for the first time the other night to discuss the Nightjar release and he gave me a four song demo CD of the stuff he’s been working on in the past year, including two re-recordings of songs on The Moth Trap.  I don’t know much about Jack or his music beyond the Nightjar stuff, but these are absolutely gorgeous.  It’s a similar gently hushed folk music to his contributions to The Moth Trap, so perhaps not for the punk rockers in the audience, but for those of you who appreciate this sort of thing you won’t find much better.  The re-working of Lady of the Calico is utterly beautiful, and that little bit of female vocal he’s added is a masterstroke.

Without having seen him play live there’s not much more I can tell you, but I promise to sort that out as soon as I possibly can.

Jack Richold – Lady of the Calico
Jack Richold – Mary Morri

Ooh, the excitement.  I do like finding new things which get me excited and then gabbling giddily about them to my crowd of internet bunnies.

Inspector Tapehead played at last week’s Trampoline gig at the Wee Red Bar and were bloody marvelous.  It’s, erm, folky indie-pop I suppose, with chunks of bluegrass and electronica thrown into the mix.  Jonnie Common from Down the Tiny Steps plays in the band and his devilish box of tricks in pretty clearly in evidence.  The other two band members, Chris Croasdale on guitar and Roy Shearer on drums, used to be in Adam Beattie & the Consultants who have produced some amazing music, but have gone rather sadly quiet recently.  So there’s plenty of pedigree in this band, although you could hardly extrapolate their provenance from their sound.

There’s definitely some playful pop sensibilities in there.  In fact, for all the folk and electronica I guess describing these chaps as a somewhat experimental pop band might be the most accurate way to get across the feeling of their music.  Each song does build rather slowly and, in some senses, a little unpromisingly, but before a minute each has launched into whatever manic energy possesses it and danced off around the room, swinging you along with it.

These songs come from a 3 song album sampler given out at the gig, and from listening to this little lot I think I can pretty much guarantee at least one sale, over here in the Toad corner please.

Inspector Tapehead – Pherenzik Tear
Inspector Tapehead – I am Your Pedigree

Plenty of things going on this week, as per usual, although I am trying not to just prattle on about the same old groups week after week – all too easily done when reporting on any local music scene.

If I was going to all of these gigs I’d have a marriage and a liver in tatters by the end of this week.  I’d also have to carve myself into four equal slices on Friday in order to go to everything I want to go to.  Funnily enough though in a week of such riches I am not going to be at all that much.  Tuesday is my last show on Fresh Air Radio, Wednesday is the Champion’s League Final and Friday I have to go to something related to Mrs. Toad’s work.  She doesn’t demand much of me, the old lass, so I can’t very well insist on this one and, frankly, it spares me having to choose between four different gigs, all of which I want to attend.  So maybe no bad thing after all.

Tuesday 20th May 2008: Feist at the Queen’s Hall.
I am not sure if I would go to this one, myself, were it not for my last Fresh Air show rendering that question somewhat academic.  I did enjoy her album, and I do like her sound in general, although it can become a little bland after a while.  Maybe if the show was priced affordably I would have gone, but in any case, very much worth considering.
Feist – 1234

Wednesday 21st May 2008: Caribou at Cabaret Voltaire.
For those not watching the Champions’ League final, Caribou have finally arrived in Edinburgh, months after their last gig was cancelled.  Math rock, it gets called occasionally, so
Caribou – Sandy

Wednesday 21st May 2008: Glissando, Meursault & The Kays Lavelle at the Wee Red Bar.
I’ve never heard of Glissando, but Euan’s Trampoline nights never fail to deliver, so pop along for a couple of local favourites and some epic miserablism from Leeds.
Glissando – Floods

Thursday 22nd May 2008: My Tiny Robots & Babybones at the Voodoo Rooms.
My Tiny Robots are a group I’ve had recommended to me on numerous occasions.  Good indie guitar stuff from the sounds of it, along with a suitably tortured vocal.  Babybones I don’t know at all, but this looks like another good lineup from Limbo.  It’s my only free night this week, so will Mrs. Toad let me go?  Hmm, touch and go, but I rather fancy this one.
My Tiny Robots – Haircut Song

Friday 23rd May 2008:
There’s so much going on this Friday that I could sprain my wanking hand just typing it all out, so here’s a list instead.  Either go and see Black Diamond Express at The Ark, or pop along to Henry’s for St. Jude’s Infirmary, who have a new album approaching, and are supported by Come On Gang, or alternatively there’s Times New Viking and Meursault at Studio 24, or finally there’s also The Declining Winter at the Stills Gallery on Cockburn Street.  I know nothing about this last lot, but they sound rather good.  Any of these gigs would be worth your time, frankly, but guess what – I’ll be at none of them.  I have to schmooze with Mrs. Toad and be a good wife at a dinner thingy of some description.  No swearing there, and no rock and fucking roll either.  Christ I’ve sold out.
Black Diamond Express – Jack
The Declining Winter – Summer Turns to Hurt
Saint Jude’s Infirmary – The Church of John Coltrane

Sunday 25th May 2008: The Young Republic at Cabaret Voltaire.
When I first started writing about their often country-tinged, genre-hopping indie pop I remember exchanging emails with Julian Saporiti that when along the line of ‘If we ever get to Edinburgh you’ll have to come along to one of our shows’ and was said with such heavy irony that we were both acknowledging just how unlikely that was to ever happen.  Well fair bloody play to ‘em, because since signing to End of the Road Records and the really positive reception given to their debut album 12 Tales From Winter City, here they are.
The Young Republic – Mary Ellen (Live)