We nearly missed our anniversary again this year, but fortunately caught the fucker just in time. We were heading off to Leith to get some scran and I was sitting at the bus stop thinking about how it was nearly August and then asked one of those stupid questions you ask when something is really obvious, but actually so obvious you become unsure of it:
“It’s July, right?”
“Yes, of course it is.”
“That means it must be nearly…” (hastily fishes in pocket for phone) “Fuck! It’s our anniversary. Today!”
When your wife forgets the thing entirely as well I guess it makes no difference, so instead of going to see something daft at the pictures, we went to a fishy place, had a seafood platter and bottle of champagne, before going for (a couple too many) cocktails at The Raconteur round the corner from our house.
Five years married. Oh how happy we looked. That didn’t last*.
01. Mazes – Summer Hits (00.22)
02. Frightened Rabbit – Fuck This Place (feat. Tracyanne Campbell) (05.49)
03. CD/EX – Tell the Girl (12.13)
04. Lab Coast – Astronaut Like Me (18.11)
05. Sauna Youth – Backgrounds (20.31)
06. Hookworms – Teen Dreams (26.52)
07. R.E.M. – Swan Swan H (Athens Demo) (41.33)
08. Admiral Radley – All Fucked on Beer (44.24)
09. Dolfinz – Coral Reefer (51.17)
10. Tom Waits – All the World is Green (59.01)
*Of course it fucking did, don’t be silly. We’re the happiest fucking couple I know, despite spending 90% of our time together swearing at one another!
 Not of course, given the business I work in, like I can’t fill it up to the brim again in a second of course. I mean, there’s the Rob St. John and Ian Humberstone as well as the All Creatures Will Make Merry vinyl artwork to finalise of course. But that can, realistically, wait until Monday. I think.
So that leaves me with tomorrow and nothing to do but hang out with Mrs. Toad. The house has been so hectic with guests, and with the Festival August might well be worse, that at least one day to spend just by ourselves will be a bloody relief.
Then on Sunday I am pottering through to Glasgow for Jonnie Common’s album launch. His new record Master of None was within a whisker of being on Song, by Toad Records actually, but we didn’t move fast enough (damn you holidays!) and also didn’t really have the money to press vinyl either. Also the record label who did end up releasing – Manchester’s Red Deer Club – are one of the best indies around and Dunk Le Chunk, who runs the label, has been one of Jonnie’s staunchest supporters from back in the days of Down the Tiny Steps, so it is rather fitting that they release his debut album.
And as much as I would have liked to have the record on Song, by Toad Records, I’d rather anyone else release it if it means I get to have a copy on vinyl. Fookin’ lovely! Anyway, yes, The Captain’s Rest in Glasgow this Sunday if you fancy some superlative musicfuns.
1. Which bird looks the most evil?
2. Which sea creature looks the most benign?
3. Name your death metal band.
4. Best use of an animal in a film…
5. …and the worst.
Five songs from a boisterous compilation I made in the Winter about umm… six years ago is it now?
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During the interview for his Toad Session I asked Johny Lamb from Thirty Pounds of Bone about the anitpathy that exists between promoters and bands. His response was sort of awkward - like most bands I presume he’s known a lot of really nice promoters in his time. But his answer was nevertheless both telling and one I have heard echoed by almost every band I have ever spoken to about the subject: “as a band, promoters fuck you over more than anyone else.”
This, to be fair, is almost certainly true. I’ve heard awful stories from almost everyone about zero promotion being done, about empty rooms, refusal to pay what was described as a ‘guarantee’, promoters sneaking off before the end of the night, subtracting things like towels, food and beer from a band’s fee and then not providing them, and occasionally asking bands to pretty much rep a whole night for them and even pay the other bands on the bill from the door money. And there have been countless others I am probably forgetting.
Having said that, since I have become a promoter myself, albeit a little reluctantly and of course at a very small scale, I can promise you that a lot of bands have pretty damn unrealistic expectations of promoters. ‘How many guest list can I get, where’s our rider, can you provide us with instruments, when do we get fed?’ These questions are valid enough at a certain scale, but the music industry has a very long Long Tail indeed, and the majority of people are futzing about playing gigs attended by under a hundred people, where these sorts of demands just don’t match up with the scale of the money being generated.
