Song, by Toad

Toadcast #76 – The Presscast

I recently did an interview with Billy from The Scotsman’s Under the Radar blog (amongst other venerable organs) which took the form of an interesting chat about the current tension between  bloggers and professional journalists.  He has played off my opinions against those of his friend Mike Diver, who is currently the online editor for (the excellent) Clash magazine.  The whole thing can be found here, along with plenty of comments from Ally and Milo, professional writers from around these parts, and myself and Tart, on the side of the bloggers.  The comments on that thread make for some rather interesting reading in themselves, I have to say.

It’s an interesting debate, frankly, and one which, as a blogger with aspirations, as opposed to someone who is happy to simply chat for the sake of it, I have applied a fair deal of thought to.  Ultimately, though, I think it is something of a false dichotomy: some of the best reporters keep blogs as ways of expressing themselves outwith the constraints of the editorial policy of whatever rag pays their wages and a lot of the best bloggers end up parlaying their writing skills into professional careers in journalism.  And of either side there is a vast amount of detritus, professional and amateur.

So, yes, the Toad once again holds forth passionately on subjects he knows far too little about and may in general be making a fool of himself once more.  The, erm, songs are good though.

Toadcast #76 – The Presscast

01. Billy Bragg – Which Side Are You On? (03.17)
02. The Decemberists – Cautionary Song (Live) (11.03)
03. Jens Lekman – No Time For Breaking Up (14.09)
04. The Meteors – Out of Time (22.21)
05. Franz Ferdinand – Darts of Pleasure (32.47)
06. The Dead 60s – Horizontal (35.17)
07. Sleepy Horses – Lubbock Love Song (42.27)
08. Eels – I Write the B-sides (52.05)
09. The Replacements – Unsatisfied (62.30)
10. David Cross – My Kids are Amish (68.09)

Toadcast #75 – The Bone Idlecast

Well, we are nearing the end of our time in Puglia.  We’re spending a couple of days in or near Napoli before we fly back on Sunday, presumably troughing like total pigs, rather than paying all that much attention to culture and all that bobbins.

Mrs. Toad is doing Sudoku and complaining about the ‘wrong sort of paper’.  I kid you not, it’s just like British fucking Rail and their ‘wrong type of snow’, but she insists it’s just for that reason that she can’t solve them, not because they’re too hard.  Personally I find myself wondering if ‘evil’ is used to describe the comments one’s spouse will inevitably make when you fail to complete it, rather than the actual difficulty of the Sudoku puzzle itself.

So yes, we have done the lazing about and there are now a few days of actually doing shit in between us and a return to the damp splendour of the British Isles.  I suppose this is what you’re supposed to do on holiday – pay attention to the country you’re in and return, eventually – but honestly, another week of doing bollocks-all wouldn’t hurt anyone would it?

Toadcast #75 – The Bone Idlecast

01. Snow Patrol – An Olive Grove Facing the Sea (04.14)
02. Beck – The Golden Age (12.33)
03. Belle & Sebastian – Simple Things (19.32)
04. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Tom Justice, the Choirboy Robber (21.00)
05. Johnny Cash – Folsom Prison Blues (29.10)
06. Navigator – Work is Done (NOT Change, as we announced, sorry!) (34.44)
07. Lord Cut Glass – Holy Fuck! (40.19)
08. Son Volt – Sultana (46.46)
09. Smog – Drinking at the Dam (56.30)
10. Alela Diane – Age Old Blue (60.17)

Toadcast #74 – The Poolcast

Mrs. Toad and I might be gallivanting about the Italian countryside, but we are still thinking of you, our loyal Toadlings. We may be relaxing by the pool, but we understand that life might not be quite so easy for those of you at home. Actually, fuck it, life is never this easy for us either. This is like some bizarre anomaly for us – time, peace, reading books… it’s all so fucking restful I’ve almost forgotten to swear at the locals.

The place we’re staying is just plain ridiculous. We are living in what amounts to the tiniest of little comedy garden sheds imaginable, but the outside space is some great big gigantic plaza. It’s just ridiculous.

Fortunately, there is something to lower the tone. Nature is basically a great big urinal, as we all know, and I have been doing my best to maintain a time-honoured male principle of ‘no place being too sacred or picturesque for having a sly piss’. So when the bladder beckons, so does the wall, and there I go to water the olive groves of Puglia. It feels like a public service, really it does.

Thanks again to Euan and the lads for keeping things going while we’re away. The connection here is so damn slow I really haven’t been able to read it all, but Mrs. Toad periodically checks up on things on her Blackberry (the woman’s insane) and lets me know how things are going. This news I generally treat with an indifferent grunt, before returning to the pondering of precisely which sort of cheese I most fancy for lunch, but I appreciate her efforts.

