What ho!

Mr. Toad, possibly in a far more gin-sodden fug than usual, has rather superbly extended his amphibious hand to The Waiting Room & granted me a bit of Song, by Toad space to post TWR podcasts whilst we swim about in the unemployment bins. Whether this sees a sharp downturn in his traffic we’ll have to wait & see.

You, then, being readers of this worldwiderife infamous blog, are probably aware of my occasional filth & jibber jabber in the comments portal thereunder &, by association, may possibly know what to expect from the ear mollestation what is The Waiting Room — perhaps having tuned in, tuned out & turned off as quickly as it took you to read that.

This week, then, on the show, The Woman of The House (TWoTH to the passengers of Deep Space Nine) & I mouthfart our merry way between such loveliness as Anna & The Family Tree, Hurray For The Riff Raff, Thomas Tantrum, The Republic Tigers, Parenthetical Girls, The Theatre Fire, Kría Brekkan (ex múm), Pale Young Gentlemen, Pete & The Pirates + the ever embedded many, oh so very, more. We also jump on the bandwagon du jour & spin a tune off of the new recording by popular beat combo Mirkinassault.

Added to all that giddiness, we have a rather dodgily realised competition, open to bands/artists/& the like, to write a new theme tune for the show. Christ knows how that one’s going to run, but if you have any musical talent & fancy a stab then aim your blunt instruments this way.

The Waiting Room: 3rd December 2008

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Ta very & huge cheers plus a doff’d fedora to Toad for the assist.

DC is giving away all sorts of goodies on The Waiting Room this week. In fact, he’s giving away all sorts of things that I would rather like to win myself, bar a couple of things which I have already. I was supposed to write this last week, but given it appears I have some sort of Black Belt in Fuckwittery, I managed to miss it by a week. Idiot.

Anyhow, all you have to do is listen to last week’s episode and email DC with the weight, pounds or kilos, of his suitcase when he flew back from the States the other week. The podcast itself is mostly about that trip and the bands he encountered there, so there should be bags of good things to listen to. I’m just downloading it myself, so I’ll be listening in a wee while.

Last week’s Waiting Room – the one with the competition.

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Anyway, the goodies to give away are as follows:

The Builders & Butchers / Loch Lomond split 12″ – signed by The Builders & The Butchers
The Builders & Butchers Debut CD Album – signed by The Builders & The Butchers
Samantha Crain & The Midnight Shivers T-Shirt – size Adult Medium (US)
Anni Rossi CD Albums Scandia + Insects Kissing
Parethetical Girls 7″ Picture Disc + CD Album Safe As Houses
The Jones Street Boys CD Album Overcome
Or, The Whale CD Album Light Poles & Pines

I can promise you, that Builders & the Butchers album is still the best thing I’ve heard since I tiptoed in to the blogosphere a couple of years ago, and Loch Lomond are brilliant. Samantha Crain is bloody marvellous too, and I’m really looking forward to seeing her at Pickathon in a couple of weeks, and to hearing her new album. When Mrs. Toad and I get drunk, The Builders & the Butchers is pretty much the first thing we reach for in the evening. The only row is whether to play Black Dresses or Spanish Death Song first.

The Builders & the Butchers – Bottom of the Lake
Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers – Bananafish
Loch Lomond – Nothern Knees, Trees, and Lights

Why is The Waitsing Room a Muslim? Because it’s all covered up of course! Get it, get it? Fuck me that was poor, apologies to absolutely everyone involved – shambolic rubbish. What prompted that garbaggio? Well this week me old mate DC (who has taken somewhat obscure exception to my post about Eaten by Monsters – I don’t understand it, but then he is Welsh) has done something I don’t think I would have the courage to do: tackle a whole show based on covers of Tom Waits songs.

The Waitsing Room – Cruel Variations

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Why wouldn’t I have the courage? Well to paraphrase Bill Hicks, I’m like a kid with a sore tooth with Tom Waits covers – it hurts, but I can’t quit pressing. Any cover of a Tom Waits song, I just have to hear. I’m fascinated, compulsive, I just can’t stop myself, despite the fact that almost without fail the only emotions they inspire in me are a mild frustration and immediate desire to go and listen to the original. I don’t know why, exactly, maybe he’s just too idiosyncratic, maybe my relationship with his music is just too close to pedestal-based worship, maybe I’m being a blinkered idiot, and maybe a little of all three.

What is it with cover versions anyway? So many are so incredibly poor, and yet we’re fascinated by them. Is it a traditional thing, where people used to cement communities by playing songs and trading stories and such-like, or is that just far too Oprah fucking Winfrey for everyone’s taste?

I’m downloading the show as I type this, and will be playing it all afternoon at work, to take my mind off the tedious grind of Proper Job and I am sure that by this time tomorrow the Tom Waits score on my last.fm count-o-meter will have jumped by another hundred or so. So toddle on over to The Waiting Room and download this week’s episode of his show, which airs live on Error FM on Wednesdays at 10pm, mostly, or nine sometimes.

A.A. Bondy – Hang Down Your Head (Live)
The Wedding Present – Red Shoes by the Drug Store

The last time I whas in Whales I think I whas about eight – my grandparents took us to Llandudno.  With the beach and the somewhat naff arcade on the pier and so on I whas probably entirely entranced, but if I’m honest I really don’t rhemember all that much about the experience.

My Granddad is Whelsh actually, so I suppose that makes me ¼ Whelsh myself.  Given my total lack of familiarity with the place though I think it would be silly to claim that ¼.  The Whelsh music scene is not one I whould general compare to the Scots in terms of output or quality, especially ghiven that there are four million Whelsh, compared to about five or six million Scots – the difference just isn’t that great.  And the Scots have whiskey to distract them.

There are definitely a couple of brilliant Whelsh groups that spring to mind of course, but in my ignorance I wouldn’t be able to name all that many that spring to mind as being current and promising.  A bit like Canada before the Arcade Fire, when its musical reputation was dominated by pantomime embarrassments like Celine Dion, Alanis Morrissette and Bryan Adams, the image of Whelsh music is still associated in my mind with clowns like Stereophonics, Tom Jones and that fat girl from Catatonia.  Mind you, if people thought of Scotland in terms of The Proclaimers, Wet Wet Wet and fucking Texas…

So, if you fancy an introduction to Whalesong, pop over to the Whaiting Room and have a listen to a couple of hours of DC and the Lady of the House wrestling the reputation of their nation back from the Dadrock of the Manic Street Preachers.  Me, I’ll be running about like a blue-arsed fly getting ready for the launch night most likely.

These songs are from one of my favourite Whelsh albums of rhecent years: Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s legendary Barafundle.
Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – Starmoonsun
Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – The Wizard & the Lizard
Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – Miniature Kingdom

Despite the fact that Akismet has unilaterally decided to filter all DC’s comments to the spam dump, we are nevertheless looking forward to the next Waiting Room here at Toad Hall.

Mrs. Toad and I featured a truly hilarious Gourds cover of Snoop Dogg’s Gin & Juice when we participated in the recent Drunk Covers show. It’s one of our favourites but I’ve never explored The Gourds any further, perhaps because the amusement of that cover version gave me the impression they were something of a novelty act. Well they’re not, apparently, and tonight DC is dedicating a whole show to them on Error FM because he is more than just a little bit of a fan it seems.

The Gourds – Gin & Juice

Most interestingly, The Gourds have recorded all sorts of little bits of silliness and some new ditties for the show itself, to go alongside DC’s usual over-excited rambling. If, like me, you know nothing about this band I can’t think of a better way to discover them.

Tonight, 9pm-Midnight (BST) on Error FM.

And here are a couple of Gourds tracks to get you in the mood.

The Gourds – All the Labor
The Gourds – I Come Up

Well I didn’t appear in this particular episode of The Waiting Room, and somewhat amazingly the whole thing didn’t go instantly to the dogs, as you might have imagined.

The Waiting Room – Wednesday 30th April 2008

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In fact, DC has sent me a couple of excellent tracks to use in my traditional plug for the show seeing as I can’t do my usual ‘I nearly chose these’ thing.

The first is by a group called Heathers who I’ve never heard of at all, but the real highlight for me was the Fleet Foxes song.  There’s been a fair bit of blog whispering about Fleet Foxes for quite a while now, and I’ve never quite got round to tracking them down and having a listen.  This, it seems, was a mistake.  Just listen below – what a fine song indeed.

Fleet Foxes – Tiger Mountain Peasant Song
Heathers – Bloodpact

Yes, my darling Mrs. Toad, the acid-tongued misanthropic centre of my world, has put in a bit of an appearance on The Waiting Room this week. Needless to say we consequently had far too much fun, talked far too much and DC had to take the shears to our segment to make the whole thing fit. No discipline, these new UGC stars, honestly. It’s all covers in this week’s episode, and we put that splendid Richard Godwin in there, some William Shatner and a hillbilly reworking of Snoop Dogg’s Gin & Juice. Splendid!

The Waiting Room – Drunk Covers – Wednesday 23rd April 2008

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Anyhow, as there was no time to throw in half the covers I know, I thought I’d post a couple here just for fun. Generally I refuse to post covers on this site because, for all many people do it with total sincerity, there is a distinct whiff of hit-whoring about it – sort of like constantly posting fucking Hot Chip and Radiohead remixes. Anyhow, time for a bit of an exception because I have three very good Divine Comedy covers, to go with the one we played in the show itself. I know The Divine Comedy have been both piss-poor and hopelessly unfashionable for quite some time now, but their early stuff was brilliant, and even now ol’ Mr. Hannon still produces the odd gem from time to time.

