It’s hardly surprising that I find myself saying that Google have turned their old motto, Don’t Be Evil, into something of a sad parody, rather than the idealistic mission it once used to be. It’s also a little sad that what prompts me to write is not their spineless compliance with internet censorship in China, but something a little closer to home.

Ed, writer of 17 Seconds, is the latest to fall foul of Google’s draconian, utterly corrupt and morally bankrupt policies towards copyright. A year or so ago Ed wrote an in-depth interview with Glasvegas, back when the band were shopping about a few rough demos, barely more than a whisper on the lips of a few of us up here in Scotland. Yesterday Google deleted that interview from his blog. The whole thing, without permission, without dialogue, without warning: they just deleted it and told him it was gone.

The reason they gave was that it had been the subject of a DMCA complaint from Columbia Records, presumably on the basis that the interview write up contained links to long-since removed mp3 files of Glasvegas early demo recordings of songs now on their debut album. Despite the contemptuous, disgusting nature what both Columbia and Google have done, I can’t even feel angry about this; just depressed. But this is wrong in so many ways it’s difficult to know where to start.

First and foremost, none of you should ever pay for a Columbia product ever again. Fuck them. If you feel you can’t live without their music then just download the bastard stuff illegally, better yet just live without it, but under no circumstances give these chiselling vipers a cent of your money ever again. Could someone who knows more about this correct me if I am wrong, but there is to my mind no way whatsoever that they could own the rights to those demos, which were recorded and circulated for free long before they were ever involved with the band. Read the rest of this entry »

Once again, I prove myself to be unbearably slow when it comes to picking up on a great many bands that everyone else already knows and loves, and here is yet another example. The Avett Brothers used to be on Ramseur Records, home to the superlative Bombadil and Samantha Crain, but have recently signed with a big shiny label, namely Colombia.

I don’t have their Colombia release yet (buy here if you fancy) but I am exploring their older Ramseur stuff and absolutely loving it, as you probably all knew I would.  When I first heard it I though ‘oh, so it’s basically just a bit of a mix of country and bluegrass’ and didn’t listen too carefully.  It only took a couple of listens to realise how good this stuff is though, although it’s nothing that I would describe as ground-breaking.  In fact, I would probably say that it is incredibly fucking simple actually; in many ways there seems to be nothing to it.

That’s the genius though, in a sense.  How can you make music this basic and familiar sound quite so good?  I love this album. Writing basic, straightforward songs is a hell of a knack.  Many bands dress it up a bit, try and twist things a bit too much, but it always comes back down to this: can you write songs that stick in people’s heads, and these lads can, with almost effortless ease.

I am just getting into their other stuff too, which tends to be a little more melancholy, but this is a bubbly, enjoyable album with a sort of easy, confident charm to it.  It’s almost as if the band were winking at you.

The Avett Brothers – Nothing Short of Thankful
The Avett Brothers – At the Beach
The Avett Brothers – Pretty Girl at the Airport

Website | Buy from Amazon

This one arrived completely out of left field. I’ve never heard Yusuf’s name anywhere, nor seen it on a poster or flyer, so it’s fair to say that I had precisely no expectations either good or bad when I clicked on the MySpace link in his email.

Well, let’s not beat about the bush here, shall we – this is really, really good.  The guitar is plucked in a lovely, rolling manner and with a really nice individual style.  It’s almost got elements of classical guitar (don’t worry, not much, I hate classical guitar too) to flavour the folky plucking, and it gives the music real character.  The breathy harmonies are really nice too, and although the delivery doesn’t quite have the spasming lurch of some modern music, it does have enough shift and lilt to catch you pleasingly off guard from time to time.

