Snow!  Awesome!  Actually, we haven’t got that much snow here in Edinburgh but I am sufficiently snow-starved that I am pretty excited nevertheless.  Not as excited as the penguins at Edinburgh Zoo will presumably be of course, but excited nevertheless.

Yusuf’s three album launch shows last week were fantastic, but I am pretty pooped and will be taking it quite easy today.  We’ve the Savings and Loan’s album release to work on for Monday, but apart from that the label is now entering a rather quiet Winter – well, apart from our official Song, by Toad Records Christmas Party of course, which will be anything but quiet.

The Christmas parties start here, in fact, with two this week, a couple of very good gigs and the opportunity to help save the Forest Cafe.  Enough for you to be getting on with for one week?  Thought so.  Welcome to the December eat/drink/hangover cycle which leaves us begging for fruit juice and fresh vegetables by January.

Xavier Rudd and Dar Williams are both (separately) at the Queen’s Hall this week, which might interest some of you.  For myself, the following gigs stand out the most:

Tuesday 30th November 2010: The Wedding Present and Ringo Deathstarr at the Liquid Room.

The Wedding Present’s absolutely brilliant, and now ‘classic’ album Bizarro is twenty or twenty-five years old or something like that, so the Weddoes are out on tour, playing the album in its entirety by way of celebration.  Just as interesting from my point of view are support band Ringo Deathstarr who make an excellent amount of fuzzy noise and whose new single is bloody excellent; I await the album with great interest.

The Wedding Present – No

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Tuesday 30th November 2010: Jenny & Johnny at Cabaret Voltaire.

Jenny Lewis is an excellent live performer with more than a little hint of swagger.  Her album, recorded with snuggle bunny Johnathan Rice, has its bland moments to be sure, but some of it is genuinely excellent, dreamy, harmony-drenched Summer pop.

Jenny & Johnny – Little Fly

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Thursday 2nd December 2010: Yahweh, Emily Scott & Union Canal at Sneaky Pete’s.

Three of the more underground bands on the week’s list of musical funz, but between Yahweh’s sweeping cinematics and Emily Scott’s musical prettiness this should be a good ‘un.  Union Canal I know nothing about whatsoever, I have to confess.

Friday 3rd December 2010: Gerry Loves Records Christmas Party at the Banshee Labyrinth.

Four of the most innovative bands in Scotland play what promises to be a very high early watermark for the tide of Christmas parties this year*.  Expect a lot of beeping and looping and stuff – which, for the less knowledgeable, is a technical musical term.  The Banshee Labyrinth is rather small, so I strongly recommend getting your tickets in advance for this one.  There will be a special guest too – one I promise you really is very thpeshul indeed.

The Japanese War Effort – Fake Tanned Out Yr Tits

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Friday 3rd December 2010: Save the Forest gig at Pilrig St. Paul’s.

This gig has been arranged to raise fund to help save the Forest Cafe, an Edinburgh institution under considerable threat after the collapse of the Edinburgh University Settlement.  Finn Andrews of The Veils will be playing, which is amazing.  The Veils are a fucking great band and although I have no idea what a Finn Andrews solo performance will be like, I would be fascinated to find out.

The Veils – Not Yet

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Saturday 4th December 2010: Limbo Christmas Party at the Voodoo Rooms.

Bands such as Toad favourites FOUND and Enfant Bastard, and Toad Records heroes Yusuf Azak and Inspector Tapehead are joined by Night Noise Team and others.  I think there will be some collaborating and some other Christmas jiggery-pokery too, but I am not entirely sure what to expect, honestly.  Apart from the fact that I am going to get very drunk indeed.

FOUND – Let Fidelity Break

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*Apologies if that analogy was just a little too tortured.  I know it was, and I judge myself.

On the drive back from Glasgow yesterday, after the second of Yusuf Azak’s three album launch gigs, the snow started absolutely horsing it down, to the extent that all the traffic slowed to a sensible single file at about thirty miles an hour, and all you could see was little red tail-lights in the white.

It was, if I am being entirely honest, pretty cool. Although of course that’s easy to say when you’re no more than twenty miles from home and in no actual danger.

Anyway, this morning it’s all turned icy outside and Mrs. Toad is complaining about the heating not being up to the job, so I think we can safely say that the rituals of Winter have begun! Hence, the Coldcast.

