First things first, this post is me asking a favour from a friend, but not from everyone.  A lot of people who read this site do so from a  long way away, physically or figuratively, and most of you can probably ignore this post as it really isn’t your problem.

For the rest, Phil is a good friend of mine who has recently moved down to Edinburgh from Aberdeen, and in doing so has put himself in pretty dire financial straits.  So dire that he recently put his prize Fender Jaguar up for sale, and you might want to ask a musician if you don’t know how much of a wrench that must have been for the guy.

We’ve all wavered on this, honestly.  Partly, sometimes people just can’t afford things, and you can’t have a big teary appeal every time life is not as sentimental as we would like it to be.  On the other hand, I have been in pretty rotten financial states myself from time to time in the past, and without fail my friends have fished me out of the shit every time, despite there really being nothing in it for them at all.

Phil isn’t just a good mate, he has done an awful lot for me since he moved down here, and I owe him a lot for all the extra work and help and support he has provided, and I am far from alone in this.  So we had a look at the actual sums, and realised that pretty much anyone would happily buy a mate a pint, and if we could find about a hundred and fifty such people to donate the price of a pint we could actually buy Phil’s guitar for about as much money each as anyone would happily lose down the back of the sofa without a second thought.

So anyone who has a reason to be grateful to Phil, be it in his capacity as promoter under the name of Slanted and Enchanted, or as guitarist in Meursault or his own musical project Debutant, or just because he is a fucking lovely guy, it would be nice if you wanted to help.  He’s a proud fucker, so talking him into this wasn’t exactly easy, and in the words of Lando Calrissian: “Come on Han old buddy, don’t let me down.”

I know this doesn’t concern most of you, so please feel free to ignore it and I hope you don’t feel intruded upon, but for those of you who wish to help out, please go here and make a donation.

Debutant – La Pucelle

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Meursault – William Henry Miller Pt.1 (Single Version)

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I suppose that if we are talking about Scottish gigs this week, I really do have to mention T in the Park, or Nedstock as my far-funnier-than-I friend refers to it over at the Vinyl Villain.  I’ve actually only been once myself, back in 1996 I think it was, when Radiohead and Pulp headlined the Saturday and Sunday spots respectively.  The thing is, I looked it up on Wikipedia and it seems that was indeed 1996, but then, it says Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were also on the bill and although I cannot for the life of me imagine missing one of my all time musical heroes I have absolutely no recollection of seeing them that year.

The one thing I do remember, however, was watching a hunched introvert and an awkward geek effortlessly engage one of the biggest crowds I’d ever been a part of.  I think it was probably the first time I ever really understood what real star power actually was, because both Jarvis Cocker and Thom Yorke had the whole gigantic main stage crowd eating out of the palms of their hands.

I’m glancing over this year’s lineup and wondering who I would go and see, and apart from maybe Big Pink and Dirty Projectors on Friday, and Frightened Rabbit and Mumfords on Saturday, I’d stick with the ‘also appearing’ bit at the bottom of that poster where you see the likes of Sparrow & the Workshop, the Boy Who Trapped the Sun, French Wives, Mitchell Museum, The Seventeenth Century and Washington Irving.  Most of them are playing the T-Break Stage, where Meursault are also making a guest appearance on Friday.

Wednesday 7th July 2010: Rickie Lee Jones at the Queen’s Hall.

I really don’t know anything at all about Rickie Lee Jones from a musical perspective, but I have heard one or two songs I like here and there.  And given people have repeatedly advised me never to ever put gigs on in the Summer, I suppose it should come as no surprise that this is the only one I could find this week that I liked.  Any suggestions welcome in the comment thread.

Rickie Lee Jones – Little Mysteries

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Housecast?  Well, yes.  One of the things I have been trying to do since I left my grown up job is get our house vaguely under control.  I have mananged to get the boxes of albums out of the hallway and into the office now, but there is still all manner of paperwork and assorted other shit all over the place.

Also, my folks are visiting at the end of next week, and you know what that means: the famous Mother-in-Law Clean.  Mrs. Toad isn’t exactly a domesticated young lady, but she will be setting about the house with a bucket of bleach and a million fistfuls of wire wool over the course of the next few days I would imagine.

I, on the other hand, just have to destroy the ropey old oven in the back garden with a pick axe.  Sometimes it rocks to get the man jobs!

Toadcast #129 – The Housecast

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01. Perfume Genius – Mr. Petersen (03.44)
02. Bottle of Evil – Same Old Story (10.02)
03. Cate Le Bon – Shoeing the Bones (15.17)
04. Warm Ghost – So Sick of the Sun (18.34)
05. Andrew Cedermark – Masterpieces (23.41)
06. Micah P. Hinson – Seven Horses Seen (29.12)
07. Yusuf Azak – Thin Air (34.23)
08. Kid Canaveral – Cursing Your Apples (38.55)
09. Communist Daughter – The Lady is an Arsonist (41.52)
10. Richard Hawley – The Ellen Vannin Tragedy (feat. the Smoke Fairies) (49.20)

I don’t think this needs much introduction.  Our pal Matthew made this, and I think it is the first video he’s ever made – just a camcorder and iMovie.

So erm, does not having a traditional working week mean Friday is a bit less Friday-y now?  Kinda, I guess.  I have been deprived of my much-cherished King’s Wark lunches by the fact that I am on the other side of town now (well, not quite, but far enough away to make it impractical) and nowadays if I have two pints at lunch and then skive away the afternoon I am basically just ripping myself off.  Which rather makes it less fun, I have to confess.

Mind you, it’s sunny as arse out there, so the sooner I get my jobs done and can nip out into Inverleith Park to play some basketball the better.  I played for the first time since 1998 this week and, erm, well it really wasn’t pretty.  I actually used to be okay at this game, believe it or not.  By which I mean that I could at least shoot the fucking ball without having to fetch it from the adjacent field every two or three shots, which seems to be happening with disturbing regularity at the moment.

It’s a bit of a shame how you can lose skills, actually.  I used to be pretty much fluent in German.  I worked a telesales job in Austria over one Summer, all in German, and although I was shit at the job that was more to do with the fact that I despise telemarketing rather than any kind of language difficulty.  Embarrassingly enough, though, these days I could barely tell an old lady to fuck off in German.  And you’d be surprised how often you need to do that if you ever want to ride on public transport in Vienna…

*Cough*

Anyhewwwww… yes, it’s Friday, which means pish-talking and a big fat de-lurking amnesty, so come out of the woodwork and give us five silly answers to five banal questions and then while away the afternoon leaving silly comments and smart remarks.

1. What were you good at once, but would bungle horribly if you tried now?
2. What is your most obscure skill?
3. Name a talent you have seen someone display where your only thought was ‘how on earth could they be bothered actually putting in the time needed to be that good at something so utterly pointless’?
4. What do you wish you were good at?
5. Tell us about a public transport etiquette nitpick which winds you up.

Ugly Casanova – Hotcha Girls

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Kid Loco – Cocaine Diana

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Jason Ringenberg & Steve Earle – Bible and a Gun

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The Flatlanders – Going Away

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Pulp – Down By the River

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By now you probably know that when I start a review by calling something a big old fucking mess it means I am going to like it.

I was introduced to Andrew Cedermark when I received a promo copy of the cassette in the picture; a split with Drunk Tigers.  Drunk Tigers turned out to not really be my thing, but the Andrew Cedermark half of the release is really good.

Apparently he used to be in Titus Andronicus, and I guess that if you try hard you can just about imagine him thinking ‘I quite like this band, but you know what? It’s way too slick for me, I want to make a fucking racket’.  Anyone thinking that about Titus Andronicus really really must love mess, but that seems to be the case here.

I can’t imagine how much fun it must have been to play drums on these recordings.  They get battered all over the place throughout this, and the bass nearly shook the pictures from the walls at various points, but despite the mess you never get the impression that any of this is anything other than tight as fuck. I am not sure why, but that is just the way it comes across.

There’s a sort of joyous belligerence to the music which I find hard to describe.  It’s a bit like a gentlemen’s round of fisticuffs – violent and aggressive, but without any kind of meanness or dirty tricks to it.  I don’t get the impression this is a bitter record, just a boisterously angry one, and I am enjoying it immensely.

Andrew Cedermark – Lookin’ For a Boswell

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