The thing is (ignoring the lazy, dishonest promoters and demanding, entitled bands, who will always exist) that neither side’s complaints against the other are entirely unreasonable. The problem is that the sums on one side and the sums on the other just don’t match up.
Now, in Edinburgh (and Glasgow I believe) you are expected to have three bands on a bill, and you can just about get away with charging seven quid if they’re small bands people haven’t heard of, but I personally would feel nervous doing so, unless we were in the Caves or somewhere like that.
I understand that these norms are culturally specific, and it may be different in other parts of the country, and I also accept that even around here they are very much open for debate. If anyone can correct me on any of the stuff below, please do speak up, because I have only been promoting shows for a little while and as such accept that I am very much a beginner.
As a promoter you are expected to do the following:
Hire a venue. Around here this costs roughly £100. It’s a hundred for the Wee Red, a bit less for Sneaky’s and a bit more for Henry’s. You can always use a community or church hall instead, but then you have to hire in a PA and pay the sound engineer yourself which, unless you are well connected, can come to a lot more. These venue fees go down as you build a relationship with the venues and they start to cut you some slack, but starting out, those are on the cheaper side of reasonable around here.
Actually promote the gig. Some of this is free. Emailing places like The List, The Skinny and blogs who do listings is (or should be) a given. As should setting up a Facebook event page, sharing it to your profile at judicious intervals, posting the event to the band’s own pages and harping on about it on Twitter. Bands can be very bad at helping with this, actually, and it always stands out when a band at least try and contribute. A band shouldn’t be responsible for the promotion of a gig, but it is just good practise to at least make some effort.
It’s not all free, though. Posters cost money to make. Only about £10/£20 if you stick to black and white, and less if you sneakily use the work photocopier, but they have to be put up as well. Less regular promoters can do this themselves, but given I tend to put on a couple of gigs a month I just don’t have the time, so I pay a postering company to do it, which is £20-£40, depending on the numbers I ask them to distribute.
Printing flyers also costs, as does getting them out there if you can’t do it yourself. So just simple promotion costs, assuming online isn’t enough, which it really isn’t if you want more than twenty or thirty people to turn up, will set you back about £40-£60, and that’s if you’re really doing it on the cheap.
Provide creature comforts. Touring bands always expect to be fed, and all bands expect to be given beer, but I get the impression that surprisingly few of them acknowledge that it costs money to do this, and this is part of the cost of putting on a gig. With three bands on the bill, four people in each, say it can cost you £30 just to provide a couple of beers, and more if you want to be a little more generous.
Feeding people is tricky, too. Touring bands get in, soundcheck and then sit around, and that is when they want to be fed. Taking them to a restaurant – even a chippy – would be financially crazy, so we tend to cook for them at home, but then they only get that after the gig. And even home-cooked food costs at least £20 to feed a hungry band. More if you want a few beers or a couple of bottles of wine in the house to help them wind down.
Provide kit. This one kind of annoys me. I don’t mind spending money, but I don’t like to ask people for favours. One band asking to use another band’s amps and so on has happened to me so often I assume it is standard practise, but I have had a lot of drummers ask me if I can source breakables for them. This is something I hate asking my drummer friends to lend me, but what other choice do I have?
Actually pay the fucking bands. I know a lot of promoters don’t do this, but I have yet to hear a compelling argument why not. The ‘I didn’t make enough money’ excuse is bollocks, because you are basically asking the bands themselves to subsidise your night. We pay bands a standard £40, £50 and £60 for the three slots on the bill, and will always try and increase that for touring bands. The biggest fee we’ve paid a touring band is about £180, and we lost a lot of money that night. So I am absolutely guaranteed to spend £150 on fees, and usually it’s at least £200, because we usually have at least one touring band on the bill.
And, the sums. So, for a cheap night (i.e.: no touring bands) my guaranteed outlays are: £100 for the venue, £50 for promotional costs, £30 for beer, £150 for band fees. If there’s a touring band, you can add at least an extra £50 for fees, as well as £30 (minimum) for extra food and booze. So, £330 for a cheap night, and over £400 for a lineup where someone has had to travel.
Going back to the fact that I feel uneasy charging more than a fiver to get in, and that means I need between sixty and seventy paying customers through the door before I do anything other than lose money. That doesn’t sound like much, but I assure you, that’s a lot of people. I have seen decent touring bands play Cabaret Voltaire to a lot less. I’ve put on gigs where we got about thirty customers through the door, but between guesties and band members it still felt like a busy, successful night. Except it cost me almost two hundred pounds.
But let’s look at the last part of that sum again, the band fees. Now, compared to some promoters £40-£60 for a hometown gig is great, I know. Lots of promoters try and shirk that responsibility altogether. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s an absolute fucking pittance, really.
As a Band, What Does it Actually Cost to Play?
Caveats first: I am not actually in a band, so this list will necessarily be incomplete, and may well be slightly off the mark in its emphasis as well. If you’re in a band and I have left something out or made some other mistake, just let me know.
Travel. This is pretty much the big one, I think. The number of bands I know where no-one has a car is amazing. Without this, even playing a hometown gig is expensive. Imagine you’re first on a bill at a Toad night. The whole band is getting paid £40 – you could pretty much eat that up in taxi fares getting people’s amps and kit down to the venue and back. If you’re from as close as Glasgow, which gets treated as ‘local’ to all intents and purposes, then just a return train fare costs you £12 per person, and that’s assuming you can travel at off-peak times, which isn’t always possible.
If you’re playing outside your hometown, it’s even worse. Our van is pretty efficient, but to get to London and back is at least £200 in fuel costs alone, so when I ask bands from down South to play in Edinburgh, and really go out of my way to offer them £150, which I often know I won’t make back, they are still losing money just getting here. And that’s assuming they have a reasonably-sized car, or know people who can lend them a van. If they have to rent a vehicle, it becomes a complete non-starter. No wonder there are so many solo acoustic singer-songwriters – at least they can feasibly get the Megabus, no matter how uncomfortable.
Accommodation. This too can be a killer. Travelodges are great (by which I mean shit, but serviceable), but rooms still end up costing £30-£40 a night, even if you get in relatively early, which isn’t always possible. And you can maybe try and get everyone in one room, but if you get caught, you’re fucked. So just an overnight stay in a strange place can cost a band £70, and I’m not sure, but I think that’s low-balling it.
This doesn’t apply to hometown bands of course, but for a promoter, particularly one with a family, finding the space to accommodate bands, and friends to help when you run out of space is a major, major headache. And if a promoter is anything other than a rank amateur, with all the disadvantages that can bring, they seem to be unlikely to offer to arrange accommodation unless really pushed to do so.
Time off work. To a degree I think bands complain about this too much. If you think of a band as a startup business, then taking time out of your regular job to work unpaid in the one you are trying to kickstart is simply part and parcel of the undertaking. Starting the record label involved me using unpaid leave, every last bit of holiday and every last bit of spare time I had, that’s just the nature of the beast.
Unless you’re saying it’s just a hobby, in which case the argument about taking time off work to do something you are doing for fun is even less valid.
Where I do have some sympathy, however, is the difficulty of coordination. It’s not just one person: usually several people have to get the same time off, and that can put people in really, really awkward situations. I am not sure about expecting financial compensation from a promoter for this, but there are times when irrespective of fees, bands simply cannot play gigs, and both the promoters trying to book them and the bands themselves need to acknowledge this.
Food and drink. This is a funny one. A lot of bands say things like ‘well they aren’t fucking paying us, the least they can do is provide a few drinks’. This is very much true. But we do pay bands, just… well, not nearly enough, if I’m being honest. But if you’re asking someone to do something you should at bare minimum cover the cost of your request, and while travel and accommodation do fit under that banner, food and drink do not – people have to feed themselves every day of their lives, irrespective of whether or not they’re playing a gig.
Having said that, eating at home can be beans on toast for a quid. Eating somewhere reasonably near a venue can be eight quid each for a shit burger, depending on how lucky you get. These are costs which, whilst I am not sure who I think ‘should’ pay them, add up very fast for either band or promoter. If there’s four of you and you have to eat at a pub or restaurant – or even a chippy, these days – the costs can get up to £40 in the blink of an eye.
