Well, what a productive morning I’ve had, being all domesticated.  As Mrs. Toad and I have said before, we really need a wife for all this shit, because we’re both awful at it. Laundry just piles up in the corner of the bedroom until we literally have not one single item of clean clothing left.  Dishes just sit and stare accusingly at us from the sink.  Minor domestic DIY has been ignored for six years now, and counting.  Although I suppose DIY is supposed to be a Man Job, rather than a Wife Job, if we’re respecting our stereotypes here.

Anyhow, Brian, El and myself will be back on Fresh Air Radio this afternoon at 3:30pm with Song, by Toad’s Friday Fives, so please do tune in for some fine tunes, interspersed with tedious bickering. We’ll be adding to the playlist at the bottom of the page live as we go along.

Listen live here: on air from 3:30pm UK time.

And I appreciate the affection, but the cats have been showing an inordinate interest in my working day recently.  I don’t mind when they want to sit in my lap as I’m working through emails, although my legs do go to sleep eventually, but the trampling back and forth across the keyboard does get a little tedious.  I might as them to fill in this week’s Friday Fives themselves. Question 1: orwhgw90382509l;\’a/[g, Question 2: wgm9ic2i2p98p;q/ etc etc etc…

Nah, not really, it’ll be my job as usual.  So de-lurk, fill in your fives and then fritter away the rest of the afternoon talking shite.  Hey, if you’re typing you must be working, right?  They don’t know you’re just talking bollocks on the internet.

1. What is the worst touring band you’ve ever paid to see?
2. Which support band was so bad you couldn’t even enjoy the headliner?
3. How often do you arrive in time and actually pay attention to the support band?
4. Who are the most incongruous/later to become massive support band you’ve seen?
5. Who would you like to see being forced to support whom, as a lesson in humility?

Song, by Toad’s Friday Fives Fresh Air playlist:
1. Rob St. John – Domino (Acoustic Demo)
2. Rob St. John – Domino (Live at Retreat)
3. John Knox Sex Club – In the Ditch
4. SAUNA – Glitter Party
5. Elton Motello – Jet Boy, Jet Girl
6. Beirut – Elephant Gun
7. Beastie Boys – Body Movin’
8. Now Wakes the Sea – Propranolol
9. Adam Stafford – Shot Down You Summer Wannabes
10. Dead Prez – Hip Hop
11. LCD Soundsystem – Someone Great
12. Rob St. John – Domino (Album Version)

PUB!

 Yes, this coming Wednesday, the fifteenth of February!!!  Get it in yer diaries! This is going to be the Edinburgh launch for Randolph’s Leap’s rather excellent new album Randolph’s Leap and the Curse of the Haunted Headphones.

It’s a brilliant album of lo-fi charm, moving effortlessly from humour to pathos, and will be available on Peenko Records on a limited run of 30 tapes.  Well, 29 as far as you’re concerned, because I will be having one.

Also on the bill will be Molly Nilsson, who is pals with friends of ours from Manchester and touring the UK at the moment.  She too is a little eccentric, but completely compelling, and I reckon this could be one of our best house gigs yet.

In other news, Brian, El and myself are back on Fresh Air Radio from half past three this afternoon. It will be your usual pre-pub Friday Five show, and I might even sneak on some naughty previews of Song, by Toad Records’ upcoming releases too, just because I am too excited to keep them to myself, but don’t want them out there in a format people can rip and pass around.

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

Now, as to the Friday Fives themselves, here are your five stupid questions for this evening:

1. Given every venue in Edinburgh seems to be closing, where should we host gigs in future.
2. Where is the oddest place you’ve been to a gig so far?
3. If you had to name a venue, what would you call it?
4. Who doesn’t seem to be touring, but you would really like to see?
5. What are you looking forward to in your immediate gig-going future?

And in terms of the Song, by Toad House Gig, tickets are a mere £5, all of which goes straight to the artists, and can be purchased by clicking on the link below:

Randolph’s Leap – I Can’t Dance to This Music Anymore

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Playlist for the Fresh Air Funtimes…:
01. Molly Nilsson – A Song They Won’t Be Playing on the Radio
02. Randolph’s Leap – Bile
03. Sex Hands – Chandler in a Box
04. Dolfinz – Jennifer Finch
05. Police Teeth – I Made Out With You Before You Were Cool
06. Crocodiles – Stoned to Death
07. Wanda Jackson – Funnel of Love
08. Chris Devotion & the Expectations – Tell the Girls
09. Morris Major – In Amongst My Ideas
10. Warm Ghost – Open the Wormhole in Your Heart
11. LeThug – 3rd Lanark
12. R.M. Hubbert – Sunbeam Melts the Hour
13. Memory Tapes – Bicycle (Little Loud Remix)
14. PAWS – Chair
15. Waiters – Brisk

 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)