Yusuf lists his influences as Eliot Smith, the Beach Boys and Bob Dylan and that’s pretty evident from his music.  His review in Is This Music also mentioned Nick Drake and I can certainly understand that one as well.  Basically he sounds like a ghostly set of old bellows, wheezing in and out and managing to rather surprisingly generate some fantastic songs whilst doing so.  The new EP Light Procession was recorded with the help of the Dalhousie String Quartet (the what?) and they really add a gorgeous atmosphere to the songs on which they appear.

Yusuf is lining up a tour for November and will be accompanied by the very same quartet, so I would strongly recommend getting along to one of those shows if you get the chance.  Buying the EP is logistically difficult at the moment, but if you contact him through his MySpace page I am sure he will happily send you this one, and hopefully his previous one as well.  There are plenty more songs to preview there as well.

Yusuf Azak – Light Procession
Yusuf Azak – Ursa Major

Mrs. Toad is back from touring God Bless America with her Shiny Shiny Job and she has characterised the mood amongst the financial people she met there as being pretty much like so: “AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! The world is fucking ending, run everyone run. Fuck the women and children, save yourselves!”

I am slowly but surely starting to find this sort of shit deeply fucking irritating. It is exactly this hysterical herd mentality that got us into this sort of shit in the first place. These fuckwits don’t perform ‘analysis’ as they like to boast, they basically act like a school of fish and cluelessly swim in vaguely the same direction as their neighbours, all the while pretending it is part of some sort of complicated strategy.

Whenever I ask how exactly it is that these bovine cretins make quite so much wedge I hear the idiotic bleat ‘oh yes, but you must understand, I have the responsibility of handling millions of pounds of other people’s money’. As if handling other people’s money was in some way the same as handling other people’s money responsibly and effectively.

The Bank of Scotland just sent me a letter telling me that they were increasing the limit on my credit card by a thousand pounds. A thousand pounds which I never asked for and which one would assume they could not fucking afford. Oh but wait, the government has just handed the banks billions of pounds of, erm, my money, which they have generously packaged up and sold back to me, presumably adding a big fat commission to their personal champagne fund in the process. The worst of it is that keeping the money markets liquid was absolutely essential, and there weren’t a lot of obviously better ways to do it, but watching the same old same old come around again as soon as these buffoons get their melodramatic caterwauling under control is far from amusing.

How do things like boom and bust happen then? Basically everybody in the financial sector gets massively over-excited about something. Then the fucking herd mentality sets in, because all these morons’ pals are getting excited about the same damn thing, and there commences an incoherent, animalistic frenzy based on no more than human beings’ pathetic herd mentality. Then the value gets so ridiculously over-inflated by all this idiotic screaming, until someone finally notices that no amount of squealing and snorting at the great trough of fiscal hyperbole actually makes a fucking Kinder Egg worth fifty million pounds. At which point everyone panics and runs away as fast they can, whilst making equally stupid pronouncements along the lines that no-one will ever eat a Kinder fucking Egg ever again and that it was all our fault for finding them tasty in the first place.

All of which is fine, of course, because finance is difficult and people, generally, are not very bright. Except, of course, for the smug, self-satisfied nature of the chiselling avarice of these fucking whores. You are no better than fucking bin men you useless cunts, irrespective of how expensively you dress, so you can stop pretending to be anything other than vacuous fucking sheep. All this pretence of strategy and deep understanding of something so subtle and so complicated that it is clearly, clearly beyond the grasp of us mere mortals was irritating enough to begin with, but given that it has now been exposed for the extremely fucking obvious fraud that it was, it is even worse. I am not listening to any more pompous puffery from people who clearly have no better idea what they are doing than a flock of fucking pigeons.

If the financial services were more populated by the competent, rather than fat-tongued Yahs who manage to render the disadvantage of spectacular mental dullness irrelevant by having cunningly been sent to the right school, then I might find this whole pig’s ear less depressing. As it is, when the response to a disaster caused by years of their own gloriously frantic me-too flailing is this sort of nonsense, then I get annoyed: that there will never be such a thing as growth ever again; that this is worse than the Great Depression. Anyone who actually had to live through the Great Depression will be either laughing their arses off or crying into their beer.