And, the sums. If I invite a band up from Manchester and don’t give them a place to crash, what does it cost them? At least £100 for petrol, assuming they can find a big enough car. At least £100 to rent one if they can’t. £70 for overnight accommodation. £40 to eat out, near whatever venue I might have chosen. So even if we pay them £100, feed them and give them somewhere to sleep, they still only break even by a whisker. And that’s just covering costs – bear in mind that for the promoter or the band in this scenario ‘breaking even’ still means your actual labour and time have been donated for free.
Basically, it just doesn’t add up. The scenario I’ve described – getting fifty people along to a local gig in a small venue is pretty normal. I’ve seen bands on Matador, Domino and Bella Union play that kind of show and actually, if the venue is right, fifty paying customers can make for an awesome gig. But fifty people means, almost by definition, that unless they’ve managed to cut corners elsewhere, the promoter loses money.
It also means that the band don’t get paid anything like enough to cover the costs of simply turning up. The only alternative in that case is to cut corners – for the band to play a stripped down, more portable set, if they can, for the promoter not to feed people, not to provide a rider, cut down on promotion costs etc etc etc… and suddenly you can see why there is often so much resentment between band and promoter.
As soon as you outgrow playing for free just because you’re kind of amazed anyone took an interest in the first place, you have to make an awful lot of progress before you get to the point where you can consistently attract enough people for the amount of money generated to really make it fair on anyone.
When I first wrote about Dirty Beaches I described the kind of music they make thus: “the kind of music that sounds like what you might hear if you submerged yourself entirely in the bath while your next door neighbour was playing pop music just loud enough that you could hear it.”
I am still not entirely sure I can top that, although for a band people have actively asked me to take off the stereo when I’ve played Badlands in the house, they do seem to remarkably buzzy at the moment.
In fact, fuck it, let’s get the shite on the table first, shall we? This stuff sounds almost like it is daring you to call its bluff and say ‘no, sorry, that’s shit’. It’s all so muffled, slurred and lackadaisical-sounding that you wonder if they did it for a dare, at times.
The kind of emotion it generated in me for the longest time after the vinyl first turned up was a weird mix of fascination and the creeping suspicion that I might be dazzled by that fascination into thinking that I loved something that was, in fact, rubbish.
I am over that now. This is great.
It’s a dense, suffocating, oppressive record though, and doesn’t make for particularly light listening. So many people are burying old school rock and roll songs under layers of obfuscation these days, that the minute I heard the tape distortion and fuzz I prepared myself for a spot of same old same old, which really isn’t what Badlands is at all. Although this does make occasional use of that sort of thing, it’s more like an underwater hydrophonic recording of machine music, drone and occasionally just a touch of synth pop.
Black Nylon and Hotel, at the end of the album, are perhaps closest to a perversion of the sort of drone folk on Consider the Bees by The Honorable Worm, and there are songs at the beginning which seem to start with what might once have been nice, innocent pop music. It is so ruthlessly throttled, however, and delivered with such an anguished yelp – particular opener Speedway King – that all the innocence is crushed out of it long before it reaches your ears.
Funnily enough, the closest to an easily digestible pop tune might be Lord Knows Best, not because the underlying landscape of the track isn’t just as ground up as everything else, but because of the twinkling piano which skitters over the top. It almost reminds me of some of the chillout compilations back in the early years of this millennium, although on an album like this that brief glimmer of prettiness seems less like a pleasant dinner time gambit, and more like an injured fawn running for its life from a pack of starving wolves.
In fact, the whole listening experience of this album might well be described like that, in a sense. And it’s fucking great.
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 Another one of those incredibly difficult band names to track down on Google. Not as incriminating as Teens, Girls, Women or (shudder) Sexy Kids, but nevertheless, you try tracking down a band called Easter when all you know is that they have a song called Holy Island. I sifted through a lot of religious shit and quasi-spiritual bollocks before I finally tracked them down.
I was actually introduced to this band by the lads from Milk Maid, when they came in to record their Toad Session and play an Ides of Toad gig a month or so ago. The asked to put Holy Island on the Session podcast, which was the first I’d heard of the band.
