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

 BUT DON’T WORRY!  After last week there will be no surprise eighties bonanza, just good old whinging indie pish, as you’ve probably come to expect these days.

After the radio show there will be a bite to eat, and then a slow slide into oblivion as I go from Collar Up, Sparrow & the Workshop and Meursault at Cabaret Voltaire to the Gerry Loves Records Christmas Party at the Banshee Labyrinth.  It might get messy.

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

Also, yesterday I dropped off some Toad merch at a new Christmas popup shop on St Leonard’s Street, in the Studio 203 Gallery.  If you’re heading out of town past the Pleasance, it’s a couple of hundred metres further out, opposite the Lismore Rugby Club, and there’s a map here, if that doesn’t ring any bells.

Normally an arts studio, I believe, the gallery is now full of all sorts of really nice handmade bits and pieces, as well as releases from some of Scotland’s best independent labels, in the music room through the back.  Well worth a visit, I reckon.

Anyhow, in the meantime, delurk, come out of hiding, bother your arses and complete this Friday’s five stupid questions:

1. Have you put any thought into your top albums/songs/etc lists for 2011 yet?
2. At what date is Christmas officially allowed to start being mentioned, in your view?
3. Next film you’re likely to see.
4. Favourite thing to do with snow.
5. Artistic skill you would learn if you had the time/inclination/talent.

And again, as per usual, the playlist for the radio show will appear below once we go live at around half three this afternoon.

1. The Fall – Two Librans
2. Liars – Scissor
3. Deerhunter – Nothing Ever Happened
4. Washed Out – Eyes Be Closed
5. Collar Up – The Boatman
6. Spook School – Are You Who You Think You Are?
7. Jetskis – Moonlight Kawasaki Ride
8. Quiet Americans – Summer House
9. Dead Rabbits – Make Me Believe
10. Robin Grey – The Hackney Gentrification Song
11. Video Thrills – Sports Park USA
12. Trapped in Kansas – Happiness is an Allegory, Sadness a Story

 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

 As the more cunning of you might have noticed last week, Song, by Toad’s Friday Fives is now a radio show on Fresh Air, as well as just a means for you to waste your time on the internet on a Friday afternoon.

This means that from 3:30pm Brian Pokora and myself will be live on the radio, with some sort of attempt made to avoid the dreary old pish I would usually pick, out of respect for the fact that this is officially pre-pub radio and you probably want cheering up rather than bringing down.

Live on air from 3:30pm – listen here.

Also, there are a couple of live gigs to remind you about this weekend, including some late news which will hopefully be rather interesting for you.

Firstly, we have The Last Battle, Dad Rocks and Shoes & Socks Off at Henry’s tomorrow night.  It is only a fiver in, and those who come along will also be able to get into the second show of the night, which is as follows:

Secondly, Lach is opening for Viv Albertine (of The Slits) at Henry’s after our gig there on Saturday, and anyone who is there for the Ides of Toad night will get in for £4.

Thirdly, on Sunday in Anstruther we’ll be hosting a Song, by Toad all-dayer called Flamin’ Hott Toadzzz! at the Hew Scott Hall.  The lineup will be Avital Raz, Dan Mutch, Yusuf Azak, Jesus H. Foxx, Jonnie Common and Meursault, and tickets will be available on the door.

And on Monday I will sleep.

Today’s pointless questions for the internets.  Remember, fives first, pish-talking later.

1. Most shameful album you’ve seen your parents buy.
2. Coolest album you’ve seen your parents buy.
3. Most embarrassing gig you’ve been to.
4. Favourite type of weather.
5. If you had a parrot, what would teach it to say?

Playlist for Song, by Toad’s Friday Fives will appear below as we play stuff:
1. The Piranhas – Getting Beaten Up
2. Dad Rocks! - Aroused By Hair
3. Youth Lagoon – Posters
4. Tom Waits – Goin’ Out West
5. Easter – Somethin’ American
6. Dolfinz – Hot Pants
7. The Twilight Sad – Kill it in the Morning
8. Dead Kennedys – Holiday in Cambodia
9. John Cooper Clarke – Gimmix
10. Yuck – Holing Out
11. Lil Daggers – Dada Brown
12. Horsecollar – Christopher
13. Other Lives – For 12
14. Blur – To the End (with Francoise Hardy)

 There will be a bit of a change to the format of the Friday Fives for the next few weeks, as I combine it with my radio show on Fresh Air, which is the student radio station here in Edinburgh.

I will be joined by Brian Pokora, who plays guitar for The Last Battle, Loch Awe and Trapped Mice (and probably three or four others), and was selected for this role by virtue of having been stood next to me in the pub when I decided that Friday afternoons would be the best time for the show.