Toadcast #74 – The Poolcast

01. The Shaky Hands – Summer’s Life (03.26)
02. Lemonjelly – Spacewalk (12.45)
03. Grandaddy – Ghost of 1672 (19.44)
04. Billie Holiday – Good Morning Heartache (24.36)
05. Animal Magic Tricks (with Neil from Meursault & Pete from The Leg) (34.42)
06. Edith Piaf – C’etait Une Histoire D’amour (38.11)
07. The Flaming Lips – Can’t Get You Out of My Head (48.12)
08. Wilco – Jolly Banker (52.17)
09. The Laurel Collective – No Pirates Left (63.04)
10. Yoshimi! – Philosophy For Fangirls (69.12)

Toadcast #73 – The Holiday Podcast

This is not so much the holiday podcast as the pre-holiday podcast because, for all we are away now, I recorded this on Thursday night before going away, as we prepared ourselves for the unspeakable burden of doing absolutely fuck all for two weeks.

I am taking a pile of books and a pile of new music and we are going to do pretty much nothing at all.  My parents used to do really adventurous travelling when we were young, but honestly I don’t have the energy.  I am so incredibly fucking exhausted from constant Toadery that actually, despite having a holiday inferiority complex, pretty much all I can cope with at the moment is a couple of weeks of fuck all.

Even last year when we went to Portland for a couple of weeks, we took all the technology and recorded interviews and all sorts at Pickathon.  It was relaxing and nice, but I still got a hell of a lot of work done.  This time I will take along some tunes which I have been meaning to catch up with, perhaps record a podcast or two, and basically spend the rest of the time lying in the sun by the pool.  My folks might not be all that impressed, but the recharging of the batteries is the sole purpose of this trip and I think we might manage just that.

Toadcast #73 – The Holiday Podcast

01. MJ Hibbett & the Validators – Being Happy Doesn’t Make You Stupid (04.17)
02. Midnight Oil – Bushfire (10.06)
03. Headless Heroes – Hey, Who Really Cares? (Jon Hopkins Remix) (16.56)
04. Alela Diane – Pieces of String (21.05)
05. Inspector Tapehead – A Fillet of Bozo (25.42)
06. Maxwell Panther – Shiver on a Twist of Fate (33.19)
07. Jack Richold – Lady of the Calico (37.00)
08. Grant-Lee Phillips – Calamity Jane (41.16)
09. Billy Bragg – Bread & Circuses (50.20)
10. The Divine Comedy – Les Jours Tristes (57.45)

Toadcast #72 – The Slowcast

This is called the Slowcast because there are so many songs and, more commonly, whole albums out there which I took ages and ages to get into, and for no really obvious reason.

There are several reasons, I guess: how familiar a sound is, your emotional state at the time, what your mates are listening to, how popular something is and stuff like that.  I know I’ve admitted plenty of times in the past that I have a habit of refusing to like things if they get too popular.  That sounds ludicrous, but it’s not exactly a conscious decision, more an instinctive recoiling.  I never have liked much popular stuff, although I do certainly go through phases.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons that, with the label, I am not looking to sign or work with the modern equivalent of a Top 40 band – I have never much liked Top 40 music.

Anyway, that’s not really the point of the podcast.  This is dedicated to those albums which for some reason you have to hear about a million times before you eventually, out of nowhere, realise that you love them.

Toadcast #72 – The Slowcast

01. Billy Bragg – Honey I’m a Big Boy Now (04.36)
02. Tom Waits – Goin’ Out West (08.37)
03. Radiohead – My Iron Lung (14.14)
04. The Mutton Birds – Envy of Angels (23.42)
05. Mancino – Definition of an Accident (32.26)
06. The Mabuses – I’m the Greatest (36.09)
07. Interpol – Obstacle #1 (43.31)
08. My Latest Novel – Wolves (49.30)
09. The Wedding Present – 2, 3, Go! (55.29)
10. Yo La Tengo – Big Day Coming (59.56)

Toadcast #71 – The Tough Lovecast

Oh dear god almighty I have a hangover.  Fucking bastard music people.  Last night there was gigging and drinking and wandering the streets of a most balmy and pleasant Edinburgh with an assortment of miscreants and other ne’er-do-wells.  We saw Honeytrap and Meursault play at Sneaky Pete’s – I was recording this podcast, hence late for X-Lion Tamer, sorry to both Ed and Tony – and it was fucking amazing.

And after that there was drinking.  Fuck me there was lots of drinking.  And then I came home and went into the local all night shop and purchased a couple of steaks for late-night snacking purposes, and was harassed by a bunch of young lads when I came out.  Not harassed in a bad way, but I think I was asked to buy them some fags or something like that.  Anyhow, the conversation… erm, well I’m not really sure how the conversation went, because I was fucking hammered, but at some point the van came up, which was parked just along the road.  So, ah, for some slightly bizarre reason I ended up with five high school lads and me sat in the van with the stereo up fucking loud – so loud apparently that you could hear it all the way down the street.  Or, at least, so Mrs. Toad tells me.  Because at some point she came home from wherever it was she was out drinking and hopped in as well.