Having finally tracked them down on Soundcloud, I am really enjoying their stuff; it’s quite grandiose, actually, and just a little bit proggy in places. There are even moments when I am reminded of bands like Shearwater, albeit more in the emotional character of the songs, rather than any musical resemblance.
In amongst the clatter and the engine noise of the guitars, the actual vocal is cold and a little bit unwelcoming. I don’t mean that as a criticism though, because it gives the songs a nice, distinct character of their own, but again I find myself reminded just a little of Jonathan Meiburg. It’s not that it’s an unemotional voice, more that the emotions to which it does succumb are resented and bottled up as much as possible – almost as if their breaking through into the song feels like some kind of failure to the singer, who doesn’t really trust us enough yet to really want to share too much.
It’s hard to make much of just three songs, as I say constantly on these pages, but this lot look really promising.
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I don’t really need to add anything to the following, do I? Apart from a big thanks to the Electric Circus for suggesting I put these nights on, thanks to all the bands for agreeing to play and umm… well, I hope to fuck you all turn up, eh!
 You know what’s on this week? Nothing! Nada. Zip. Diddly. Bupkis. So I suggest you go to the movies, read a book, sit outside in the sun (if it lasts) or whatever the fuck else it was I used to do before getting so sucked into the world of music.
There’s The Bellrays at Cabaret Voltaire on Thursday, I guess, but I have only ever heard a song or two by them I’ve really been into. I think the real highlight of the week will be the Live Lounge at the Electric Circus, which has Finn LeMarinel and Debutant on the bill, amongst others. I’ve hummed and hawed about Debutant in the past, but I’ve been listening to his album a fair bit recently (free, here) and really enjoying it.
Shortly, however, there will be this, and what better time to tell you about it than a slow gig week:
Acoustic music throughout the afternoon in the Anatomy Lecture Room
Spend the first Sunday of the Fringe hanging out in Edinburgh’s most unusual new bar: Summerhall’s Dissection Room. Grab a drink, listen to some fine music and buy lots of great records from some of Scotland’s best loved record labels and bands.
Including stalls from Chemikal Underground; De-Fence Records; Fence Records; FOUND; Gerry Loves Records; LuckyMe; Retreat!; Song, By Toad Records and more to be announced.
Funnily enough, I’ve been talking to Kev from Avalanche about this, but unbeknownst to me Tommy from FOUND was having the exact same chat independently, and has actually got his shit together a lot quicker than I did. The idea is that Scottish labels bring along their wares to sell, record shops come along with older Scottish music, as well as a any self-releases or single-release label stuff or labels who can’t be arsed to come along themselves, and the whole day includes all sorts of live performances and DJ slots from the Scottish independent music community.
It should be a blast, and hopefully the catalyst for a yearly event celebrating the independent music scene, the actual physical objects which are made, and the people whose work goes into making it all happen.
If you’re a shop, label, or self-releasing band and you want to get involved, email Tommy here: tommy@foundtheband.com
 This is called the Barbecast because we finally went out and replaced our shitty old one this morning, and today we intend to christen the new one. The previous one had actually rusted through, and the only way to hold the burning coals in place was a shonky combination of chicken wire and tin foil. Not ideal.
It’s funny though, the two nations who go about barbecueing things the most actually know nothing whatsoever about the barbecue.
Dear Aussies and Americans, if it is powered by gas rather than charcoal it IS NOT A BARBECUE. It is simply a cooker you keep outside. Cultural differences … blah blah … practicality … witter … special smoked wood chips … etc etc etc…. BOOOORING! You’re wrong, you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s not a barbecue unless you have to light your own coals. Full stop. Non-negotiable, this is simply a fact of life: if it is gas-fired then it is a cooker, not a barbecue, irrespective of whether or not you use it out of doors, and you can stop calling it that and kidding yourself you actually barbecue, because you don’t.
