I know this ‘what’s your blues name’ nonsense has been floating around the internets for a while, but I thought it might be fun for Friday’s traditional buggering about – just click on the image to have a proper look.

In other news, I will be wearing a fucking penguin suit tonight, for something like the first time in three years.  I fucking hate those things.  I’d rather be a man than a woman at these formal events, because at least we have a simple uniform and don’t have to give a fuck about being judged for our choices, but nevertheless…  yeuch.

I guess the fact that I never have to wear anything more formal than a shirt with a collar on it occasionally means I just don’t feel comfortable in these fucking things, but whatever the reason is, I just don’t, and the sooner the speeches are over, the jacket and fucking tie can come off and the sleeves be rolled up the happier I’ll be.

Then I can get hammered and swear at everyone.

Mastering was fun yesterday as well.  Although actually, there wasn’t much mastering done, just endless tweaks of the final mix to make sure everything was ready for the mastering process, so I still don’t really know what goes on behind the curtain.  I did learn a lot of good things about mixing though which, given I have never really been taught properly and generally just made it up as I went along, is a very, very welcome thing.  Just watching other people do shit is pretty useful I think, even if you don’t end up repeating it, it still just helps to accumulate as much knowledge as you can.

Listen to all the advice you can get, and then ignore 99% percent of it.

Anyway, oh yes, the Friday Fives.  This is why people like me, with a propensity to ramble, just shouldn’t have blogs.  A grownup editor would have butchered this whole load of bollocks down to about three or four sentences, if that, and honestly, where’s the fucking fun to be had there, eh?

1. What is your blues name?
2. What is your posh name?
3. When do you feel most like a fish out of water?
4. Who should be the new England captain, now John Terry’s got the boot (serious answers not encouraged)?
5. Who should headline Glastonbury (or whatever the biggest festival is) this year?

Jingo – Fever

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Mercury Dance Band – Envy No Good

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Das Yahoos – Mabala

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Bokoor Band – Onupka Shawarpo

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Nkansah and Yaanom – Pem Dwe

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Fucking typical. We spend the day recording with PAWS for the split 12″ I’ve been going on about so much recently, and then I spend two or three hours getting preliminary mixes together for them before heading up to their show at the Electric Circus.

Then, because I am a fucking idiot, I come home and start faffing about with the mixes. Never mind your actual judgement, your hearing actually changes when you get drunk (I think you perceive the upper registers far less, but I’m not sure, it could be the other way around) so mixing music is a pretty stupid thing to be doing.

I don’t think I did much damage of course, mostly because I didn’t really change much, and also because I have found the bit in Logic where I can rewind to an older version of the file, but I did sit up until half three in the morning mostly just because I am so excited about the record. Muppet. It’s a good thing to be this excited of course, but given how shite I feel this morning I am not sure it was the best way to express it.

Anyhow, I dearly wish someone could be made to go and fetch me coffee.  Sometimes these basic personal maintenance tasks seem so completely unreasonable – maybe it’s a hangover from being either a student or a child, but I honestly think that the sink could be overflowing at the moment and I couldn’t be arsed to get up and stop it flooding the house.

So, please do de-lurk, answer the following five stupid questions, and then waste what little productive time there is in your average Friday afternoon by fannying around on the internet with us.

1. What do you get so obsessed with you stay up far too late doing it?
2. What is the one trivially simple task you really can’t be fucked with when you’re having one of those ultra-lazy moments?
3. Back to basics snack you could really do with at the moment.
4. If I offered to buy you any album at all right this minute, what would you choose?
5. If you could obliterate all your responsibilities this afternoon, and be entirely free to do as you please, how would you spend it?

And not just any cats, those two fuckwits in the picture up there. Yep, Mrs. Toad managed to keep her despair at the loss of Floyd under control for just about six months before she decided that not just one cat, but TWO fucking cats was the answer.

I think the idea is that because I work from home they will keep themselves entertained and not pester me the whole fucking time, but I honestly think this is ambitious. I think they are going to be climbing all over the keyboard all the time and making a right fucking nuisance of themselves to be honest.  And the second I complain people will call be a bad person because wook and the wickle darlings, they’re SO KYOOOOOOOT!

So while you are sitting uncomfortably in your offices today, Mrs. Toad and I will be driving up to Aviemore to meet the lady who’s selling them to us and then driving back with a van full of mewling kittens.  Splendid.

Anyhow, if those two little fuckers don’t tempt you to de-lurk and say hello, then nothing will.  This is the internet, right?  Pictures of kittens is just what people do here.

1. Name the girl (on the left, she’s a menace, apparently).
2. Name the boy (the gormless one on the right).
3. Which of the various internet memes since the cute pictures of cats obsession have you enjoyed the most?
4. What would be a better way of delaying your mid-twenties-onwards parenting instincts which people seem to salve with pets these days?
5. Pick a weird pet for someone you might not expect to have one.

PAWS – Kitten

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Squirrel Nut Zippers – Fat Cat Keeps Getting Fatter

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The Cure – The Love Cats

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Willard Grant Conspiracy – Cat Nap in the Boom Boom Room

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Grandaddy – What Happened…

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Soft Cat – Silver Babies Sun

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Blech, it’s late and I am only just sitting down at my desk, so apologies for being a little behind on things.  I didn’t sleep in or anything, I promise, I’ve just been running around like a blue-arsed fly doing assorted domestic shit.

Mrs. Toad kindly reminded me that, as well as a record label and a bunch of bands, I also happen to have a wife so this weekend I might make a bit of an effort to be a slightly more attentive husband that I might have been recently.  Apart from recording with Dolfinz on Saturday of course.  But umm… well, a fella has responsibilities you understand.

It’s a gorgeous day, too.  One of those chilly, clear-as-a-bell days you get at this time of year.  The angle of the sun when you’re this far North, even in the middle of the day, makes driving a bit of a challenge, but the clear, white light is a lovely, lovely thing.

Anyhow, let’s get fivesing shall we, and remember that is the day one de-lurks and says hello.  Because, erm, well what other way is there to waste the afternoon before pub time.  Well, you could always try this I suppose: Cliff Richard Dying Inside.

1. Favourite Bond film.
2. Most cringeworthy Bond moment.
3. Phrase or saying you just don’t hear these days.
4. What percentage of a fuck do you give about the announcement of the Brits nominations?
5. Which celebrity looks the most dead behind the eyes to you?

The Selecter – Too Much Pressure

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The Pop Rivets – Lambrettavespascoota

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Soft Cell – Bedsitter

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Sham 69 – George Davis is Innocent

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The Meteors – Out of Time

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 And might I mean that quite literally.  Not ‘probably functional’, it’s still all very much up in the air, but it’s plausible I might be back in something resembling the land of the living.

I think the work which had to be done pretty much immediately has had the effect of jump-starting a spluttering brain.  The Josh T. Pearson Toad Session is finished and ready to publish next weekend (assuming he’s happy with it), and Ian and I have been plotting this year’s Song, by Toad Records er, strategy, if you can call it that (just listen to tomorrow’s podcast if you’re interested).

We’re also working on this year’s Song, by Toad Records free sampler, which is going to be excellent.  A little different from last year’s of course, but then I suppose that’s the point.

Anyhow, welcome to the first Friday Five of 2012.  Why not delurk, just for shits and giggles, and say hello.  I promise the questions won’t be challenging.

1. A New Year’s resolution you might keep.
2. One you’ll make but will probably break.
3. One you wouldn’t be naive enough to even make in the first place.
4. One someone else should make.
5. One other people might make for you but they can fuck off.

The Dirtbombs – Livin’ For the City

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Modey Lemon – Loch Ness Monster

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Joy Zipper – 33X

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Sly & the Family Stone – Life

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The Wipers – 07

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 Morning.  Fucking brilliantly awesome get tae fuck good fucking morning to you all.  Grrrmpf.  You know those days which start out fucking shite from the very get go and before you answer a single email or deal with a single individual you’re already within a whisker of just telling everyone to piss off because you just can’t be fucking arsed with them?  Yep, one of those I’m afraid.  Hopefully El and Brian will cheer me up on Fresh Air this afternoon.

This is the last show on Fresh Air this entire term, I think, so we’ll be playing a combination of Christmas tat and end-of-year favourites, I believe.  And after that I shall be scuttling off for a much-deserved pint.

On air from 3:30pm UK time – listen live here

In the meantime, after the hugely successful song of the year vote, we are at that time of year, where I ask you to tell us all which albums you have loved the most this year.  I’ll add them up as we go along and on Monday I will announce the winner.

This is of course the perfect opportunity to de-lurk and say hello.  It’s always nice to hear from people I had no idea were reading, and of course our readership is orders of magnitude larger than our commentership* so I am forever wondering who these shadowy thousands are who read the site regularly but hang about in the shadows saying nothing.  Make today the day!

So, simply, just list your five favourite albums, in no particular order, preferably in the format band – album so I can tally them easier, and we’ll see who everyone’s been enjoying the most in 2011.  And the tracklisting for the radio show will appear live below as we go along, once the show starts at half three.

1. Ian Humberstone – The House on the Hill
2. Seth Faergolzia – Weird Old Toad
3. The Leg – Witch on the Speakers
4. Jesus H. Foxx – So Much Water
5. Louis Barabbas & the Bedlam Six – Away in a Manger
6. Meursault – Christmas in Kirkcaldy
7. Warpaint – Billie Holiday
8. Tom Lehrer – A Christmas Carol
9. Yusuf Azak – Swim
10. Plastic Animals – Post-Rapture Blues
11. Trapped Mice – Just Like Christmas (Low cover)
12. Waiters – Tomorrowland
13. Battles – Ice Cream
14. Easter – Damp Patch
15. Hookworms – Teen Dreams
16. Dead Rabbits – All You Need
17. Sons of Joy – Go Tell it on the Mountain

*My sincere apologies to the English language.

 Okay, angry mob of the Toad readership, do your very worst.  Today, as promised, is the day we vote on our five favourite songs of the year so there will be no foolish questions as per usual, but what there will be is the chance for you to write down your favourite songs, in no particular order, and I will count them up and find out which songs the readers of Toad have enjoyed the most this year.

There aren’t any real rules, although the song should have been released in 2011.  And also, just to help me count, I’d appreciate it if you could write in in the form Artist – Song Title please.  Other than that, umm… well, do your worst, I suppose.

And, as per usual, El, Brian and myself will be live on Fresh Air Radio from about half three in the afternoon.  We have special guests this week, but they were invited by El and I have no idea who they are, what they do or why they are there.  I guess I will find out when I get there.

Live on Fresh Air Radio from 3:30pm UK time – listen here.

Now, to get you in the mood for voting for your top five songs, here’s a quick recap of last year’s winners, as well as a link to the thread itself where the voting took place.

1. The National – Bloodbuzz Ohio

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2. eagleowl – No Conjunction

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=3. Meursault – What You Don’t Have

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=3. Broken Records – You Know You’re Not Dead

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=3. Foals – Spanish Sahara

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And the playlist for this week’s show shall appear live below, as we play the songs:

1. Whirling Pig Dervish – Bawjaws
2. The Cure – The Love Cats
3. King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – John Taylor’s Month Away
4. Ringo Deathstarr – Do It Every Time
5. Twin Shadow – Slow
6. Hooray for Earth – True Loves
7. DZ Deathrays – Teeth
8. Joanna Gruesome – Lemonade Grrl
9. Class Actress – Weekend
10. Shirley Ellis – The Clapping Song
11. Blondie – Hanging on the Telephone
12. Rob St. John – Sargasso Sea
13. Foals – Spanish Sahara
14. The National – Bloodbuzz Ohio
15. Diana Ross – Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

 Yep, it’s time to lie back on the shrink’s couch and ‘tell me about your childhood’.  Well.  Sort of.  Actually, my mum just happens to be in town, so I reckon that on Fresh Air Radio this week I might just play all sorts of mum songs, just for shits and giggles.

This came about because of the following comment by my brother on the thread about music formats this week:

“I need to at some point clarify Mum’s music taste for your readers because the poor woman just constantly gets dismissed as a ‘pop fan’.  

The poor woman has a massive collection of jazz, blues; a truly encyclopaedic Opera and symphonic collection and yet, one Lighthouse Family album and the poor woman’s whole musical taste just goes whooosh out the window while Dad is sanctified while you merrily ignore his David Grey albums.  Albums with an emphasis on the plural!”

Now, as you might well know by now, I am a philistine, so mum’s classical music and whatnot means absolutely bollocks-all to me.  However, I think it needs to be pointed out that I most certainly do not ‘dismiss’ my mum as a pop fan.  I fucking love the pop stuff she used to play around the house when we were growing up, and if anything it was my mum’s stuff which first properly got me into music in the first place.

On air from 3:30pm UK time – listen live here.

So for all I do indeed call her a pop fan, which she most certainly is, I do not at all mean that to be a dismissal.  As you will find out on Fresh Air today, when I will be playing all sorts of shite from my mum’s record collection.  And of course, seeing as I left home in 1993, it will be enormously 80s-tastic!

And now, while we’re at it, for the Friday Fives. Honestly, I doubt I can do much better with these questions than I’ll do with the music I’m going to play this afternoon, but Mrs. Toad and I were talking about doing a Saxcast this weekend, so I thought I might ask for some help.

1. Which instrument would you like to see get the saxophone Total Taboo treatment?
2. Best super cheesy 80s sax tune.
3. Acceptable use of sax.
4. Awesome Great Big Eighties Pop Song!
5. Most eighties of all eighties movies.

Song, by Toad’s Friday Fives radio tracklisting for today:
1. David Bowie – China Girl
2. Meat Loaf – Dead Ringer for Love
3. Bow Wow Wow – Aphrodisiac
4. Sparrow & the Workshop – Devil Song (Live)
5. Erasure – Sometimes
6. Bruce Springsteen – Dancing in the Dark
7. Withered Hand – Cornflake (Fresh Air Session)
8. Mike MacFarlane – Waltz (Fresh Air Session)
9. Simple Minds – Don’t You Forget About Me
10. Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill
11. The Magnets – Ever Fallen in Love (Buzzcocks cover)
12. ABC – Poison Arrow
13. Meursault – Lament for a Teenage Millionaire (Fresh Air Session)

 Having been sick all week it is a bloody miracle there’s been anything written on this blog at all, never mind the fountain of insightful commentary we have seen since Monday.  Pulitzers, here we come!

“And the Nobel Prize for Gin and Swearing goes to…”

Anyhow, I am having one of those ‘what the fuck kind of a world do we fucking live in?’ weeks, which I generally dismiss as the indulgence of old people who forget how shit things actually were in their youth.

But this week we have seen the forcible suppression of peaceful protesters in the States, the criminalisation of the equally peaceful Fortnum & Mason’s protesters in the UK, the classification of pizza as ‘a portion of vegetables’ in the guidelines for providing balanced meals in US schools, Sepp Blatter suggesting that racist abuse can be laughed off with a handshake (to howls of outrage from the English press, whose own national football captain was caught on film recently calling someone a ‘fucking black cunt’) and our government subsidising the private sector by sending them slave labour in the form of the jobless, whose benefits will be withheld if they don’t obey.

My taxes may well be spent on some dubious projects, but damned if they should be spent paying the wages of fucking Tesco employees, thank you very fucking much.

So, swearing over with.  As I will be on the radio later I needed to get that out of my system now, lest I sully the ears of Edinburgh’s sensitive student population with naughty words.  I will be joined, of course, by El Parks and Brian Pokora on Fresh Air radio at 3:30pm, and for those of you who are out and about on Saturdays when our pals from Live From the Latin Quarter are broadcasting, then you can always listen to them again on Mixcloud here.

On air from 3:30pm UK time – listen live here.

And in the meantime, here are five silly questions for those of you with an afternoon to waste.  Friday is of course de-lurking amnesty on Song, by Toad, so if you’ve been reading for a while but never quite been arsed to chip in and say hello, why not do it today.  Let’s face it, nothing you say can possibly be as inane as what the rest of us will be coming out with for most of the afternoon.

1. What would you set the jobless to do, if you had them at your disposal?
2. Most spurious ‘portion of fruit or veg’ claim you can imagine.
3. Most hateful athlete.
4. Worst old people moan.
5. Worst old people moan you find yourself letting slip occasionally.

And the playlist for the radio show will appear live below from half three.

1. Yo La Tengo – Tom Courtenay
2. Adam Stafford – Shot Down You Summer Wannabes
3. P.S. I Love You – Facelove
4. The Twilight Sad – That Summer at Home I Had Become the Invisible Boy
5. Jonnie Common – Hand-Hand
6. Phoenix – Fences (Friendly Fires Remix)
7. Weird Era – Garage Honeymoon
8. The Pixies – Where is My Mind (Bass Nectar Remix)
9. Wounded Knee – Hares on the Mountain
10. Sugar Baby – Dock Boggs
11. Clarence Ashley – Cuckoo Bird
12. The Black Keys – The Only One

 Helloooooo… once again Brian and myself will be gracing, if that’s the right word, the airwaves of Fresh Air Student Radio this afternoon.  We will also be introducing a new member of the team, the lovely and lively El Parks, who you might know from The Electric Circus. And if you don’t, you’ll soon know her from the show.

As per usual, the show will be kicking off at half past three this afternoon, and we will guide you lovingly through the last couple of tedious hours of work, before pub o’clock sweeps in like an avenging angel of inebriational joy to rescue us all from another week in our dingy offices.  Or wherever it is you happen to be foostering about this week.

On air from 3:30om: listen live here.
Or iTunes: Radio – College/University – Fresh Air, The Alternative

In the meantime, it’s de-lurking time on Song, by Toad, as it always is on Friday afternoon.  Those of you who fly by and point an laugh, why not take the chance to fritter away your afternoon answering the following five daft questions.  And then listen to us on the radio, because it will be awesome.

1. Expression or word you use all the time which you wish you could stop using.
2. Thing you wish you could have been the one to discover.
3. One great thing about living hundreds of years ago.
4. And one bad thing.
5. Coffee break routine.

The playlist for the radio show will appear live below as we go along:
1. Zed Penguin
2. PET – What You Building
3. Grandpa Was a Lion – In a Dream
4. Lady North – It’s All About Gettin’ That Claude Monet
5. Weird Era – Summer Heights
6. Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers – Get the Fever Out
7. Plastic Animals – Pirate DVDs
8. Mastodon – Black Tongue
9. Magic Arm – Daft Punk is Playing at My House
10. Luna – Sweet Child O’ Mine
11. Jack Steadman – Beatplate (Remix)
12. PAWS – A Romance in Lower Mathematics