Direct download: Toadcast #150 – The Coldcast

01. The Mountain Goats – You or Your Memory (00.28)
02. The 63 Crayons – Devils (07.02)
03. The Sex Pistols – Pretty Vacant (15.50)
04. Brown Brogues – I Just Don’t Know (19.07)
05. The Beatles – Dear Prudence (25.16)
06. Girl Problems – Sancho (31.49)
07. Thirty Pounds of Bone – A Lesson in Talking (41.21)
08. Willy Mason – Carry On (44.33)
09. Y Niwl – Dau (52.42)
10. Songdog – A Life Eroding (So Much Sorrow) (61.26)

I am not cold in the sense that the temperature is all that low, more in the sense that I have been just a little too chilly for a few hours now and it is really starting to get me down.  Moan moan.  Song, by Eeyore etc etc.

Anyhow, Cellar 35 in Aberdeen was excellent last night – what a top wee space.  It is basically just a scruffy basement, but they’ve got a couple of carpets down and sofas and the atmosphere is really, really nice.  It helps a great deal that the staff were brilliant and helpful, but in general I thought it was a great place to put a small gig on.  John from the Kiosque tells me that it doesn’t get used all that much, which is a shame, as anything acoustic would really work well there.

They’re getting a new PA system too, which means they’ll be able to handle bigger bands soon, and apparently the new owners are making a big push to put more gigs on there – honestly, I would wholeheartedly recommend it.  It’s an ideal space and Jamie and Emma were absolutely great – and of course a big thank you to everyone who came along, and to Amber Wilson for playing and The Last Battle for stepping in at the last minute to complete the bill.

It’s basically December after this weekend isn’t it?  The time of the office Christmas Party.  I can picture myself sat here on my own with a Marks & Spencer’s individual Christmas dinner and a sad little party hat on; the only person at my own office party.  I suppose that’s not really fair though is it, because all the bands should really be there, and Dylan and Fee of course, and Wee Matthew and Andy who does the website stuff and Mrs. Toad as the Grand Matriarch.

I may sleep off Yusuf’s three album launch gigs on Sunday, but next weekend we will probably go and get ourselves a Christmas tree and so on and so forth – holly, all the usual shit.  For some reason my usual grinchery has vanished this year and I am really looking forward to Christmas.  I am looking forward to the tree, and I am even looking forward to my parents coming to visit, even if they are rather inevitably going to end up tutting at me on the Weekend of Doom when our label party is followed by eagleowl’s and then Kid Canaveral’s and then the hospital, all in the space of three days.

What’s got into me for Christ’s sake, this is most un-Toadlike, particularly after my birthday humbugging (Humbuggery?  It really has to be humbuggery doesn’t it.).  As long as I avoid the shops and the telly, which has been all too easy since ours was nicked, I think this should be an ace December.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of seasonal pish, here is the latest in FOUND’s Free Music Friday series: a remix of Au Revoir Simone’s Fallen Snow.

1. How would you rate the ambient temperature in your office/classroom/lab/bedsit?
2. What’s worse, a freezing cold toilet seat making contact with your arse, or car seats that get so hot in the sunshine that your legs stick to them if you are foolish enough to sit down in shorts?
3. Anyone started thinking about their end-of-year best of lists yet?
4. Having a good meal anytime this weekend?
5. Is there a particular ‘making time to sit down and listen to music’ time coming up this weekend?  And what will you listen to?

These songs all come from a compilation made for me by my pal JC from The Vinyl Villain to mark the occasion of the launch of Song, by Toad Records, some six months before we ever actually released anything, back in July 2008.

The Ukrainians – Batya (Bigmouth Strikes Again)

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The Delgados – California Uber Alles

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The Monochrome Set – Jetset Junta (Remix)

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Ballboy – All the Records on the Radio are Shite

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The Lilac Time – The Girl Who Waves at Trains

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This is ‘alternative folk music’ clearly enough, if you want to call it something, but there are times when just for atmosphere that sounds like very much the wrong term to describe this album.

There’s actually an air of early nineties indie to it at times, although that’s possibly in the vocal, possibly in the actual song structures themselves.  The style and emphasis of Johny Lamb’s voice add to that impression as well as just the timbre of it, but don’t ask me to pin it down any better than that though, because I don’t think I could.   Songs like The Fishery do build and build like early Britpop though, which is a strange experience in the middle of what is ostensibly a folk album.

There’s none of this ‘modern folk’ stuff going on here, with electronics and archness and experimentalism.  It’s a pretty direct approach to songwriting, and the songs aren’t afraid to launch into big, strongly emoted choruses.  It has a really distinctive character actually, but again, I would perhaps struggle to clearly explain exactly why.

Nevertheless, I am really enjoying the unguarded emotionalism and straightforward arrangements of this album.  I miss folk bands who use the accordion.  Why don’t they use the fucking accordion anymore, eh?  Because they all want to be in punk bands, or clever fuckers with samplers, that’s why.  This record, for the most part, is a bit of guitar or banjo, accentuated with accordion or horns.  It does break big on occasion though, with drums and howling guitar feedback, and there’s generally quite a harsh edge to the recording which fits these little outbursts very well, so maybe he does want to be in a punk band after all.

Method veers from the odd to the conventional, from the sparse to the rackety, and I still haven’t entirely figured out what to make of it.  I know I like it though.

Thirty Pounds of Bone – A Lesson in Talking

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Thirty Pounds of Bone – Island’s Ode to the Itinerant

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MySpace | More mp3s | Buy from Armellodie Records

P.S.: I’ve categorised Thirty Pounds of Bone as a Scottish band, partly because of the label being from Glasgow and partly because of the fact that Lamb was raised in Shetland.  He lives in the very deepest South now though, and wasn’t born up here, so it’s a bit false but erm… fuck it, we’re claiming him.

This is as gorgeous an album of acoustic pop as you are likely to hear.  It’s all just done with such unassuming warmth it’s almost impossible not to be taken by it pretty much immediately.

Unlike a lot of modern folk pop there’s not a shred of affectation about this, and it doesn’t seem like it’s been aimed at any particular style either, it simply is what it is.  It’s as if the songs are the way they are for no more complicated a reason than that they just tumbled out that way.

Although in a sense, I suppose, that’s doing the album a disservice by implying, however tangentially, that it is in some way thoughtless or uncrafted, which is not what I am trying to suggest.  There is plenty of oomph to the arrangements when required, it’s just that it isn’t called upon that often.

I know I think of this almost as a debut album, owing to having only just discovered Sweet Baboo (courtesy of Cloud Sounds and Away Game), but Stephen is actually three albums (I think) into his career, so perhaps it should be no surprise that there is a confident solidity to this record.  Generally sad and beautiful, with little more than a gentle strum of guitar and vocals which seem to crack at times, and at others to be resigned and reassuring, it does burst out into skiffley pop tunes from time to time, demonstrating a pretty effortless charisma which many more lauded artists would struggle to match.

That jollity which appears from time to time is discomfitingly at odds with the rather unpleasant lyrics of songs like I’m a Dancer, and indeed even on the flip side of the emotional coin, the slower songs which sound so comforting can have downright morbid lyrics, such as the final song, If I Died, Would You Remember That You Loved Me.  So apart from the lovely musical creations, there’s an emotional complexity and an inclination to wrong-foot the listener at work here which make this record a genuine cut above most things I’ve heard this year.

Sweet Baboo – I’m a Dancer (1)

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Sweet Baboo – If I Died Would You Remember That You Loved Me

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Shape Records

I have mentioned often enough on this site how much I like EPs, not least for their lack of what I suppose Americans might call a Seventh Inning Stretch – that weary feeling you get about two thirds to three quarters of the way through an album, where your attention starts to wane and you wander off to make a cup of tea.

Anyhow, I have a lot of them in my inbox at the moment, all good for varying reasons, but it seems like I would be excessive to write a separate post for each, so figured I would condense four of my favourites down into a single post for your efficient musical enjoyment, in alphabetical order by band name:

Cheapskate – Knock Knock Knock

This is actually a free download from the Cheapskate website, which appears to be down at the moment, but is also available from last.fm in the meantime.  I first found out about this band from Cloud Sounds, and it’s not the kind of music to shock you or make you sit up straight immediately you hear it, but it’s odd, and oddly compelling.

There are times when it sounds like music from children’s TV, times when it sounds like a peculiar advertising jingle, and times when it’s just sinister enough you might be worried about your teenage daughter listening to it.

In fact, this probably comes across a lot like a MySpace groomer, except in musical form: superficially friendly and oh so innocent, but with something oddly out of place and not quite right, but never so strange as to let you put your finger on it entirely.