Sorry, there were no coherent arguments there, just a depressed desire for all this wailing and gnashing of teeth to fucking stop, and for people to get their shit together, calm themselves down and get back to doing their jobs. Sadly, that will have to mean doing them as badly as they did them before, but it would at least be better than watching them all soiling their plus-fours and acting like spoiled children. This inability to dredge up even a splinter of mature reflection and use your brains is not only making things much worse just in itself, but is exactly the reason we are in this mess to begin with. Stop crying, you fucking babies, and get back to fucking work.

King Creosote – You’ve No Clue Do You?
Bob Dylan – Idiot Wind

P.S. Mrs. Toad is not a financial type, she just manages them, so I am not having a go at her, before anyone says anything (or she threatens me with castration).

Christ almighty, it’s fucking busy this week. So I guess I’ll start by listing the three famousy gigs which I will not be attending, just to get them out of the way nice and early. Firstly, I will not be going to see Martha Wainright at the Picturehouse on Wednesday because, frankly, I find her rather annoying, despite expecting to like her music. I expected to like it, I just didn’t. I also won’t be going to see Mogwai at the Corn Exchange on Tuesday because despite their legendary status, I think they’re shit. Thirdly, I won’t be going to see Noah & the Whale play The Liquid Rooms on Sunday either, because I can’t be arsed. That’s three hours of my life I’d never be able to get back.

Interestingly, Razorlight have just announced a brand new ‘intimate’ tour of the UK. Quite in whose deranged fantasy places like the Edinburgh Corn Exchange qualify as being intimate is beyond me – the place is like a run-down fucking aircraft hanger. Idiots.

So, yes, the gigs I will be attending this week. Well, not all of them, but the ones I would actually recommend, and might attend if I had infinite amounts of time and money.

Tuesday 21st October 2008: Action Group, Come On Gang & HOMEwork at the Ark.
A good value lineup at the shittest venue in the city. I haven’t seen Come On Gang for a while actually, and it’s about time I went along again, assuming my recently returned lady friend will permit it of course.
Action Group – Crime & Punishment

Thursday 23rd October 2008: Popup & Isosceles play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms.
Pure indiepop this week at Limbo. I don’t need to tell you much more about Isosceles’ spiky, enjoyable, synthy indie, and Popup are currently promoting their debut album, so this should be a most entertaining evening.
Isosceles – This Is Where It Ends

Friday 24th October 2008: Los Campesinos & Copy Haho play a Tennent’s Mutual gig at Cabaret Voltaire.
Los Campesinos are my friend Matt’s favourite band. Personally I quite like what I hear, but I know little enough about them to still be in the curiosity stage. What I have heard of them I’ve rather enjoyed though, so this would appear to be a good chance to find out a bit more.
Los Campesinos! – Death to Los Campesinos!

Saturday 25th October 2008: The Week That Was & Eagleowl at Henry’s Cellar Bar.
Field Music’s Pete Brewis has another project, and it is The Week That Was. That’s pretty interesting to begin with, but supporting them will be local favourites Eagleowl, despite Findo Gask being on the listing. So this could be rather good value for your six quid.
The Week That Was – Scratch the Surface

Saturday 25th October 2008: Seasick Steve at the Queen’s Hall.
Quite why everyone has suddenly decided that some old blues musician is the trendiest thing since sliced bread is sort of beyond me, I have to confess. I like his brand of blues, don’t get me wrong, but quite why him rather than anyone else seems baffling. Mind you, he does look like the reason the word ‘grizzled’ was invented, so maybe that has something to do with it.
Seasick Steve – St. Louis Slim

Saturday 25th October: The Hurricanes at Cabaret Voltaire.
I don’t know much about the Hurricanes at all, because they only have one song on their MySpace player, along with a remix of said song. It’s a good song though, so I am curious to find out more.
The Hurricanes – Down Below

Oh deary me.  A somewhat slurred podcast this week.  I recorded this on Friday night after coming home from sharing about seven pints with my boss at Proper Job, who is a thoroughly decent chap and doesn’t get out for beers as often as he used to due to an unfortunate breeding accident in which his wife had a baby, thus confining him to the house.  The lesson – gentlemen, for the love of god, don’t let them breed!