01. Grandaddy – AM 180 (00.22)
02. I Break Horses – Winter Beats (07.36)
03. Acid Glasses – My Pale Garden (16.53)
04. Tunabunny – (Song for My) Solar Sister (19.49)
05. Grandaddy – Chartsengraphs (24.55)
06. The Spectral Mirror – Distant Murmurs (27.46)
07. Loved Ones – Hi Pressure (35.24)
08. Paul Hawkins & the Awkward Silences – Johnny (40.35)
09. Fear of Men – Church Words (48.23)
10. Sealings – Stay Cold (52.11)
11. Grandaddy – Saddest Vacant Lot in All the World (57.33)
 When you start a business, certain things which stamp you with the mark of legitimacy are basically just a nuisance. Completing your accounts for the year is very much one of these: an awful chore, which never at any point makes you feel like your are a proper business-owning muthafucka and don’t you forget it, more like a twelve-year-old staring resentfully at their homework.
Being a blogger doesn’t help. If I called myself a writer or the owner of one of the UK’s most upwardly mobile record labels then I would feel like… I dunno, like I wasn’t just making shit up as I go along and hoping to get away with it. But the very term ‘blogger’, no matter how many of the world’s most respected writers now write blogs too, still reeks of a misunderstood teenager complaining into the vast, indifferent wastelands of the internet, whilst sitting in his parents’ basement at three in the morning with his hand down his pants and a half-eaten jumbo pack of Cheesy Wotsits spilling over the keyboard.
Recently, though, I have started to have to do things which actually make you feel awkwardly legitimate. Not legitimate specifically because you have to do them, but because the very act of doing them makes you finally realise that actually it is legitimate and right for you to be doing them, which is actually a bit of a shock when it finally dawns on you.
I have written, for example, a couple of employment references for people in our bands, and over the last couple of years, a couple of employer references for people renting flats. And actually, given the nature of the music industry, I am probably just about the right person to be doing it, which is an odd sensation.
And, seeing as I am now defining pissing about on the internet as being a proper job, how do I define skiving? When you fill in your Friday Fives and then bugger about talking pish for the rest of the afternoon you are genuinely skiving, but when I do it am I executing business strategy? I liked it better when it was just outright skiving, frankly.
1. Thing you do which makes you feel most like a proper grown-up (n.b. you don’t have to actually be a grown-up to answer this).
2. Thing which still makes you feel like a child – not past-time, we all have those, more a chore of some description.
3. Thing you thought would make you feel grown-up but didn’t.
4. Something you have entirely grown out of enjoying.
5. Thing which, despite growing up, hasn’t lost its appeal.
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 So, hands up who’s bored of me constantly banging on about ultra-lo-fi garage bands recently? Yep, me too! Honestly, I do listen to loads of other stuff, I promise – and having made that promise it seems like a good time to write about Shenandoah Davis’ new album, The Company We Keep.
I first wrote about Shenandoah back in early 2009, and her Toad Session was our landmark 100th podcast, and one of the best sessions we’ve ever done, so I am particularly pleased on a personal level to see this album released.
I don’t think of piano music as being ‘acoustic’ music, for some reason. I know that’s wrong, but there’s something grand and impressive about the piano which seems to transcend the hopeless, downtrodden troubadour image of someone fumbling away at an acoustic guitar. Having said that, the first Shenandoah Davis stuff I heard was very bare, in terms of arrangements, and this is a gorgeous, rich pop record.
Now, the idea of me loving an album which takes music from a minimal DIY aesthetic to something fuller, bigger and more involved may cause a few of you to splutter into your coffee, but that’s the case here. This is a lush and beautiful record, with a few of the characteristics of nice female singer-songwriters and all the lazy mental shortcuts that tag brings with it, but lifted at every turn by Shenandoah’s depth of arrangement and sheer idiosyncratic character.
It has real personality, this album, and real knack for building dramatic crescendoes of piano and strings, before dropping it altogether and delivering a song of restrained loveliness. Penultimate song, Duet, in particular builds to a thunderous pinnacle, before blowing itself out and collapsing into a gentle piano fadeout.
It’s such a lovely combination of the playful and the lovely, of the grandiose and the intimate, I liked this record from the first listen and it has only grown on me since.
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We nearly missed our anniversary again this year, but fortunately caught the fucker just in time. We were heading off to Leith to get some scran and I was sitting at the bus stop thinking about how it was nearly August and then asked one of those stupid questions you ask when something is really obvious, but actually so obvious you become unsure of it:
