Yoofff, wake up, my dozing brain!  I think I am going to blame Mrs. Toad, but we have recently taken to having weekends of such epic sloth that even by seven in the evening on Monday my brain is still very much stalled.

Of course, back when I had a day job this still used to happen of, except I had to sit at my desk looking fucking useless all day.  It’s just that now when I spend a day being just a little bit vacant and useless – or glaikit as the Scots rather excellently refer to it – I just end up feeling like I am robbing myself.  Which I am, because it means I have to do this shit in the evening instead, which is just silly.

Anyhow, in terms of waking up and getting out of the house for some fun and games, things still don’t really seem to be picking up in Edinburgh, after a woefully slow start to the year.  Still, never mind, there will be plenty of Ides of Toad action in the next couple of weeks, and the Tidal Wave of Indifference will be back too, so things will start creaking into action again, hopefully.

Mind you, with the official retirement of Cabaret Voltaire from the gig circuit – not that they’d been really actively booking for a couple of years anyway – and the potential closure of the Bongo Club by Edinburgh University, I’d be surprised if any self-respecting band wanted to play this blighted fucking city ever again.  Fucking hell, we’re going to be having gigs on the forecourts of Tesco’s if this keeps on much longer.

Tuesday 7th Feb: Vieux Farka Touré and Samba Sene (solo) at the Voodoo Rooms.

The venue may make you feel, as a pal of mine so neatly put it on Twitter, like you’re at a wedding reception, but it is a venue, it is in Edinburgh, and it shows no imminent signs of being closed, so for this we must be really rather grateful.  Well, that and the fact that they are bringing someone I suppose you could legitimately describe as one of the most respected African musicians of his generation to play in Edinburgh tomorrow night.

Vieux Farka Tour̩ РAigna

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Thursday 9th Feb: North Atlantic Oscillation at the Voodoo Rooms.

This event is actually called Moodjam and is being held to raise funds for the charity Action on Depression.  Playing will be Edinburgh’s North Atlantic Oscillation, who create indie which touches on everything from shoegaze to electronic to epic bigness.  Yes, epic bigness, it’s a term.

North Atlantic Oscillation – Marrow

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Friday 10th Feb: Indie Funday Friday, with Spook School, The Seven Deadly Sins, November Orchid and Little Love and the Friendly Vibes at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

This night is designed to raise money for charity, and in order to do so they have invited a very promising collection of local bands whose music can loosely be described as variations on the term ‘indie-pop’, with the Spook School and The Seven Deadly Sins looking very good indeed.

Saturday 11th Feb: Video Loves the Radio Star with Her Royal Highness at the Third Door.

I’ve mentioned this night before because I really like the concept: Videolab apparently do a live VJ set whilst the band is playing, and in terms of making a step up from the plain old ‘get some bands in a room’ gig approach, this definitely strikes me as something very much worth investigating.

Alright, I know that by the end of January you are supposed to stop using terms like ‘new year’ but I reckoned it was about time for an update on these matters, and that seemed the most appropriate way of phrasing it.

So, with a flurry of album launches coming up in the late Spring/early Summer, we have a small but exciting fistful of gigs to tide us over until then, which I will list below.  Apart from the aforementioned launches, which we’ll generally try and do somewhere a bit strange, I am looking at putting on as many of my events as possible at Henry’s this year.

This is for numerous reasons, but chief amongst them Nora and Claire have been there at every gig and have been a real pleasure to deal with.  When you’re a relatively rookie promoter, having sound engineers and venue managers who just take care of shit in the calmest possible way makes a huge difference, leaving you to panic about attendance at your leisure.  Also, I just kinda like the place.  It’s scruffy, sure, but in many ways it’s a classic dive bar – it’s where gigs should be taking place.

Anyhow, our first gig is in a few weeks and it will be Armellodie Records’ Chris Devotion and the Expectations but umm… well, I’ll write down a handy list for you because, maybe even more than it loves kittens, the internet just loves lists doesn’t it. And as per usual, all tickets will be available from Brown Paper Tickets, and from Avalanche Records down on the Grassmarket.