So, after a little van-based rocking out, they came back into the house for a bit and Mrs. Toad played them Motorhead and The Sex Pistols and The Wedding Present so fucking loud the windows shook.  Funnily enough, these nice, polite lads kept insisting throughout that we should just let them know when we were bored and we would like them to go.  Such nice, polite boys!  I think one of them even did the dishes.  I didn’t want to have to try and explain what a couple of total fucking bozos they were dealing with, but erm, yeah, that was our Friday night.  Weird, huh?  I think we went to bed at about five, eventually.  And now to record a couple of Toad Sessions, at least one with a very, very hung over band.

Toadcast #71 – The Tough Lovecast

01. Belle & Sebastian – Take Your Carriage Clock & Shove It (03.46)
02. Adam Balbo – Debating a Time Metaphor (07.16)
03. The Sequins – The Usual Delights (14.05)
04. Situationists – A Cold Front (16.31)
05. Blur – Out of Time (23.02)
06. New Ruins – Symptoms (32.37)
07. The Laurel Collective – Hindenburg Mile High Club (41.26)
08. The Lovely Eggs – Tyrannosaurus Rex for Christmas (45.07)
09. The Empty Set – A Challenge to Copernicus (49.34)
10. Honeytrap – Mussolini’s Son (55.29)

Toadcast #70 – The Snobcast

This week I am piling on the music snobbery.  Oh, okay, I’m not really – if anything I’m undermining it with some truly guilty pleasures.  There’s not much modern fluffy pop music which I happen to enjoy despite my snobbery because… well, because I just don’t think there’s anything I can think of which fits that bill at the moment.

I know nostalgic guilty pleasures and truly embracing low-brow music purely for the enjoyment of it aren’t quite the same thing but I think I’ve budged about as far as I am going to go on this one.  Girls Aloud are unlikely to ever make an appearance on this podcast, but there’s a spot of memory-tickling being indulged in with picks from Kylie and Guns ‘n’ Roses.  You can tell Mrs. Toad has been involved in choosing a playlist when it contains Guns and fucking Roses, but she was sacked from co-presenting duties due to excessive drunkenness, so her imprint on this particular episode is in selections only, and not in the presence of her dulcet tones on the interwaves.

Toadcast #70 – The Snobcast

01. Kid Canaveral – Couldn’t Dance (03.52)
02. Popup – Lucy, What Are You Trying to Say (07.04)
03. Art Fag – Nakhla Dog (15.48)
04. Kylie Minogue – Confide In Me (23.27)
05. Motorhead – Ace of Spades (28.50)
06. The Seventeenth Century – Mid October (36.16)
07. Alan Pownall – The Others (43.56)
08. Haggard the Listener Group – Blackette (47.29)
09. Soft Cell – Tainted Love (51.22)
10. Guns ‘n’ Roses – Sweet Child o’ Mine (58.12)

Toadcast #69 – The Fifecast

My Homegame review is pretty brief, but it is here, and there is a wee video thingy as well for you to enjoy.  This is of course the accompanying podcast, with songs either from the bands I saw there, or from EPs and bits and pieces I acquired at the merch table up in Fife.

I should really have included some interviews and shit in this podcast, shouldn’t I, but then I wasn’t actually as well prepared or as organised as I should have been, really.  Inasmuch as I kind of think I would prefer my video to have turned out a bit more like Milo’s, I would also have preferred my podcast to turn out a little more like DC’s Homegame show over at the Waiting Room.  I’m not saying that I dislike the stuff that I’ve done this year, just that to my eyes it lacks a little bit of fizz and personality, unfortunately.  Oh well, it’s all a learning process, and by the time Wickerman comes around I reckon I should be able to produce something a lot better.

Toadcast #69 – The Fifecast

01. The Phantom Band – Island (03.00)
02. The Hand – Happa Yori (15.02)
03. King Creosote – Nothing Rings True (19.52)
04. James Yorkston & Adrian Crowley – Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Your Grieviance (25.42)
05. Jake Flowers – One For the Ditch (30.07)
06. Love.Stop.Repeat – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (33.25)
07. Viking Moses – Clown School (39.03)
08. Inspector Tapehead – A Fillet of Banjo (46.14)
09. Animal Magic Tricks – Smallish Hooves (51.26)
10. Jonnie Common – Taken Out (57.16)

Toadcast #68 – The Leprecast

Me and the missus are rambling away together on this one.  It’s largely new music, bookended by a couple of more well-known things.  We Invent a new term – a weird combination of food and sex called culiniungus.  We offend the Irish and the Scots.  In fact, we are as offensively and predictably us as you could imagine.

