Song, by Toad

Tunnel Vision

Whilst I’m still constantly amazed by how many obscure indie bands I’ve never heard of and how many legendary ones I’ve barely ever listened to (Sonic Youth and the Jesus & Mary Chain for example), I still assume that my depth of knowledge must be pretty impressive when it comes to left field independent music.

I suppose it’s almost inevitable that, as a consequence of this depth, my breadth of awareness has suffered an awful lot.  I look back on my Best of the Year lists for 2004 and 2005 and there are bands like the Killers, Bloc Party and Maximo Park on there.  Now, I make absolutely no apology for that whatsoever.  All three of those albums are brilliant pop records, and a little more in the case of Bloc Party, however badly they followed it up.  There’s no shame in liking stuff which happens to be popular, and I still listen to all of that music with enjoyment.

So what’s my point?  Well, look at my Top 10 for 2007 (Part 1 & Part 2) and 2008 (Part 1 & Part 2), and the difference is huge.  Grinderman are big and famous, and the Twilight Sad have done pretty well here and there. Umm.. Elvis Perkins is on XL I guess.  But there’s basically no-one on either list who your average punter in the street would be likely to have even heard of, never mind like.

More noticably, however, there is no pop.  I know that all music is essentially pop, just for slightly different audiences, but there’s nothing that I would describe as populist.  A lot of those albums do work really well as pop albums, of course they do, but Maximo Park seem to have the sole goal of writing irrepressible pop tunes, and they were all over the radio, as were the Killers and Bloc Party.  I don’t even know which bands would be the equivalent of that today.  Who is all over XFM and 6Music and Radio1 all at the same time?  I guess Vampire Weekend count, possibly.  And, erm… I don’t know.  I actually have no idea.  Who fills the Corn Exchange these days?

There are loads of reasons, of course.  Partly bands becoming so broadly popular seems less frequent these days, people’s listening habits are changing and how people access music is changing.  And, as Campfires & Battlefield said on a previous thread on this topic some time ago: who cares?

I am not apologising, of course: back then I listened to lots of music I loved, now I do the exact same thing.  It’s just interesting how far away from the mainstream I find myself wandering.  And if you think I’m exaggerating just imagine what the difference in total album sales between the old lists and the new lists would be – that more than anything drives the point home, as far as I am concerned.

Maximo Park – Going Missing

Bloc Party – This Modern Love

The Killers – Believe Me Natalie

Support the Lifeboats This Saturday

This Saturday Mrs. Toad is in charge of collecting for the lifeboats in Stockbridge, and any help we can get with the collection would be hugely appreciated.  We will repay you all with beer and food throughout the afternoon, so it should be sociable and plenty of fun, but an hour or so of your time would be much appreciated.

The RNLI is a charitable body and hence rely entirely on public donations.  This is a fucking scandalous tax dodge by the government, if you ask me, but that doesn’t change the fact that the support of the public is absolutely crucial to what they do.  A lot of the readers of this site were up in Anstruther recently, which has a lifeboat station of its own, and was once home to a considerable fishing fleet.  Pittenweem appears to be more of a working harbour than Anstruther these days, but in general those communities who hosted us have given their fair share and it might be nice if we respected their commitment by showing a little willing of our own, as a way of repaying their hospitality.

The first collections will go out at about ten in the morning, no-one need do more than an hour, and whilst we are starting with tea and cakes we will finish up with scran and bevvies in the evening, and quite possibly some antisocially loud music at night time.  So if you can possibly help and fancy coming round, please get in touch.  Giving a few quid would also be a big help, but actually participating and helping out is much harder to do where charity is concerned, so we’d really appreciate it if you could come round and lend a hand.

The Divine Comedy – A Seafood Song

And, erm, I hope it’s not too tasteless, but this is the obvious song to choose:
British Sea Power – Fear of Drowning

The Way to a Man’s Heart…

Apparently, according to my little book of annoyingly folksy cliches, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.  It’s only half-right, I think.  Surely the way to anyone’s heart is through their stomach – or at least, it should be.

Mrs. Toad and I are both totally disasters, in terms of domesticity, but we both love to cook.  In fact, I remember one of the best things my Mum ever did for me and my little brother as kids, and that was make damn sure we knew how to cook before we left the house.  If you want to pull – either sex – cook for them.  It’ll tell you a lot.  As my Mum (she’s a smutty old bag, really she is) always said: cooking and eating are very important because they involve all the senses, and the only other thing which really does that is sex, so if someone can’t enjoy one then what are the odds that they’re going to be any good at the other?