Cheapskate – Get Up Early

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My Tiny Robots – Rock Bossa Nova EP

This EP is short and sweet, checking in at a mere four songs, with the first one swerving shy of the two-minute mark.

Stylistically it’s an interesting mish-mash.  The first track has rather surprising hints of Maximo Park, of all things, but the rest of the EP tends to embrace seventies alt-pop sung in a voice which sits halfway between new wave and a barroom croon.

It sounds sort of cocky at times, I think, with the guitar played with a stylish swagger and the rhythms feeling kind of suggestive, although not in a way that is too obvious.  Good stuff though, and given these guys seemed to be in danger of petering out until quite recently, it’s good to see ‘em back in the game, and back so strongly as well.

The My Tiny Robots site is here, and you can buy Rock Bossa Nova here – the physical copy of the CD really is gorgeous though, so I recommend pestering them about that, rather than settling for mere downloads.

My Tiny Robots – Rock Bossa Nova Fourbeat Black

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Randolph’s Leap – Battleships and Kettlechips

When will bloggers learn not to go starting record labels?  It’s a natural extension of the instinct to spend all your time writing about your favourite music though I guess, so it should be no surprise really, particularly in the age of the internet where there actually is an audience out there to be reached now that the traditional gatekeepers are floundering about like buffoons in search of their lost customers.

Step forward Olive Grove Records, and debut release, Battleships and Kettlechips by Randolph’s Leap. Randolph’s Leap are clever and sensitive, with a tongue in cheek way with their lyrics, and the ability to combine the sincere with the amusing which few manage this well.

I hate words like quirky, but it’s hard to avoid with bands like this.  Not that there’s anything zany or madcap about them, more that there are plenty of moments on this EP where I find myself looking up and actually cocking an eyebrow at the speakers, wondering quite how these guys see the world.  They seem like the kind of lunatics who are absolutely convinced that they are sane, and who tolerate the rest of the world’s eccentricities with a genial sympathy.

Randolph’s Leap – As I Lie in the Mud

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Willy Mason – So Long Baby Shoes

There was a time Willy Mason seemed oh so very close to becoming one of my favourite artists.  That he didn’t quite owes an unreasonable amount to a disappointing show at the Liquid Rooms about four years ago, where the full band he played with rather smothered the loveliness of his songs, making it all sound less remarkable than it actually is.

Shame on me, I actually stopped really paying attention with anything like the same enthusiasm after that.  I suppose it doesn’t help that he seemed to drift back from the verge of a major, permanent breakthrough to the vastly different world of self-release, meaning his new stuff wasn’t as enthusiastically forced on me as it might have been.

This is bloody gorgeous though.  The arrangements are really simple, leaving the emphasis on his lovely, lovely voice, and gentle, tender lyrics.  It’s sufficiently lovely that I feel like a right disloyal bastard for letting his music drift out of my life for the last couple of years.

The website of his UK fanclub is here, and you can buy So Long Baby Shoes from CDBaby here.

Willy Mason – I Wish I Knew How to Say Goodbye

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As much as I can like Frightened Rabbit, I am not sure their legacy was particularly good for Glasgow bands.  The number of pale imitations I have heard in the last couple of years has been rather disheartening, in much the same way that far too many London bands seem to still be trying to be the Libertines, and it got to the point where I just wasn’t listening to much guitar music.

Then, down South at least, lo-fi garage stuff started to appear, mixing punk and surf and even a bit of doo-wop occasionally, and the spell seemed to finally be broken.  I don’t know if the Scottish Enlightenment can do the same up here, wean bands off the Frabbit teat, but I hope so, because I like guitar music and I want to start enjoying it again.

Which brings me to Johnny Reb.  Like The Scottish Enlightenment and Kirkcaldy’s excellent Ambulances before them, they don’t do anything wildly or obviously different, but I immediately liked their stuff when they first pointed me to some scratchy MySpace demos, and I still do.  The band have been in Portugal recently, recording with a certain Mr. Boz Boorer, who played guitar on some of Morrissey’s best stuff – most notably the brilliant Your Arsenal, which is where I know his name from – so there is now some new, shinier stuff to be enjoyed.

And enjoy it I do.  The band describe themselves as having a 1995 fixation, and I reckon perhaps 2005 channeled through the spirit of 1985, which averages out at more or less the same thing I suppose.  More specifically, and ironically enough given my snide remarks about the Libertines in the first paragraph, they sound a bit like an unknown late-eighties indie band the Libs might have been obsessed with before they started writing their own songs. Or Morrissey after three pints, as they describe themselves.

Presumably out of excitement about their new stuff, the band have been chopping and changing the songs on their MySpace player a fair bit since they got back from Portugal, so it’s a bit hard to keep track of what I’ve heard, what I haven’t, what I liked a lot and what I liked less.  Of the two tracks they’ve suggested I post, at times Emile sounds a little too like London lad-rock for my taste, but Nine on the Line has grown and grown on me since I first heard it, and I liked it well enough to begin with.

Much like Ambulances and The Scottish Enlightenment, I really couldn’t pin down what I like about these guys.  I like the vocals best when they veer closer to a croon, such as Nine on the Line, because it gives the warm nostalgia of the guitar sounds a comforting counterpart.  And I suppose that with this kind of thing, the challenge is always to update the older styles you’re interpreting, and to make sure that the songs are strong enough to stand up on their own merit, irrespective of the actual style of the music.

It’s hard to tell when a band don’t have all that much material, but they are heading back to Portugal to do some more recording in the Spring, I think, and it all sounds promising to me so far.

Johnny Reb – Nine on the Line

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Johnny Reb – Emile (Part 1)

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I haven’t, I have to confess, used either Last.fm or Pandora for a while now, but the reason I abandoned them (yes, before Pandora was banned from the UK) in favour of podcasts and the radio is because they ended up being just a bit too good to be interesting.

Most of the radio shows and podcasts I tend to listen to play a fair few songs I think are shite, but I’ve always though this was a very good thing.  I got very bored with Last.fm very quickly because it tended to play me pretty much the right kind of music all the time.  If something shite comes up on Last.fm, or indeed when I hit shuffle on my whole music library, which serves more or less the same function, then I have a bad habit of just skipping it.

With radio shows and podcasts I don’t do that, partly because it’s harder than just blindly tapping F9 and carrying on with my work, so whether I like what I hear or not I tend to just let it play out.

This is a good thing though, because I get really sick of just being spoonfed stuff I pretty much know I am going to like already.  It’s dull.  When I first got into Yo La Tengo and The Wedding Present, my long-suffering flatmate had to put up with two years of abuse for playing them before I finally decided they were right up my street.  It’s only by being open to stuff we aren’t sure about that we push our boundaries to begin with.

I know a lot of people are more naturally open than me, but I tend to need to hear new stuff quite a lot to really absorb it, and that’s just with new songs; when it comes to new genres I can be even worse.  Basically I need other people’s ‘bad’ choices to stop my music taste from completely collapsing in on itself – to keep pulling it in other directions.

Sometimes I come around and sometimes I don’t, but if all I did was listen to Last.fm and Pandora I think I’d probably end up with a really boring, narrow, self-referential taste in music.  You might say that’s the case anyway, and I guess I couldn’t really argue, and it’s possible their recommendation algorithms have improved (i.e.: loosened up a little) but in general, unless I am making a specific choice, I am happier listening to more music I am not all than keen on than sticking with recommendations which might be more reliably tailored to my taste.

Well I was really looking forward to seeing Julie Doiron’s new project Daniel, Fred & Julie this week, but it turns out the fucker’s cancelled, leaving us with little else but a gigantic, all-venue clusterfuck to disentangle on Saturday evening.

I generally don’t feel like the poor relation in musical bun-fights in Edinburgh, but on Saturday Yusuf’s album launch at the St. Stephen’s Centre is going toe to toe with the Leith Tape Club all-day special and, if that wasn’t bad enough, the three-venue, all day extravaganza which is Sneaky Fest.

I feel a bit like a comically feeble Disney character, armed with little more than a dinner fork, with a fire-breathing dragon on one side and an army of homicidally angry vikings on the other, desperately wondering if we can’t all just get along.  But these coincidences, annoying as they are, do just happen in the world of promotion, so only one thing to do: stop whining and just deal with it.

Actually, the Song, by Toad Records Commercial Strategy Department suggested that I just quietly neglect to mention either Sneaky Fest or the Leith Tape Club this week, but the grizzled, indomitable editorial team at Song, by Toad held out for journalistic integrity in the face of insidious commercial pressure – brave chaps, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Oh, and apart from those gigs listed below, Wounded Knee and Remember Remember are listed as playing the Electric Circus this week, but whilst it seems clear enough that Remember Remember are on Thursday 25th, the Electric Circus website is an utter nightmare to get any kind of useful information from, and although Wounded Knee are clearly written down there in the live music bit, it is not next to anything so useful as an actual date.  So erm, good luck.

