Live recordings – in fact, specifically, live albums – came up in a recent post on Song, by Toad and the idea of doing a podcast composed entirely of live recordings really appealed to me because there are so many great ones.

That said, on the post in question there arose a debate, one voice expressing my deepest hatreds of the genre, and another being perhaps over-generous in the other direction.  Frankly, I despise the vast majority of live albums.  Mostly they are shit recordings of songs we already know, released for the sole reason of fleecing fans whose devotion has already been established, and whose wallets can clearly be plundered for a few more empty sheckles.

Despite that, of course, there are some truly stunning live recordings.  In fact, I’d argue that some of the most memorable, legendary recordings of all  time are in fact live ones.  Bob Dylan live at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1966.  Bruce Springsteen pretty much any time in the seventies.  Basically, for all live recordings are mostly rip-off bollocks, there are some truly phenomenal live albums, ones which open your eyes to the artist, ones which fill in that artist’s musical upbringing, and some which are just genuinely amazingly wonderful recordings in their own right.  Therefore we bring to you the Livecast.  Enjoy, Toadlings…

Toadcast #57 – Production Values

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01. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – 10th Avenue Freeze Out (04.09)
02. Andrew Bird – Why (11.47)
03. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Papa Won’t Leave You Henry (16.22)
04. The Moulettes – Country Joy Song (25.29)
05. Colin Meloy – Blues Run the Game (32.49)
06. Quasar Wut-Wut – The Partisan (35.45)
07. Jeff Mangum – Two Headed Boy (43.04)
08. Tom Waits – Diamonds on My Windshield (54.37)
09. Billy Bragg – Days Like These (DC Remix) (56.46)
10. Ben Folds Five – Satan is My Master (60.15)
11. Bob Dylan – Like a Rolling Stone (64.16)

On Sunday I make my DJ debut at the Flying Duck in Glasgow, where I have rather foolishly agreed to play records after a Men Diamler, Animal Magic Tricks, Withered Hand and Meursault gig.  That’s some lineup, but I will probably spend most of it convinced that the simple task of playing one record after another will for some reason prove to be beyond me.  Lets face it, DJs are fucking idiots, so if they can do it then surely to fucking god I can do it.  Presumably you have to do something clever every once in a while just to prove that you are somehow better than the shuffle function on a discerningly stocked iPod, but I doubt I’ll bother.

Mrs. Toad is around this weekend for a little while, before buggering off to Australia for ten days, which is crap (the buggering off, not the being around).  Still, it should help me get the Pictish Trail Toad Session finished, which would be fun.  We’re going out for a meal tonight in a half-hearted attempt to spend some time together before she vanishes again, so there should be a late, drunken podcast and plenty of swearing by lunch time tomorrow.

On the subject of tomorrow, we will be collecting our beloved old Volvo (and by old I mean 1971, so yes, old) and putting her on sale and also checking on the state of repair of the Toad van – our fucking ludicrous Toad Mobile.  I don’t know if I’m just excited or if I think we as big a pair of fucking idiots as you probably do.  I think we’ll call her Charlene.

This week I have spent a lot of time in the workshop here at Proper Job, listening to the radio.  A lot of it has centred around the state of the banks in the UK and particluarly the spectacular chutzpah of Fred Goodwin, who had the gall to run one of the world’s largest banks into the ground, and then resign on a £650k per year pension.  It’s a bit like being caught shagging someone’s wife and asking for a cup of tea and a biscuit before they throw you out.  The problem really is that for all the discussion about all this bollocks, the whole debate really boils down to this:

Why did it happen?  Because the decisions are made by blinkered, avaricious cunts with no regard for anything other than enriching themselves in a spectacular fashion.  Why aren’t you doing anything about it?  Because they still have all the fucking money – what’s left of it anyway – so there’s really fuck all we can do because the whores still have us by the short and curlies.  End. Of.  Story.

So, on that perky little note, this is the weekly opportunity for random participation and nonsense.  Please don’t feel you have to be a comedy genius, or contribute all that much, but do take this opportunity to de-lurk and say hello, particularly if it’s for the first time.

1. Favourite excuse for the credit crunch made by some snivelling financial type.
2. Worst ‘poor meal’ you ever had.
3. Something you’re going to spend money on this weekend which you really shouldn’t.
4. Canny saving trick you recently discovered, making you all pleased with yourself.
5. Cheapest thing you’ve ever bought which should be really expensive.

Dan Bern & the IJBC – Crow (IJBC stands for International Jewish Banking Conspiracy, so it is slightly fitting!)

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Hawksley Workman – Bankrobber

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REM – What if We Give it Away

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Richmond Fontaine  – $87 and a Guilty Consience That Gets Worse the Longer I Go

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The Welcome Wagon – Sold! To the Nice Rich Man

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Ten Tracks is a new download service which has been launched recently, by a friend of mine Ed Stack, in collaboration with local arts paper The Skinny.  Bascially, they release specially curated bundles of ten songs once a month, which you can subscribe to for a tenner for the whole year, or simply buy as a one-off for a quid.

Ed does a really good job of finding local bands and getting local musically involved people to participate, and on Valentine’s Day they hosted their first official gig night at the Bowery.  Regular readers will already be familiar with the Rob St. John and eagleowl videos from this splendid evening but, if not, here’s a summary of the night as a whole in video form.

And for those of you who like the look of this, swing by the Bowery again on Saturday, where Found, the Joe Acheson Quartet and Emily Scott will be playing another Ten Tracks gig.

2001 was a very odd year for me on a personal level.  I spent most of it in a surprisingly long term relationship with a girl with whom I was not in the least bit compatible, and I was made redundant in November in the wake of the World Trade Centre attack and the dotcom crash.  Jolly times.

It wasn’t bad though, funnily enough.  I hated work, sure, but it was my first professional job and I was living in Cambridge which, although it’s not somewhere I’d want to settle down, was extremely pleasant.  Actually, to be fair to the place, it’s not all that unlike Edinburgh in many ways – very genteel.

I also heard the album which led to me rediscovering folk music.  I got into popular music largely via the Pogues, and after moving to the UK in 1993 at age seventeen I got really into both Britpop and a lot of increasingly folky stuff.  That sort of petered out as I drifted more into indie over the years, and by about 1995/6 I was pretty much an out and out indie kid.  When I moved to Cambridge it was on the back of Yo La Tengo’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, Moby’s Play and Doves’ brilliant debut. Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone wonder where those eagleowl videos from their Valentine’s Day performance at the Bowery got to?  Well wonder no more, here they are. Any comments appreciated. Is this kind of thing helpful for bands? Apparently people are increasingly using YouTube instead of MySpace as a way of exploring new bands, so any feedback on that phenomenon would be good. How about the picture and sound quality – they’re a bit scratchy at times, but good enough I think. What do you reckon, Toadlings?

In the absence of Mrs. Toad I have to thank Jake for his work wielding one of the cameras, incidentally.  Given we had absolutely no chance to discuss what I was looking for he got it spot on and shot some very nice footage.  Thanks old chap.

[Photo a bodged version of one of David Forcier's pics.]

You have to admire Limbo.  How the hell they manage to put on a three-band lineup every week is frankly beyond me, but to do it and still have so many great bills is a seriously commendable achievement.  And this week, once again, they’ve produced a corker.

Findo Gask only have a couple of singles to their name, but they are both absolutely superb, particularly the slightly enigmatic, insidiously catchy One Eight Zero.  There are a lot of bands making catchy pop songs with an epileptic casio edge to them, however, and that is not, for me, what sets Findo Gask apart tonight.  The difference is in the excellence of the drummer and the elusive sadness of some of the music.  It’s not just dancefloor electropop by any means, although that is superficially what it can sound like, there’s actually a sense of longing in their somewhere which gives the music a really captivating element of mystery.

Maybe it’s Gerard Black’s keening vocal; his voice sounds a lot like King Creosote’s, albeit with just a little more falsetto.  It carries the same innate sense of yearning for something never quite explained, and perhaps helps explain why they have that little bit extra about them as a band.  Black himself is pretty camp, and viewed through that lens, I suppose you could start to view the music as slightly camp as well.  However, that extra dimension to the vocal and, I’ll say it again, the excellent live drumming keep the music in a slightly different territory and, crucially, well clear of pigeonholes.

They only have two singles to their name, so it’s very much premature to go making judgements, but on the back of both those releases and their excellent Limbo show I reckon these guys have serious potential.  Now, anyone know where the fuck I can get hold of a copy of Va Va Va on vinyl, because the bastards appear to have sold out.