It’s such a great pulling tool, it really is, if I could recommend any young man or woman learn any one skill (apart from becoming a black belt in oral sex of course) then it would be excellent culinary skills.  Particularly if you can make it seem effortless and do not turn into the gastronomic version of a wine snob.  In fact, best just not use the word gastronomy at all, really, it’s probably a step too far for any right-thinking person.

In a less vulgar sense, of course, it’s a good test of personality.  Anyone who picks their way through things and won’t eat this and won’t eat that is surely not worth bothering with.  I am not talking about shunning people with potentially fatal food allergies (but real ones, not imagined ones, please) but people who are picky eaters are to be avoided.  Why, let’s face it, would you fucking bother.

As for anyone who ruins meals by obsessively watches their weight, well, we don’t even need to discuss that, do we.  Flush them down the toilet with the semi-digested remains of their last meal.  Obsessive gym bunnies (male and female), manorexics (what?) or anyone so obsessed with their appearance that they don’t know how to just fucking relax and indulge a bit… well, fuck ‘em, frankly.  Or, more literally, don’t.

And as for people who have their steaks or their tuna cooked any more than medium rare (and even that’s going a bit far)…

The Divine Comedy – Seafood Song

James Yorkston – Midnight Feast

Lady Rock

On the subject of women in indie, I remember that I never did get into much female fronted music as a kid.  It was all R.E.M., Billy Bragg, The Pogues, Bob Dylan and stuff like that.  Not much that was current and, for no obvious reason, not much stuff made by women, particularly with lead female vocals.  Maybe if I’d been more into Motown and soul that might have been different, but I never really crossed paths with Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez or Marianne Faithfull either, who were all working in the same basic territory which I was exploring at the time.  Sandy Denny was one of the most conspicuous exceptions, but I can’t think of many others off the top of my head.

This didn’t really change until I went to university.  All that was really different there was that I became considerably more aware of popular music which was popular away from the dominance of the likes of MTV and so on.  So I started getting into bands like Saint Etienne and their ilk and I was sort of interested in the Cranberries without ever really clicking with them.  The real sea change was of course the explosion of sassy, lady-led groups which came with Britpop.  It became such an obvious phenomenon that I seem to recall Louise Wener of Sleeper wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with ‘Just Another Female-Fronted Band’ at some point, although my memory is far from definite on the subject.

Anyhow, I got really into Sleeper (although perhaps only really from their second album onwards, rather than their first), I loved the first two Echobelly albums and I really liked Belly as well.  Elastica were around at the same time, but I never quite got into them, and the Cocteau Twins were really good too, but not quite Britpop I guess.  If you follow those links then you’ll be able to pick up almost any of these albums for a pittance on Amazon Marketplace, and there’s some amazing stuff there.

Maybe it’s because it was the first popular movement I engaged with at the time, but I still have a real affection for Britpop, despite its foisting the likes of Menswear on us.  It was brash and confident, and maybe that was the attitude which I responded to the most in this plethora of female-led rock bands.  I know that same attitude was largely the undoing of the movement as a whole in the end, as it got all tangled up in itself.  And with the decline of Britpop most of these groups disappeared from the scene to a large extent.

It was fun though – lots of fun.  It was the first time I’d really engaged with the thrill of anticipating new music, as opposed to exploring what was already out there.  It sounds dated as hell listening back to it now, and maybe that’s why those albums are all so cheap, but there are too many memories for that to matter much.

Sleeper – Lie Detector

Echobelly – King of the Kerb

Belly – Untitled and Unsung

Cocteau Twins – Tishbite

Toadcast #59 – The Sexcast

This has been coming for a while , frankly.  I nearly deleted this podcast on Saturday morning before it was even published, but I allowed myself to give in to the false deadline I set myself to publish these once every Saturday.

Why have I deleted it?  Well in many ways that should be obvious, I suppose.  I was going to leave all the comments up, because I quite like the fact that a lot of people called me out on what shit this podcast was – that’s what friends are for, and it might well have been easier to just turn your backs and wander off, so I appreciate you taking the time.  Ultimately, though, I thought we might be better off just flushing the whole sorry episode and moving on.  I hope you don’t think I am doing this as a way of hiding from your criticisms though.

What finally convinced me to get rid of the bloody thing was the last comment, from Mr. Bear:

“this is an ugly mess of a post and although you are known to push the boat out when it comes to good taste, this is so extreme that it doesn’t even sound like you.”