To reduce the middle-class white boy/tedious blokey pub banter factor just a little we are looking for someone else to join the team.  Specifically, someone who is not a nice, polite middle-class white boy. You’d need to be available from 3-5pm on Fridays, and have a rough, but please not exact, agreement with the kind of music we are likely to play.  Get in touch if you’re interested.

Live from 3:30pm – listen here.

As for the rest of the Friday Fives, well they will hopefully proceed very much as per usual I would think.  Five stupid questions, an afternoon to waste by answering them and then talking pish with everyone afterwards, and only one rule: fives first, pish-talking after.

So, for starters, this week’s Friday Five:
1. Which muppet best represents you (Fraggles and Sesame Street ones count too – Yoda does not).
2. What one thing best represents the really early days of the internet to you?
3. Technology you could happily do without.
4. Do you cross the road at the lights or absolutely wherever the fuck it occurs to you?
5. Say you were in a coffee shop trying to get some work done.  Say a sprawling infestations of yummy mummies and copious living evidence of their inability to keep their legs clamped shut came spilling into the place and proceeded to turn the whole fucking cafe into a writhing, squealing, cavorting cacophony of horror.  How many of the little fuckers do you think you could cheerfully batter to death with a fucking cricket bat before it stopped being fun?
Sneaky bonus research question: did Song, by Toad or Fresh Air bring you to these parts?

The playlist will appear live below from 3:30pm:

1. Bon Iver – Bloodbank
2. Rob St. John – Sargasso Sea
3. Tom Lehrer – Bright College Days
4. Randolph’s Leap – Cassie O’Tone (Fresh Air Session)
5. Cub Scouts – Evie
6. eagleowl – Sleep the Winter
7. Bob Seger System – 2+2=?
8. PAWS – Winners Don’t Bleed (Toad Session)
9. The Ukrainians – Polityka
10. The Moth & the Mirror – Fire
11. Evan Dando – $1000 Wedding (Gram Parsons Cover)
12. Yoofs – Sidewalk
13. We Were Promised Jetpacks – Medicine

So, I may be jetlagged to all fuck, but why not get on Fresh Air Radio and pass my incoherence onto you.  Hell, what could possibly be more entertaining than listening to me almost fall asleep whilst introducing songs?

Actually, it will probably work in everyone’s favour actually, as rather than the usual bollocks talking, I will probably end up playing more songs and chattering far less in between, which will presumably be much more entertaining for those of you actually listening.

I will also be joined by Olaf Furniss of Born to be Wide, who will be introducing us to lineup for Wide Days, which takes place on the 7th April 2011 at Teviot House.

Live from 8pm UK time: click here to listen.

As per usual, feel free to chip in in the comments below, and I will be adding the playlist as we go along.

1. Pavement – Spit on a Stranger
2. Preston School of Industry – Straits of Magellan
3. Sparkelhorse – Happy Pig (Live)
4. The National – Think You Can Wait (with Sharon Van Etten)
5. Lady Lazarus – Fighting Words and Fists
6. New Animal – All I Want is Gone
7. My Teenage Stride – The Genie of New Jersey
8. Dolfish – Digitised Love Letters
9. Dolfish – I’m Proud of You Joanna
10. The Zincs – Rich Libertines
11.

I am Ruthless for this week’s show on Fresh Air Radio, so it will just be me prattling on by myself instead.  I have a John Darnielle tribute to the assault on organised labour in Wisconsion, I have the original version of that song, and I have some Withered Hand, in honour of his SXSW visa troubles.

Other than that, I am pretty worn out from a night of epic drinking in Stockton (which is not even Middlesbrough) last night after the excellent seminar thingy hosted by The Generator at which I (inevitably) drank and talked far too much.  There is a certain inevitability to these things, isn’t there.

Live from 8pm UK time – click here to listen.

As per usual the playlist will appear below as I play things, and feel free to swing by the comments and have your say.

1. Lil Daggers – Give Me the Pill
2. King Post Kitsch – Don’t You Touch My Fucking Honeytone
3. Meursault – And Butter Would Not Melt (from Jonnie Common’s Deskjob)
4. Withered Hand – No Cigarettes
5. Tom Waits – Anywhere I Lay My Head
6. John Darnielle – There is Power in a Union
7. The Louche FC – Only in a Dream
8. Irk the River – Mind That Child
9. The Son(s) – Radar
10. REM – It Happened Today
11. Billy Bragg – There is Power in a Union
12. Elbow – Jesus is a Rochdale Girl
13. David Thomas Broughton – Ain’t Got no Sole
14. Clem Snide – Pale Blue Eyes
15. Warm Ghost – Open the Wormhole in Your Heart
16. Dam Mantle – Grey
17. Dolfish – Your Love is Bummin’ Me Out
18. The Honey Pies – Hair of the Dog