We were out and totally smashed at the Broken Records gig at the Bowery yesterday, followed by some hot Sneaky Pete’s action.  There are some disastrously embarrassing pictures here, if you want to point and laugh.  The gig was amazing.  I knew a group like Broken Records would be amazing in a small space like that, and so it proved.

I had to do some very pointed Standing Up though, which was fucking annoying.  What the fuck is it with people, sitting down at fucking gigs?  If the room’s empty that’s one thing, but the room was full, people were on tiptoes up the back, and this shower of cunts insisted on sitting on their fucking arses down the front, protecting a meter and a half of empty floor space between them and the band.  So, as Mr. Discreetandtactful, I went and stood in front of them.  Fuckwits.  The band did get everyone on their feet after a song or two, which was a fucking relief, but honestly… it’s rock ‘n’ roll bitches, get up off your fucking hippy folk arseholes and stop acting like the Chipping Sodbury Chapter of the National Union of Knitting Champions.  It’s not, to paraphrase a friend of mine, the fucking Teddy Bears’ Picnic.

This delightful little anecdote does have a darker side, however.  Some lass tugged on my sleeve to ask me to sit down during the first song, and I attempted to politely but firmly say no thank you.  Unfortunately I may have succeeded more at the latter than the former, and ended up just being rude to the woman.  Who was very pregnant.  Well done me.  Picking fights with pregnant women isn’t really all that clever, is it.  So, er, sorry pregnant lady, I didn’t mean to be quite so terse, nor did I mean to imply that you should just stop moaning about your baby and stand up.  But then, you can’t really expect to sit two metres back from the stage and object to anyone standing in front of you either, because that’s just silly.

Oh, and we met Peej, a reader from New York, who was in town for the week and said hello.  He was a really nice chap, so why he reads this fucking site is a mystery, to be honest, but it was brilliant of him to say hello, and then to put up with our drunken stumbling later on as well.   Sometimes I love teh internetz.  Not times like this of course, but sometimes.

Toadcast #68 – The Leprecast

1. Joy Zipper – Dosed & Became Invisible (01.40)
2. Love Like Fire – William (08.37)
3. Rock Plaza Central – O Lord, How Many are My Foes (13.17)
4. Animal Magic Tricks & Neil Pennycook (17.24)
5. Ambulances – Last Old Fiver (24.45)
6. King Creosote – Camels Swapped for Wives (27.11)
7. Jesus H. Foxx – I’m Half the Man You Were (33.51)
8. God Help the Girl – Act of the Apostle (44.15)
9. The Limes – Dead Furniture (46.47)
10. The Pogues – Night Train to Lorca (58.06)

Toadcast #67 – The Wuzzlecast

This podcast is sort of like the Clustercast should have been.  I haven’t actually listened to it yet, so I don’t know if it’s any good, but it sort of felt better, somehow.  It isn’t anything like that incoherent and garbled anyway, which is a relief.

We spent the day collecting for the lifeboats, along with some excellent help from our pals Dylan from Blueback Hotrod, Neil from Meursault, Ed from 17 Seconds, Dave, Michael and the Stormettes from The Stormy Seas and Morgan from, erm, Glasgow.  I have to point out how important their help was as well.  It’s easy to talk a good game and then to pussy out at the last minute, but despite the fact that both Neil and Ed had other things on today, everyone made the time to come down and help out, which is bloody good of them.  We collected a fair chunk of cash – Mrs. Toad’s pretty blonde colleague collected the most, rather predictably.  Maybe we need fewer beardy alt-folkies and more hot babes next year.

Enjoy the podcast, then; we’ve got a lot of nautically-themed songs this week and could have had even more.  There are loads of songs, and we had far more on the list before trimming.  It’s a bit out of control, this podcast, but actually I think it’s quite good.  Dylan’s roving reporter slots are just… well, they’re just.  They’re just. That’s what they are.  Experience them for yourself.  Good luck.

Toadcast #67 – The Wuzzlecast

01. The Pogues – The Ship Comes In (05.57)
02. Sad Day For Puppets – Big Waves (09.07)
03. Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (17.44)
04. James Yorkston – Sir Patrick Spens (26.22)
05. The Second Hand Marching Band – Not Yet (38.40)
06. The Stormy Seas – The Sea Wind (42.40)
07. Ute Lemper – Little Water Song (50.31)
08. Frightened Rabbit – Floating in the Forth (57.25)
09. Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians – The Wreck of the Arthur Lee (64.53)
10. American Music Club – The Song of the Rats Leaving the Sinking Ship (75.43)

For reference, here are some YouTube videos which inspired this podcast: