Toadcast #94 – The Not-Notcraigcast
I know I promised the Notcraigcast last week, but it didn’t happen I’m afraid. After last week’s amazing Craigcast Neil and I were intending to introduce Craig to all sorts of modern music which we thought continued some of the traditions of the blues music he was describing to us, but circumstances have rather conspired against us unfortunately. Neil is off on tour with Meursault playing his songs, and Craig is off on tour with his liver, taking it around the watering holes of Edinburgh and giving it a good, hard kicking in each one.
Consequently I’ve sort of cobbled together a podcast from fragments of the Pantscast and the stuff I’d intended to play for Craig. It’s largely folky, but that wasn’t wholly by design, more to do with the fact that listening to the really early blues stuff Craig played for us sent me back to listening to old Smithsonian Folkways stuff and so there are a couple of songs from there, as well as a couple of modern things which those recordings brought to mind.
Smithsonian Folkways, incidentally, is a non-profit record label run by the Smithsonian Institute to preserve and support a truly epic amount of our musical heritage. Just go and have a browse through their archives – it’s amazing how much incredible stuff these guys are looking after on everyone else’s behalf.
Toadcast #94 – The Not-Notcraigcast
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1. Micah P. Hinson – She Don’t Own Me (02.57)
2. Hem – The Cuckoo (11.13)
3. Saint Etienne – Like a Motorway (16.52)
4. White Antelope – Silver Dagger (22.15)
5. The Boggs – Plant Me a Rose (28.00)
6. Willard Grant Conspiracy – River in the Pines (31.47)
7. Berzilla Wallin – Conversation With Death (Oh Death) (39.22)
8. Samamidon – O Death (44.26.)
9. Dock Boggs – Sugar Baby (49.21)
10. Alela Diane – White as Diamonds (Daytrotter Session) (54.09)
11. Sandy Denny – By the Time it Gets Dark (59.07)


Just listened to this while lying in bed with a vicious hangover. And really enjoyed it.
Of course you enjoyed it, man, you have working ears don’t you?
Smithsonian Folkways is a miracle. I almost wish the States was a monarchy so Moses Asch and Marian Distler could be knighted (and “damed”?). There were some great ladies among the old blues singers by the way, like Etta Baker and Vera Hall, but what you say is true as a general matter.
Vera Hall is the lady singing Trouble So Hard on Moby’s Natural Blues, by the way.
is the toadmobile dead?
No, no, just doesn’t like the cold. Being fixed as we speak.
phew! i love spotting that thing whizzing around town.