Saturday 18th Feb: Chris Devotion and the Expectations, My Tiny Robots & Morris Major.

Chris Devotion and the Expectations have a new album out on the brilliant Armellodie Records, and will be playing some dates to support the release.  Their smart, slight stylised indie pop should work well with My Tiny Robots, who are also rather stylish indie poppers, albeit in a rather different way.

Friday 24th Feb: The Pineapple Chunks, Brown Brogues & Zed Penguin.

Er, ramshackle and idiosyncratic – is that the best way to describe this lineup?  I think it might be.  Zed Penguin have a new EP and a new full band lineup, and Brown Brogues a new single on the way, so this should be perfect timing.  All these bands make a bit of a racket, and none of them seem entirely right in the head, which er, well, should probably make for a brilliant night I reckon.

Saturday 25th Feb: Louis Barabbas and the Bedlam Six, Skeleton Bob (I think) and Lee Patterson at the Third Door.

Louis Barabbas were absolutely mental and absolutely brilliant when they last played Edinburgh, in the middle of last year.  They’ll be joined on the bill by Lee Patterson, who I first happened across at this year’s Antihoot in the Summer, and hopefully Skeleton Bob.  Actually, for all they said ‘yeah, awesome’ when I asked them to play, I have yet to get proper confirmation from Skeleton Bob actually, so I’d better get on top of that, now that I think about.  Also, please note that this gig is at the Third Door, not Henry’s.

Friday 9th March: So Many Wizards and LeThug.

This will be a pop night, sort of.  All the bands take their pop and make it weird, be it by fuzz or by skewed eccentricity.  So Many Wizards are over touring from the States, and LeThug are a really promising new Glasgow band I wrote about on Song, by Toad recently, and if you haven’t already checked out their stuff then you should.

Saturday 24th March: Post War Glamour Girls, Dolfinz and Slowcoaches.

Two Leeds bands accidentally ended up on the same bill here, so I hope they get on. Dolfinz are favourites of ours already, as you know, and they are touring with Slowcoaches, so you can expect some fine, garagey racket from those two.  Post War Glamour Girls are just a tad more restrained and stylish I think

The Muppets win at everything.  That’s all I have to say on the matter.

In other news, Mrs. Toad and I went out into the garden this weekend, to try and tackle the small jungle which has slowly been developing since the Summer.  The weather has been so spectacularly shit since July and August that we just haven’t been out there, so our window boxes have all died and every bed was overrun with weeds.

Still, due to our particularly indelicate methods of gardening – a little closer to slash and burn than anything you might see on Gardeners’ World – we managed to get through an awful lot and also to shove some rather late bulbs into the ground, albeit more in hope than expectation.  It was nice though, especially because we haven’t been out there for months now.  Although fuck knows what we’re going to with all the piles of cuttings and various other crap we generated.

Anyway, after the extreme rock ‘n’ roll of a spot of gardening, I’m not sure that booze and drugs and gigs will impress me all that much.  But let’s give it a go, eh…

Thursday 2nd Feb: Born to Be Wide Festival Seminar at the Electric Circus.

The guests for this one include Dave Corbet (T In The Park/The Edge Festival), Katch Holmes (Knockengorroch Festival), Gordon Reilly (Insider Festival), Shaun Arnold (Go North). So if you want to know how best to get on festival bills and to hear some chat about what it can actually do for you, then I strongly recommend you come to this one.

Thursday 2nd Feb: Lady North play Sick Note at Cabaret Voltaire.

This is a late night club show, and I actually think this might be one of the best ways to experience Lady North’s thumping rhythms and hypnotic guitars.  And for those of you getting soused at Born to Be Wide ealier, then this would be an ideal place to stagger onto next.

Saturday 4th Feb: Love Your Library Day at Penicuik Library, with The Last Battle and Matt Norris and the Moon.

Ed from 17 Seconds has organised a couple of great events for National Libraries Day.  The first is a comedy night involving Frankie Boyle and Miles Jupp, but that’s sold out now, and the second is a musical event out in Penicuik, with a couple of 17 Seconds Records bands.  The 37, 47 or X47 will take you there really easily from the centre of Edinburgh, so I don’t want any whinging excuses about the enormity of the journey, it’s just not that hard.

Sunday 5th Feb: Dam Mantle plays Superclub at Sneaky Pete’s.

Dam Mantle is probably on the fringes of my taste for electronic music, truth be told, but for those of you with better knowledge of this kind of stuff I reckon this should be a very good bet.

 Is it just me or is the gig calendar around these parts taking ages to shudder back into life after Christmas?  I know there have been good shows here and there, but most weeks I find myself looking at a list of one, rather than the more plentiful goodness we can usually count upon in Edinburgh.

Ah well, Mrs. Toad’s two new cats are capering about the house like loons, so I suppose they’ll keep me entertained in the absence of significant musicfun.

What’s fucking happening in Edinburgh anyway? Neither the Liquid Room nor Cabaret Voltaire seem to be doing any significant booking anymore, are we just not considered to be worth visiting for a band who can attract a crowd above about two hundred people?  I mean, the smaller venues do a good job of bringing really under the radar bands here, but is no-one interested in booking anyone that people have actually heard of?

I love the Ides of Toad gigs, but we’re operating in venues with a capacity of a hundred or so – who the fuck is bringing the bands to the city who can pull a few hundred people to a venue?  No-one, it seems, although please do correct me if I’m wrong. Even DF and PCL seem to have decided there ain’t much point in bringing bands that they’ll happily put on in Glasgow through to Edinburgh.

Presumably we just don’t go, so as far as the bigger promoters are concerned there’s just no financial point in putting on bands here, and so to a degree we get what we deserve.  It’s a shame though.  Even when I first turned up here I’d regularly go to 200-500 attendance shows at the Liquid Room or Cab Vol.

Thursday 26th Jan: United Fruit, PAWS & Vasquez at the Electric Circus.

This is going to be good and loud isn’t it. PAWS are just back from recording their debut album down in shiny, shiny London so I reckon they’ll be in a fair mood to blow off some steam.  United Fruit are a band I tried to get through to Edinburgh in August actually, until it turned out they couldn’t make it, so I’ll be looking forward to seeing them too, as well as a local band Vasquez, about whom I know shamefully little.

PAWS – Bloodline (Toad Session)

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Friday 27th Jan: Live Lounge, with Mike MacFarlane, HP Neilson, Jay Bharaj & Mike Kearney at the Electric Circus.

In the absence of more than a single relatively big ticket show in town this week, why not swing by the Circus on Friday for a bit of an Antihoot reunion, in the form of the humour of Jay Bharaj, the rather biting self-mockery of Mike MacFarlane and the smooth MCing and popsmithery of HP Neilson.

 Man, as a blogger who works from home is there such thing as ‘taking a day off sick’?  I don’t think there is, but if there’s one thing I miss from the days of having a grown up job it’s being able to take a day off sick knowing that someone else would have to take care of the shit you were supposed to do, and it wouldn’t all just pile up and sit in wait for you until you got back.

So here I sit, secretly wanting to curl up in bed, but knowing full well that, well, all the shit I have to do now isn’t going anywhere, I am just going to have less time in which to do it once I do get my shit together.

Gig going, at this point, is the very last thing on my mind.  However, I do of course recognise that there are hardier souls than myself out there and that with an Edinburgh gig calendar still only spluttering into life after the Christmas break there will be a fair few people champing at the bit for musicfuns by now.

So what are your options, if that’s what you’re after?  Not an awful lot, to be honest, but there are definitely a couple of goodies to be found this week.

Thursday 19th Jan: Frightened Rabbit at Cabaret Voltaire.

Tickets for this are apparently available only on a first come, first served basis, so I expect a rather enthusiastic queue to be forming on Blair Street on Thursday.  Given the size of venue they are used to playing and the way Frightened Rabbit put their back into things live, this should be a rammed, sweaty corker.  If you can get in.

Thursday 19th Jan: Seafieldroad at the Traverse Theatre.

This is part of the Traverse New Sessions, apparently, which looks interesting, if a little grown up for boorish oafs such as myself.  Nevertheless, I can’t think of anywhere more suited to the rich, rolling piano balladry of Seafieldroad, so this should be a treat.

If there’s other shit that I’m missing, well you’re just going to have to forgive me I’m afraid. I am off back to my bed.

 So, what’s happening with you lot this week?  I myself am getting ready to do a spot of recording with Waiters and Sex Hands, who are up from Manchester to put together a split 12″ which we’ll be releasing in, er… April, I think, assuming all goes well.

So, once more to offend the neighbours with the battering of drums and the sound of loud guitars.  The good news is that Mrs. Toad is off to the States on grown-up business this week, so that’s at least one less person to annoy with the racket and the mess.

Once again, there’s not all that much on this week, but what there is looks really interesting. Sneaky Pete’s website is down at this particular moment, so I can’t check what they have going on at the moment, but you can check yourself here when you get the chance, and hopefully it will be back up and running.

Thursday 12th Jan: FOUND launch Atmosphere|Memento at the InSpace Gallery.

I’ll be honest with you, I know next to nothing about this. FOUND are involved though, and pretty much everything they touch turns to genius, so I’d recommend it whatever it is.  According to the blurb on the site they are presenting two different chronologies of the same story to two different audiences, one being linear, and the other more fragmented, to represent the story of a man who can no longer form new memories.  Sounds a bit weird, but fascinating, but then that’s FOUND for you.

Saturday 14th Jan: My Tiny Robots single launch at The Third Door.

As well as being the launch night for My Tiny Robots’ new single will be the first night of a new concept at the Third Door called Video Loves the Radio Star, a collaboration between Ten Tracks, who book for the Third Door, and video LaB. My Tiny Robots will be looking to follow up a couple of excellent singles last year with Zut Alors (preview below), and I can only assume they are building towards a debut album – one I will be most interested to hear.

 Holy fuck my brain is still resisting any and all attempts to get it working again.

I lived on a boat down in London, and I remember when I first bought the thing it was semi-submerged, and I had to pump out the engine compartment just to get the old Lister engine above water for the first time in about two years.  Even after two years under the fucking Thames, all I had to do was crank it manually a couple of times to flush the water out, replace the battery, press start and boom, the ancient bastard thundered into life immediately. How I envy such resilience!

The guy who told me how to get the thing going again said that apparently those old Lister engines are so good that they have almost no secondhand value, because pretty much every one ever made is still working, they’re that tough.

My brain, on the other hand…

Friday 6th Jan: The Occasional Flickers album launch, with the Second Hand Marching Band at The Third Door.

Gigs in January would seem to be a little foolhardy, but given how little is actually going on this week then I suspect the Occasional Flickers might actually have been a little canny in timing their album launch show as they have.  The record itself is not one I am hugely familiar with just yet, as I am still getting myself organised again after Christmas, but as you can tell from the Bandcamp embed below, it is a lovely sounding, whimsically flavoured pop album.  First gig of the year people, don’t miss it!

Aaaaaaand another year rolls around, and we find ourselves once again at New Year’s Eve.  Or approaching it anyway.

And this time we have something a little different for you, an idea which was suggested to me the day that Kev from River of Slime (and FOUND) played a set in our front room which we streamed for Social Media Week.  There were three or four of us watching that evening, but it was pretty obvious there should have been more, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to put that right.

Kev will play a short set early in the night, then Neil from Meursault will play some songs just before the bells, we’ll all walk out into Inverleith Park* where you get a pretty good view of the fireworks, and then we’ll come back for some more River of Slime and then, er… well, fuck knows, frankly.  Tickets are only a fiver and very, very limited in number inevitably, so pick ‘em up quick.

All the money goes straight to the bands so there are no guesties, although Kev and Neil are welcome to fund your ticket out of their cut if you can persuade them to do so.

Sold out now, sorry.

*This is not obligatory of course, particularly if the weather is pish.

Well if there’s any shit going down in Edinburgh this week I am not going to be there to enjoy it.  Not out of shame at having just used the term ‘shit going down’ as if I was a teenager in the nineties, but because my gigfuns will be happening in London and Glasgow this week.

Tomorrow I am in London to see Rob St. John and Neil from Meursault play at the Vortex, and then on Thursday I’ll be in Glasgow for the Fence Records Christmas party.  And funnily enough, with Detour, Frightened Rabbit and Jill O’Sullivan coming through to Edinburgh on the same night as the latter, it seems the two cities will be swapping musical populations for a week.

Then on Sunday we have a gig by three of the most promising lo-fi garage rock bands I’ve come across this year – Dolfinz, Joanna Gruesome and The Black Tambourines.  This will be a bit messy, but also really fucking loud and (mostly) tuneful!

Anyhow, I have a pile of things to tell you about this week, including something rather good on tonight, assuming you can get down to Leith in time…

[Edit:  balls, just going through my emails and realised I missed this: Plastic Animals, Trapped Mice and Supermarionation at the Wee Red Bar on Thursday 15th Dec. - sorry!]

Monday 12th Dec: Taperecorder, Hailey Beavis & Dusty Cut at the Shebeen Bar.

The Shebeen is in what used to be the Old Dock bar down near Commercial Quay in Leith, and this is the first of a series of nights of free music, which promises good things.  Leith has needed something like this since the Leith Tape Club went quiet at the start of the year.  Taperecorder also sound really interesting too, like either an indie, an experimental or a techno band, depending on what moment of what song you happen to catch.

Taperecorder – Gravel Mountain

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Friday 16th Dec: Papi Falso at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

Papi Falso is the perfect club for people who aren’t that into clubs.  The music is fucking awesome, and you can either go nuts on the dancefloor or lean at the bar and have a pint.  Guess which one I tend to favour?

Saturday 17th Dec: Kid Canaveral‘s Christmas Baubles at Summerhall.

This is another all-day Christmas shindig, with performances from the Canaverals themselves, eagleowl, Slow Club, Josie Long, Sweet Baboo and a pile of others, and is being held in pretty much Edinburgh’s most charismatic new venue: Summerhall. I’ll be there. You’ll spot me easily because I’ll be the really drunk one.

Kid Canaveral – And Another Thing!!

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Saturday 17th Dec: Fuzzy Star, The Oates Field & The Occasional Flickers at Sneaky Pete’s.

With Kid Canaveral already sold out, this is a fine alternative for those too slow to get tickets.  Fuzzy Star were excellent at the Ides of Toad earlier in the year, although I suspect this is likely to be a full band set, fleshing out the awkward acoustic introspection with a somewhat fuller sound.  The Oates Field make a cracking racket, and the Occasional Flickers do swoonsome indie-pop as well as anyone in Edinburgh.

The Oates Field – Nae Luck

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Sunday 18th Dec: Doflinz, Joanna Gruesome & The Black Tambourines play The Ides of Toad at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

I am really looking forward to this one.  All three bands play rough and ready, lo-fi garage stuff, but still keep enough tunes in there that you aren’t just battered with a racket.  This should be messy and loud though, and might well be my final gig of the year.

Dolfinz – Coral Reefer

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Joanna Gruesome – Madison

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The Black Tambourines – Bad Days

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Just a quick reminder about tomorrow’s festivities, as well as some practical details.

Firstly, I never got my shit together to get tickets to Avalanche, for which I apologise, but it’s a really big venue, so you shouldn’t have any problems getting in, assuming you turn up relatively early (i.e. not 9pm).

Secondly, it is both child-friendly and BYOB.

Thirdly, bands will play roughly from doors at 2pm to 6pm, when there will be a break for some scran and a stretching of legs, and then more music from 7pm until we have to bugger off at eleven.  No hints as to who and when though, sorry.

The venue is here.  And the event is in the community hall downstairs, which is to be found through the door shown in Streetview below.

Umm… that’s about it.  Hope to see you there.  Happy Christmas!

Cheers,
Matthew

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