Oh, and Laura Marling’s at the Liquid Room on Sunday too, but it’s already sold out and she’s incredibly fucking boring anyway, so no skin off anyone’s nose there.  Although a few of you perverts do actually like her stuff, don’t you?  I will never understand the internets.

Saturday 27th November 2010: Yusuf Azak, The Japanese War Effort and Ethan Ash at the St. Stephens Centre.

I’ve talked about the three Scottish launch dates in much more detail here, so suffice to say that I think the St. Stephens Centre looks like a fantastic venue, now that we’ve finally found one, and I would be deeply grateful to anyone forsaking our more glamorous competition to potter on down there on Saturday and enjoy some fine tunes and a glass of wine (it’s BYOB, incidentally, but there are plenty of places nearby).

Yusuf Azak – Eastern Sun

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Saturday 27th November 2010: Leith Tape Club All-Day Special at Cruz.

From Withered Hand to eagleowl, and from FOUND to Over the Wall, taking in a special mystery guest on the way, I have to confess that this looks like a brilliant evening.  And apart from sitting on the top deck in the blazing sunshine, it may be the first recorded instance of actual Fun taking place at Cruz since the days when it was the Guinness family yacht, and presumably saw parties that would turn even Lindsay Lohan’s hair white.

Withered Hand – Religious Songs

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Saturday 27th November 2010: Sneaky Fest three-venue, all-day bonanza.

This takes place in the Electric Circus, Cabaret Voltaire and Sneaky Pete’s, with one ticket covering all shows in all venues all day.  The full lineup is to be found by following the Sneaky’s link above, and includes the likes of Kid Canaveral, Washington Irving, My Tiny Robots, Kid Canaveral and Three Blind Wolves.

Only one bit of Song, by Toad Records news this week, and it is that we have finally managed to find a home for Yusuf Azak’s album launch gigs this week.  We booked a three-date tour of Scotland with Ethan Ash, with whom he has been on a joint tour (if you’re from Inverness, St. Andrews or Dundee, I did try, it just didn’t work out, sorry), only for two of the venues to close down within a week of the posters going out and the Facebook thingy going up.

The collapse of the Edinburgh University Settlement and the subsequent loss of the Roxy Art House has been much discussed already, but Gambetta in Glasgow also shut down on us, and had somehow lost our booking so they didn’t even get in touch to let us know.  Had it not been for Yusuf hearing talk on the grapevine and checking it out, we could conceivably have all turned up there on Friday night to find a locked venue and no clue about what was going on.

Anyhow, after all sorts of fuss, and places like Tchai Ovna rather annoyingly neglecting to even answer their emails, we have two new venues sorted and can, erm, I suppose ‘re-announce’ the tour dates for the coming weekend:

Thursday 25th November 2010: Cellar 35, Aberdeen, with Amber Wilson.

Amber is a singer songwriter who generally plays solo acoustic, but played her first ever full band set at the Meursault gig at the Beach Ballroom last month.

Amber Wilson – Love Will Tear us Apart (Joy Division)

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Friday 26th November 2010: The Winchester Club, Glasgow, with Jonnie Common.

Jonnie Common is one of those creative sorts who always seem to have about three different albums on the immediate horizon.  I know of three at the moment, at least, and this is from one of them.

Jonnie Common – Photosynth

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Saturday 27th November 2010: The St. Stephen’s Centre, Edinburgh, with The Japanese War Effort.

Jamie from the Japanese War Effort is actually playing an acoustic set, so as a preview I thought his Fresh Air Session would be most fitting.  His recorded material tends to sound a bit more like this. The St. Stephens Centre itself is actually underneath the main church (see Google Maps link above, and main post image), so go left past the main entrance, and there’s a door just past the main stair.  We’ll try and make it really obvious if we can!

The Japanese War Effort – Lanark (Live on Fresh Air Radio)

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So there you go, finally organised.  The St. Stephens Centre in particular looks rather interesting, but honestly I am just grateful we managed to find venues at all, given it was a last minute job, at this time of year, and we needed weekend slots too.  Anyway, as you can probably tell, these gigs haven’t had the easiest of times, so we’d really appreciate anyone making the effort to come along and see the bands.