So I came back to the house and wanted to play some loud music.  I popped a bottle of beer, bought some munchies and mumbled my way through a pile of loud, rambunctious songs that I played far too loud as I sorted out the playlist, and great fun it all was too. I asked about modern rowdy music this week, and Bart kindly recommended some bands, a couple of whom I assume I may have been a little quick to dismiss in the past, so I am going to have another go at them.

Looking through the playlist, I find one thing sticking out more than anything else: how the hell can you tell a Sex Pistols demo from a Sex Pistols recording?

Toadcast #42 – Noise Please

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01. The Libertines – What a Waster (02.56)
02. The Von Bondies – Shallow Grave (08.59)
03. The Bellrays – Blues For Godzilla (12.05)
04. Ian Dury & the Blockheads – Ballad of the Sulphate Strangler (17.49)
05. The Damned – Thrill Kill (23.07)
06. Hoggboy – Left & Right (29.31)
07. Liars – Mr You’re on Fire Mr (35.33)
08. Monster Magnet – Kiss of the Scorpion (37.57)
09. The Sex Pistols – Anarchy in the UK (Demo) (43.24)
10. The Fall – Two Librans (49.47)
11. The Small Faces – All or Nothing (Live) (53.41)
12. The Detroit Cobras – Hey Sailor (59.44)

Chillout music really is the valium of our generation, isn’t it. And oddly, in my case, associated with Napster because it is the genre I discovered through using it, at least the most clear cut one anyway. Most early chillout was essentially electronica, not a genre with which I have a particularly easy relationship, and so I rather eyed it with suspicion at the beginning.  Besides which, it started life as comedown music for drug takers, which I never was, so our paths never really crossed.

Q Magazine released a brilliant compilation years ago, something like 2000 or 2001 (yes, that actually is years ago now), called Chillout which mixed all this downbeat electronica with some gorgeous acoustic tracks from the likes of Fairport Convention and John Martyn. This CD introduced me to Goldfrapp and, I think, Lemonjelly, but it was access to Napster that really allowed me to explore and enjoy bands like them, Thievery Corporation, Dzihan & Kamien and all sorts of others from a genre I might never have touched otherwise.

In many ways it’s easy to forget just how crap Napster was. You could end up dowloading any old shit, and the quality was often dismal. But it was great for exploring things you weren’t familiar with and taking a chance on new music. I did even less at work back then than I do now, and I remember sitting there watching a huge long list of things ticking over slowly as they downloaded. Oddly enough, I also remember getting loads of messages from disaffected teenagers in Australia because of my huge collection of Doug Anthony Allstars material, but that’s largely beside the point.

My relationship with Chillout was always pretty ambivalent, to be honest. I prefer acoustic music to electronic if I’m relaxing, provided it doesn’t become so morose that I fear for my guests’ will to live. Then there was the fact that almost the instant the concept caught on, it was replaced by unspeakably bland electronic mush that had absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever. Was ever a musical movement so swiftly eviscerated as Chillout? I can’t think of another. By the time the likes of Zero 7 came along it was time to put the whole bloody lot in the bin and slam the lid.

It’s like people forgot that a mere mood is not enough. This is fucking music, you cretins, not interior fucking decorating. Although maybe that crossover was the heart of the problem. Go to IKEA, get some shitty furniture, throw in some nice paint and a feature wall with Habitat wallpaper, and then add some stylishly packaged pap with no musical merit whatsoever just to show people that you’ve all read the same edition of Wallpaper.

