Toadcast #64 – The Welshcast
It’s been a longish week, but believe me this weekend is going to be worse. I am offering up my poor old Volvo for sale, which breaks my embittered little alcoholic heart, so it does. I am going to miss that car, we’ve had some wonderful times pottering about in her and I am going to miss the silly old girl, really I am.
This is a joint podcast, seeing as how I was in the pub with Dylan and the poor whelp seemed to have nowhere else to go, I invited him back to the house to add his own particular brand of incoherent nonsense to this week’s podcast. Because lazy racial stereotyping is something of a stock in trade around here, I find myself making several lame attempts to bring up Welshness and national identity and all that pish, but ultimately this is just two drunk people chattering about music.
More or less the usual, then.
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01. Billy Bragg & Kirsty MacColl – A New England (05.12)
02. Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – Miniature Kingdoms (14.54)
03. Manic Street Preachers – From Despair to Where (18.53)
04. M.J. Hibbett & the Validators – The Fight for History (27.46)
05. Broken Records – And They All Fell Into the Sea (35.50)
06. Drunk Country – The Rain That Almost Drove the Windows In (44.44)
07. Meursault – William Henry Miller (49.34)
08. Super Furry Animals – Into the Night (57.24)
09. Supergrass – Moving (65.15)
(1) no, there’s no Welsh equivalent to Song, by Toad. I have looked. Nothing there.
(2) it’s more tall brunettes from Sweden, to be honest. The blondes tend to be a little bit ‘up themselves’. Have I now ruined my contacts with the blonde-centric musi-industry with that comment?
(3) Welsh music, new Welsh music/whatever, is far & few between in terms of decency vs amount available. There’s a LOT of bands – a lot of them are very samey; some are not even ‘Welsh’ per se, but have a link to Cardiff (or wherever) as a result of attending University. The vast majority get filtered through TWR at some point, but in general the Welsh music scene is rather paranoid & so doesn’t seem to want to accept assistance from anyone outside of their immediate circle of knowledge. It’s not like I haven’t ‘put myslef out there’ & offered sessions & airplay. Unfortunately 80% of almost every domestic Welsh band I’ve ever approached have either not bothered to reply, or they’ve never followed up on promises. That’s the Welsh in general, see. They want help, but only when they’re ready &, most importantly, on their terms.
(4) we’re planning a Welsh Music special shortly with new Welsh bands only. That’ll be a chore to compile, but needs must as I’ve had a number of requests from WOXY listeners stating they “love Welsh music”. By that, I’m presuming, they (lazily) mean Plastic Veet Features, Cerystonia, Stereochronics, SFA, & (not ironically) Tom ‘orange-faced cunt’ Jones. Hmmmm.
(5) MSPs’ ‘Holy Bible’ is extraordinarily overrated. MSPs are extraordinarily overrated. I like the fact that they were embraced by the emo crowd once the general general public interest disappeared after the release of This Is My Truth & I Nicked It From Some Intellectual I Sped-Read Looking For Socio-Political Commentary In Order To Bolster A Rapidly Disappearing Relevance To Anyone’s Interpretation Of Anarchic Revolution Amongst The Class Structure (Especially In Wales). I have some lovely MSP-related stories for when I come up & if we ‘do’ the podcast (was that a secret?).
(6) The Scottish Arcade Fire sound a little bit like The American Del Amitri.
(7) Another semi-coherent lo-ong, lo-ong comment to continue the thread from a drunk fuckwit from the internet.
Aww is that the Welsh way of sayin “thanks for playin my song on yer podcast” then? You Welsh are an odd bunch! xoxox
I was avoiding that, Tart – esp. as I’m not particularly fond of that one (was a very rough as arseholes demo & went on for far too long)
But, Cheers Toad.
(did I get away with any of that?)
Absolutely rubbish. I am sitting at work looking at a newly minted (and leek flavoured) toad cast that I can’t listen to. Was there ever a sadder tale?
Was there ever a sadder tale?
I believe Tony Curtis has optioned “The Volvo & The Toad”, which sounds like it could be a real blub-fest.
She’s gone to a good home. More than that one could not ask.
*sniff*
Yes, yes. And I hear that ‘Diary of Anne Frank’ has some sad bits too.
But none the less. Quite tragic.
Sad bits? I thought it was a musical comedy.
As an avid fan and admirer of Joey Deacon I can only say that I am appalled with the poor taste I feel you have shown to what is a very serious condition.
you “gentlemen’ should be ashamed. and I believe I speak on behalf of the entire JD fanbase when I say-
vjwfbcLJNXIOPH98HIEUA;B kghtjr9b8[v’nqv’trib’qfdnav ,sfdnvfjjvjfskhjbbjfjkfjkjfdhfhjvbhkj jkdbvjdfnvkjbhriowtbjoirjt’bgflhbljfsb;nfkldbnalk r’bh’rik ‘fnbionwr’tkbnjwgfklbnwrnwfsjkbgnb;j otyihbjow’ritrowhbtjr`*************Y*Y@(*&am p;@Y&@T^T@^&^@G^G£OSBPEBUIXP*£(NUIJPhjoiJHJ8*JP*(PJ$DUEDUhHIHhIHOIHDPIU £PRNDRU IHFRUIHP$HUFHJE@RCNJKNCHUIEHDUIEgHJHhjkl hjlkdhjkshlkjhlkarhguh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
completely off topic, but here is a quick video I found in the darkest corners of t’interweb of our dear old boot “doing the do” with some seriously over-excited nubile. Go Tart!
Balls.
try again… (Toad, can you clean this up/host it/whatever if my html Deacon plays up?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e28lVDLhcGQ&feature=player_embedded
You are pure, unadulterated, evil embodied.
But I take comfort in the fact that you obviously feel the need to distract yourself from your homoerotic feelings toward Matthew and thus redirect the inner disturbance they produce towards me. It only confirms my suspicions held thus far.
I have the name of a good psychiatrist if need be, he’s in Edinburgh. Dylan slipped me his number last week after our phone session
of course, we all know that once alone, Matthew and DC will only be doing this.
yes, but butt naked.
just leave the camera running…. that’s all we ask
Oh Lordy! You two blathering on about Billy and Kirsty’s version of New England is forcing me to dig up the details for you:
Billy wrote it sometime before May 1983, as it was first put on Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs Spy – 12″ vinyl (a collection of demos – two sets, one in 1982ish and one in 1983). … coincidentally, I was first year in college the year after that and fell for him via the LP version in 1983, imagine that!
Kirsty made it a hit in 1985 all on her own, after getting him to write her two additional verses. After her death, Billy has always sang all four verses, and I think, has performed this at every gig, “for Kirsty” at which point we all get a frog in our throat and find something interesting to look at on the floor of the club.
The track you played is from the BBC Radio 1: Nicky Campbell show 26 June 1991, as far as I can track down. And it is the goofiest version possible of that song! But who can resist a line about “wishing on space hardware?” xoxox
just wait……all of you just wait!!!!!
Cunts
Oh Tom, how d’ye think I feel? I might as well be a million miles away from Anstruther.
I knew the first bit, but I never knew Billy himself wrote the extra verses for Kirsty MacColl’s version. I’ve never liked it all that much, so I never really bothered looking into it.
Call yourself a fan…
I <3 Kirsty MacColl, but who’s this Billie Brag person who stole her song?
It’s the greatest outrage since Tim Waite ripped off Rod Stewart’s Downtown Trains.
The Kirsty version isn’t bad, but I really am not fussed by it at all.
Johnny Marr played guitar on the Kirsty one
He played guitar on a lot of Billy Bragg stuff around that time as well.
yeah i’ll not say Billy is a good musician or singer, but time and place, people! it’s about the lyrics, the man himself, the time of the politics and all…. and he can write a very good pop song or two, ya know, xoxo
You can laugh at me all you like, but frankly when I heard about it I thought Twitter was a joke. Kids these days.
Tart, honestly, you do not need to lecture me about not liking Billy Bragg enough. I am right there with you, believe me.
Broken Records:
Increased production values, wear it well. Sounds brilliant. I loved them low-fi too and, in fact fell in love with them like that. But the new sound really does suit them.
DC
Please don’t take this the wrong way but usually when someone says’ ‘I wrote this song, would you like to listen’ or, I wrote a poem/story’ my nuts shrivel to the size and colour of Crasins. Same if someone says ‘my friend has an album’. I’m always terrified it will be dreadful.
But this is really really good. Do you have more stuff, and can I listen to that? Where does one buy Drunk Country music? I don’t like to download illegally you see.
The Broken Records early/self recorded stuff was always a bit murky for me & I longed for a bit more clarity in production. I always thought the clouding of sonics on the louder numbers ruined a few excellent songs. It’ll be really good to see what happens with the new LP & whetehr they’re re recording any of the giants from their back catalog (can’t believe I’ve not even asked them that question yet – Toad’ll know, I’m sure).
I’d be terrified of the shit that come out of my creative side, too, Ben, so no worries there. Send me an email & I’ll send some stuff over.
It’s okay. I just googled for Crasins. There’s no need to do that silly auto-google thing on me.
DC – yep, lots of old favourites on there.
did everyone just ignore Mr Bear’s rude outburst?
Yes. Bad Bear, no biscuit.