I have felt just a little bit sick about this podcast since the second I listened back to it on Saturday, and that comment pretty much sums up my feelings about the whole business.  I appreciate the people who stood up for me in the comments, but I am not sure that when publishing anything it is really acceptable to hide behind the ‘you know he doesn’t really mean it’ defence.  more »

It’s All Going to Be a Bit Late Today

I’ve got meetings in Inverness with Proper Job all day today, so everything is going to be a little late, including the Monday listings.  Hope there’s nothing unmissable on this evening, but nothing to be done about it I’m afraid.

The Avett Brothers – Hard Worker

2001 Was Quite a Good Year Actually

2001 was a very odd year for me on a personal level.  I spent most of it in a surprisingly long term relationship with a girl with whom I was not in the least bit compatible, and I was made redundant in November in the wake of the World Trade Centre attack and the dotcom crash.  Jolly times.

It wasn’t bad though, funnily enough.  I hated work, sure, but it was my first professional job and I was living in Cambridge which, although it’s not somewhere I’d want to settle down, was extremely pleasant.  Actually, to be fair to the place, it’s not all that unlike Edinburgh in many ways – very genteel.

I also heard the album which led to me rediscovering folk music.  I got into popular music largely via the Pogues, and after moving to the UK in 1993 at age seventeen I got really into both Britpop and a lot of increasingly folky stuff.  That sort of petered out as I drifted more into indie over the years, and by about 1995/6 I was pretty much an out and out indie kid.  When I moved to Cambridge it was on the back of Yo La Tengo’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, Moby’s Play and Doves’ brilliant debut. more »

Go On DC, Piss Off

Well, well, well, here’s a bit of news for you all.  My – well, really, our – good friend DC will shortly be leaving us for some very swanky new shores indeed.  The Waiting Room has been commissioned by WOXY, one of the few remaining really top quality independent* radio stations.

For those of you who don’t know the details, DC had an almighty falling out with his old host, Error FM, back towards the tail end of last year and quit the station in the mother of all snits.  He started looking around for a new station, and I told him that he was welcome to put his show out on Toad until he found something a little more suitable, which is why he has been gracing our Wednesdays (usually) with his blethering for the last couple of months.  The WOXY deal has been a long time in the pipeline, and there have been a lot of sealed lips for the last little while, but it has now been formally announced at last.

It can’t be overstated how impressive a result this is.  WOXY really is a very cool station indeed.  And it also can’t be forgotted how important people like DC have been to this site over the last couple of years.  I love having readers and so on, but the people who make such active and (largely) intelligent contributions in the comments mean that Song, by Toad is able to be way better than I alone could ever make it.  So go to that WOXY thread and leave gushing comments to make him look good.  They’ll be as sick of him as we are before too long, no doubt, so it might as well at least start out as positively as possible.

Well done, mate.  You and the Lady of the House really deserve this, and I am bloody chuffed for both of you.  Best of luck to you two and to the show itself.

Twentymen – The Waiting Room

The Magnetic Fields – Famous

*Although they’ve just ‘joined Future Sounds‘, about whom I know absolutely nothing.  Is this a good thing?  Enlighten me, please.

Sorry, I Can’t Help Myself

Turn the volume up really fucking loud, and enjoy. This video makes me want to weep with happiness.

Space – The Final Front-Bottom

This is a little teaser for tomorrow’s podcast, because the playlist became so long that all sorts of good things ended up being cut from it, including three splendid suggestions by Dylan from Blueback Hotrod.

As most of you probably know already, for some inexplicable reason back at the height of the popularity of the original Star Trek series a couple of the main characters dipped their toes in the muddy shallows of the Celebrity Music Vanity Project.  With some bafflingly bizarre results:

Most of you probably know that video already, not that that makes it any less funny.  Less well known is that Leonard Nimoy also dabbled in the world of music, and it was no less weird:

This kind of crazy stuff just didn’t seem as incredibly fucking ludicrous back then, or at least so it seems, looking back.  Remember when the cast of Star Wars appeared on the Muppet Show?  Genius!  Can you imagine the beast from Alien doing a song and dance number with a bunch of felt puppets?  No, me neither.

Anyway, enough of  such visual nonsense.  Tomorrow’s podcast is going to be all space related and these rather splendid songs didn’t quite make the cut, so seeing as they are so odd and so brilliant at the same time I thought they had to make an appearance somewhere, and seeing as it’s Friday and the weekend is only hours away, some silliness won’t go amiss.

Leonard Nimoy – Highly Illogical

William Shatner – Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds

William Shatner – Real (From this – buy it, it’s actually really, honestly a good album!)

Star Wars Theme

Star Trek Theme

Jetsons Theme