But the unconscionable garbage that it became, and that most of its better propents ultimately surrendered to, masks the fact that there were a couple of pretty good things that came out of it, early on. And the concept is sound. It thrives in indie and folk circles: close, intimiate albums full of melancholy and suited to nothing better than an evening by the fire with a glass of red wine.

So it’s gone, and not entirely lamented, but it is nevertheless a genre I sort of pity in a way.

Lemonjelly – Nervous Tension
Goldfrapp – Pilots
Thievery Corporation – Un Simple Histoire
Zero 7 – Destiny Yeuch

Right, given Dadrock seems to be the enduring theme of the moment, let’s poke a little further shall we? Actually, Dadrock in our house was pretty fucking cool. My Dad introduced me to the Waterboys, the Pogues, the Men They Couldn’t Hang, as well as the stuff he grew up with: Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, The Band and various other classics. Mum wasn’t bad either: Depeche Mode, Bowie, the Stones and The Pet Shop Boys, as well as some splendidly camp pop such as ABC, Erasure, Kate Bush, Elton John (just the early stuff, calm down) and things like that.

There were some moments of genuine shame in there too, to be fair. Who knows, we may look back on the Decemberists with derision for their pretension and intricacy, so you can never entirely tell which music will and won’t age with dignity.

I still make my parents a lot of compilation CDs, even though I don’t make them for myself anymore. In fact, ever since I left home in 1993 I’ve been regularly returning with a little pile of pre-filtered new music for them. I try and steer clear of the Libertines and the Von Bondies, but maybe that’s silly because you know who introduced me to the Dead Kennedys? Yup, my folks.

Having heaped them with praise, it must be confessed that after many years of cool, my Mum did rather embarrassingly lapse into a penchant for the Lighthouse Family. Or, in the recent traditions of this site, the Fucking Lighthouse Fucking Family. Or that Italian clown Eros Ramazotti. Dad has remained pretty steady, to credit the old bastard, but he is still the man who introduced me to Billy Joel, so some responsibility does need to be taken there, irrespective of the quality of Captain Jack and Piano Man.

So if you’re lurking, lurk no more. Now is the time to come out of the woodwork and alternately shame and praise your family. Come on, they can’t be all bad.

1. Your Mum’s most shameful crime against music.
2. The coolest thing your Mum listens to.
3. Your Dad’s worst moment of musical shame.
4. Dad’s moment of musical triumph.
5. The most shameful musical thing that you and your folks have in common.

David Bowie – Let’s Dance
The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Scarlet Ribbons
Depeche Mode – People Are People
Bob Dylan – Drifter’s Escape
Pet Shop Boys – What Have I Done to Deserve This

I am not really much of a one for proper punk, although there is plenty that I find myself really liking. Actually at the moment, after all the brilliantly quirky folk pop of the last few years, I am genuinely itching for someone to break the mould and really make some venomous noise.

Now, the last time I wrote something like this some tool left a comment suggesting I try the new Oasis album, so let me get this straight: I do not want fucking kiddie-punk. I don’t want stuff that rawks, I do not want anything with the word ‘core’ in the genre.

I want the same ramshackle aesthetic and venom I like in good, fearsome indie music. Something with some edge, and none of your wanky macho posturing.  The problem with a lot of savagely angry music is that it almost inevitably tends to attract dickheaded blokes who seem to have drawn the completely spurious conclusion that listening to music that is a little bit loud in some way makes them hard.  Actually, it probably does, but not in ‘that’ way.

Anyhow, I’ve sort of missed the recent lack of genuine noise-merchants.  Live shows by iLiKETRAiNS and British Sea Power have been the few exceptions, but it’s been a while since I’ve heard an album I want to put on when I’m in one of those moods and just crank the fuck up to neighbour-bothering volume.  Old punk seems to be just about the best avenue to explore, but I am far from an expert on such things.  The Dead Kennedys are still my gold standard, and their general fury tends to mask a canny knack for a melody that punk is forever being accused of lacking.

Bum Kon are a band I happened across recently, primarily because of their excellent album cover.  They released a couple of things back in the mid-80s and that was that, but any band with a song called Nancy Reagan Fashion Show is alright by me.  The album above can be purchased from Smooch here.

Bum Kon – Nancy Reagan Fashion Show
Bum Kon – Giving In
Bum Kon – The Draft
The Dead Kennedys – When Ya Get Drafted

Okay, there have been some comments recently about… well, read the title of the post and guess for yourself. So I thought it was time to address this issue, although not in as confrontational a manner as you might expect, given my enthusiasm for invective.

I like – now prepare yourselves here – quite a few songs by the following artists: Dave Fucking Matthews Fucking Band, Phish, Counting Crows, Sheryl Crow, Hootie & the Blowfish and Bruce Hornsby & the Range. I don’t particularly feel the need to make excuses for any of this, but I do wonder slightly that these bands are so hated by my peers, when I think they’re okay, for the most part, despite the borderline self-parodying sludge they degenerated into later in their careers.

Bruce Hornsby doesn’t really fit with the other lot, I guess, and I think that may be a nostalgia thing. I used to hear his first couple of albums quite a bit when I was growing up, so it’s kind of stuck with me. It’s funny that I have a similar sort of nostalgic affection for Cyndi Lauper’s first (I think) album, but because that’s so ironic it doesn’t seem to attract quite the same derision.

I don’t know who has any sort of liking for the softer side of the indie spectrum – Bloc Party, The Killers’ first, early Snow Patrol, stuff like that. It’s sort of like indie, but a softer sort with a lot of the edges rubbed off and something of a fuller, more radio-friendly sound. I’ll admit, I love the early stuff by all three of these groups. I also find myself thinking that my Dave Fucking Matthews and Counting Crows liking is probably the equivalent to this, but for Americana. I like a fair bit more Americana than a lot of the readers of this site, I get the impression, and maybe the softer end of that scale leaves me less hostile to the sort of musical territory we’re talking about here.

The other thing is that this is squarely in the 90s American indie rock camp, which should be just about due for its period of loathing, before the inevitable nostalgia trips begin in a few years. I’m not saying the nostalgia will exonerate any of these bands of course, but it’s funny who it leaves behind. The 80s revival seemed to rather oddly exclude Phil Collins, when you’d think that anyone so universally loathed would make for perfect ironic re-appraisal for the arch and superior. On the other end of the spectrum, Springsteen’s classic Born in the USA doesn’t seem to have been able to avoid being dragged down by the 80s production values with which it is saddled. So it’s a bit of a lottery, I suppose.

Before anything gets reappraised it seems to go through this period where it is detested with a more frantic passion than ever before. We’re getting on for ten years away from the 90s now, and 90s indie is probably about as unfashionable a sound as exists at the moment.  Also, the rabid enthusiasm for the 80s seems to be waning somewhat. Even clothes are starting to resemble early 90s away kits from the Premier League, albeit only on the hippest of kids.

So, I think the reason this stuff is so hated is not unrelated to the fact that the mid 90s are currently approaching the nadir of their appreciation, before the inevitable sea change. Whether or not this revival will take any of this stuff with it I have no idea, but nor do I care in particular. The Dave Fucking Matthews Fucking Band have two, if not three, really good albums. Fairweather Johnson by Hootie & the Blowfish is good. Farmhouse by Phish is good. Even Sheryl Crow produced half a good album, with her self-titled ’98 release. So you can snigger all you want, but I stand by this, and there’s absolutely no way there isn’t an equivalent MOR secret in your music collection somewhere.

Counting Crows – Have You Seen Me Lately?
Hootie & the Blowfish – Sad Caper
Phish – Bug
Bruce Hornsby & the Range – The Old Playground
Dave Fucking Matthews Fucking Band – Jimi Thing