The Divine Comedy – Famous (The Magnetic Fields)
The Divine Comedy – Oh Yeah (Bryan Ferry)
The Divine Comedy – Radioactivty (Kraftwerk)

My latest excursion into the murky waters of The Waiting Room saw me praising big famous bands for a change, really rather ironic given the hassle talking about those same bands has caused around here recently.  Would I have done the same segment in hindsight?  Would I fucking bollocks!

The Waiting Room, Wednesday 16th April 2008

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It’s weird, I feel something of a tit now for bigging up the bands that then bring down teh haterz, even though I know it’s nothing to do with the actual bands themselves.  Or at least I should bloody well hope it’s nothing to do with the bands.  Odd how the behaviour of someone employed by someone who employs someone to look after a group can make a band look quite so bad, really.  Guilt by association.  I know the band could quite easily order off the attack dogs (would a really big label even pretend to listen?) or publically condemn this sort of bollocks, but why would they?  They make music, not politics.  Although REM are pretty politically involved so you would expect them to have a stance on all this web madness one way or another.

Hmm, well that’s another ramble for another day.

It’s a pig themed week for some reason, so I thought I’d lob these little gems into the mix just for fun.  The Sparklehorse song in particular is something of an enormously noisy, fuzzy masterpiece.

The Beatles – Piggies
Sparklehorse – Pig

My weekly appearance on The Waiting Room included a very scant intro to The Fence Collective this week, and was entirely overshadowed by DC’s lovely missus, and also his interview and live recordings with Peter & the Wolf.  In fact, my bit on Fence was by necessity so cursory and superficial that I may actually do my whole podcast on them this weekend, and give a full review of the weekend at Homegame in the process.  Yes, why not, let’s do that.

There’s a bit of a competition going on as well, because apparently there is a unique, hand-drawn copy of Peter & the Wolf’s new CD The Ivory Palms up for grabs. To enter all you have to do is listen to the podcast, answer the following question: What’s the name of the war photographer Red Hunter (ie the P&tW chappie) cites as his major influence? and email DC at thewaitingroom AT btinternet DOT com by Sunday 13th April.

The Waiting Room, Wednesday 9th April 2008

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As a further act of generosity DC has emailed me a couple of technically almost* flawless live recordings from that very night to share with all you lovely people:

Peter & the Wolf – My Gray Overcoat
Peter & the Wolf – Anna Maria

Also, I found this song which seemed incredibly appropriate – DC, you’re welcome mate!
The Twentymen – The Waiting Room

And as a salute to DC’s frankly silly assertion that Barack Obama is in fact a Muslim, I have a couple of other songs that seemed, erm, well about as appropriate as anything on this farce of a website:
The Muslims – Extinction
The Muslims – Right & Wrong

*By almost, he means may contain all sorts of pops and crackles and things like that.

Ladies and gentlemen there were some issues with this week’s appearance on The Waiting Room – DC’s 10pm-midnight slot on Error FM. Firstly, I was away and hugely disorganised, so DC had to record his bits in my absence and then sellotape my segment in later. This wasn’t so much of a problem of course, as it prevented him and that Fisk character from moaning about my song choices, which has its benefits.

The Waiting Room, Wednesday 2nd April, 2008

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Unfortunately it means I have no idea if I answered the question properly at all. I mean, indie dance? What? I tried to get information out of the lads beforehand but they weren’t very specific, so I just kind of winged it. Whenever I’ve been to indie clubs in the past they haven’t played a type of music I would have been able to identify as ‘indie disco’ as such, they’ve just played indie songs with a bit of a consistent, bouncy rhythm so that you can dance to them. Even The Smiths wrote a good few songs you can dance to, and if ‘hang the DJ’ wasn’t designed to be an end-of-night dance hall sing-along then I don’t know what was.

Supergrass – Caught By the Fuzz
The Smiths – Panic
The Smiths – This Charming Man

That said, there are a few dancey bands who I guess I would call indie – it just depends on how loosely you apply your category terms I guess. Personally I throw these terms about pretty carelessly because let’s face it, who really cares what specific type of music it is that you’re listening to, so yeah okay, indie disco I guess. Fisk played Stereolab, who are a group I really like, but didn’t play the likes of Saint Etienne, who I would have thought fit that category pretty well, as do groups like Goldfrapp, Blondie and The Long Blondes (the new album really is just dance floor indie – it’s not great, but it’s dancey stuff).

Saint Etienne – Nothing Can Stop Us

That said, I’ve been in clubs where they’ve even played stuff like The Rat by The Walkmen, which is based around the band battering shite out of their guitars for most of the song, and people, myself included, leapt around like maniacs. That wasn’t even remotely dance music by any genre definition, but it proved to be a hugely popular song to dance to at the time. So there you go. Come to think of it, this would probably have made a much better, more considered response to the question at hand, but I had to rush it and given my 20 minute slot I’d never have had time to get all that rambling in there anyway. So sorry DC, not sure I hit the nail on the head with that one, but I’ll do better next week, promise.

The Walkmen – The Rat

And tell Fisk that Orbital are bloody awful.