Findo Gask – One Eight Zero

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Findo Gask – Wrapped in Plastic (Live)

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MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Angular

I’ve mentioned Magic Arm before, and I hope you were paying attention because he is very, very good.  I saw him for the first time at the first Fence Club I ever attended, and then again at Homegame a couple of years later and was really impressed both times. So needless to say the news of a new EP and imminent album release is greeted with much anticipation and joyfulness here at Toad Hall.

Magic Arm is the stage name of Mancunian Marc Rigelsford, and he is another loop pedal master, along with the likes of Toad favourite David Thomas Broughton.   The tendencies of Magic Arm, however, seem to have a little more of a pop-wards leaning than his Leeds contemporary.  Bootsy Bootsy is a little less introspective and meandering that his wonderful debut Outdoor Games, from what I’ve been able to make out so far, but whatever the hell it sounds like I am really looking forward to it – just waiting until pay day on Friday!

In amongst his loops, he uses acoustic guitar, electronica, children’s instruments and god knows what else, and this gives his music the kind of improvisational, stumbling narrative which regular readers of this blog will know is like a gentle and loving caress to my oh-so-predictable eardrums.  As well as Bootsy Bootsy, there is an album pencilled in for release later in the Spring, I believe, and I cannot wait to hear it.

Magic Arm – Move Out

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Magic Arm – Daft Punk is Playing at My House

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This week I will finish the live videos for Ten Tracks and eagleowl, to go with the Rob St. John ones here:

In other news, the lineup for the Fence Collective’s annual liver-bothering get together has been announced, and it’s fucking superb:

* KING CREOSOTE *  MALCOLM MIDDLETON * EAGLEOWL * ROB ST JOHN * SLOW CLUB * BURNS UNIT * THE PICTISH TRAIL * THINGS IN HERDS * CANDYTHIEF * EMMA POLLOCK * JAMES YORKSTON * DAVID THOMAS BROUGHTON * MEURSAULT * DE ROSA * FOXFACE * THE RED WELL * ROZI PLAIN * RACHAEL DADD * WIG SMITH * ICHI * FOUND * ART PEDRO * ADEM * KID CANAVERAL * SO COW * WITHERED HAND * HMS GINAFORE * LITTLE PEBBLE * MICHAEL JOHNSTON * KARINE POLWART * ADRIAN CROWLEY * PLAYER PIANO * ZIGGY CAMPBELL * STEVEN CRACKNELL (MEMORY BAND) * ANIMAL MAGIC TRICKS * HARDSPARROW * VIKING MOSES * EXPEDITION GUIDE * MELANCHOLICS ANONYMOUSE * GOLDEN GHOST * COME IN TOKYO * ONTHEFLY * LOVE.STOP.REPEAT * WIQWAR * ENGLISH BORE * EMILY SCOTT * THE PHANTOM BAND * LITTLE RAY * DOUG JOHNSTONE * WILL HODGKINSON * STRIKE THE COLOURS * GEORGE THOMAS * MARTIN JOHN HENRY * MARINA & THE DIAMONDS * OLO WORMS * VIVA STEREO * GUMMI BAKO * DJ DOMINIC * BOYWONDER * THE HAND * INSPECTOR TAPEHEAD * JAKE FLOWERS * PANDA SU * FRANÇOIS * THE CHEEK * JOHN B MCKENNA * JONNIE COMMON * DOOGIE PAUL * PETER GREENWOOD *

Any suggestions for people I should particularly make time to interview and get a bit of live footage from?  Not Found or the Pictish Trail, because of approaching Toad Sessions, and I won’t be interviewing Meursault obviously, although I will try and get some live video of them.  Tickets here – I’d recommend going if you possibly can.

Wednesday 25th February 2009: Come On Gang SXSW Fundraiser at the Wee Red Bar.

Come On Gang are one of several Scottish bands who are facing the considerable bill of dragging their arses out to SXSW this year, and will be holding a bit of a fundraiser to help cover the costs.  They are punky, poppy and brash and I haven’t seen them play for ages.  This will also be a chance to catch fellow Edinburgh indie-poppers Cancel the Astronauts.  Indie pop (which is probably not quite the right term for these bands, but bear with me) is actually a significantly neglected genre in this city, what with the recent rise of all these indie-folksters so it’s about time I went to something where they wield their guitars with a bit of bite for a change.
Come On Gang – Fortune Favours the Brave

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Thursday 26th February 2009: Withered Hand, The Travelling Band & the Set Up play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms.

Withered Hand are, basically, fucking brilliant.  It’s confrontational punk-folk, although the punk side comes from the attitude and the delivery, rather than the instrumentation.  Nevertheless, if you want to be told that “a hard-on doesn’t mean you’re in love” with some force, then you really have to see this band.
Withered Hand – Hard On

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Thursday 26th February 2009: Little Pebble, Son of Thom, Emily Scott & Dan Haywood’s New Hawks play the inaugural Leith Tape Club, upstairs at the IsoBar.

This gig has sold out, I’m afraid, so unless you’re going already, you’re stuffed.  I thought it was worth bringing to your attention anyway, though, because Little Pebble (one of Edinburgh’s most under-rated and neglected live performers, including, embarrassingly, by myself) is going to be putting these nights on on a regular basis and they look like they’re going to be really good.
Little Pebble – Hold That Thought

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Friday 27th February 2009: Flowers of Hell, Wounded Knee & eagleowl at the Wee Red Bar.

This is a Benbecula Records night which looks like it will be showcasing their signature style of experimental, ambient music infused with sensibilities of both the folk and electronic persuasions.  Wounded Knee might be this city’s foremost loop pedal black belt, and has a new record approaching soon, so if you want to hear his new material then I would guess that this is likely to be a good chance to do so.
Flowers of Hell – The Strength of String

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Saturday 28th February 2009: Found, the Joe Acheson Quartet & Emily Scott at the Bowery.

Found will make their Bowery debut this week, in another gig that is being put on in association with Ten Tracks, as part of their fundraising efforts for their own SXSW adventure.  Come.  That is an order.  Advance tickets can be bought here.
Found – Closed Time Like Loops

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After a week spent debating it, how about a podcast embodying the discussions we’ve been having about production values I thought a podcast which sort of pulls all the disagreements and moans and whingeing and so on into one big mp3 of joy would be a good idea.

So we’ve got some Big Production, some demo scratchy stuff and a few bands who have dabbled with both.  I fart on about production values as if I have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, which of course I don’t.

I’m not sure how well it works as a playlist – it might be a bit disjointed – but in general I like it.  I like the debate in general, I like the thought process we’ve all gone through together this week, and in general, by association, I like this podcast.

Toadcast #57 – Production Values

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01. Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA (Original Nebraska Sessions Demo Version) (04.31)
02. Radiohead – Everything in its Right Place (11.13)
03. Enfant Bastard – Vessel (20.19)
04. Half Man Half Biscuit – 1966 and All That (22.37)
05. U2 – Red Hill Mining Town (29.56)
06. Snow Patrol – Last Ever Lone Gunman (37.40)
07. The Divine Comedy – Life on Earth (42.10)
08. Yann Tiersen – Geronimo (Black Session w. Neil Hannon) (46.07 )
09. The Wave Pictures – A Long Way Away From Me (53.34)
10. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) (Live at Hammersmith Odeon, 1975) (57.35)

Alright, the Alela Diane thread has been one of the most interesting on this site for a while, so it’s time to destroy all that mature and considered debate and return to the sort of trivial internet white noise which, if we’re being honest with ourselves, is really what we do best, here at Song, by Toad.

This weekend holds a trip to Manchester and a discussion with a pal of mine about possibly putting some design thinking into this site.  I am not happy with it, but I decided to stop buggering about and just accept it for the time being, until I was well and truly ready to design it properly, once and for all.

Now, seeing as we had such a splendid discussion about production values this week, and seeing as last week’s five was so racy as to terrify the living shit out of a large number of people and hence curtail participation, here’s a fitting and much more family fucking friendly Five For Friday.  Emerge, join in, release yourselves from the travails of skulking lurkitude.  Then get absolutely cabbaged, fuck someone wildly inappropriate and wake up in and empty house in a bath full of ice with a suspiciously angry scar across your abdomen. And have a splendid weekend in the process.

1. Favourite song or band which is as rough and ready as fuck.
2. Favourite song or band which is Big!  Big Sound, Big Production, the works.
3. Which ultra-low-fi band could you imagine doing really well with a bit of shiny recording and production?
4. Which big shiny band would you like to hear record a rough-as-a-bear’s-arse demo?
5. Your biggest culture shock when a band you love went glossy.

Maxwell Panther – Rewire

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Nicole Atkins – The Way It Is

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Enfant Bastard – Plastic Bag

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Bruce Springsteen – I’m on Fire

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The Wave Pictures – Kiss Me

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