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)

No, seriously, a cartoon combine harvester, I kid you not.  What sort of ridiculous synaptic misfire is responsible for that image, you ask?  Or at least, I pretend you ask. Well here’s a needless insight into how these Friday Fives come about for you, seeing as I pretended you asked.

These things are all about finding one of those weird tangents your brain shoots off on at times, and embracing it.  So I was having a piss this morning… no, too much information.  There I was this morning, contemplating how efficient I had been with my inbox this week.  I generally have an ‘On Trial’ folder for unreviewed or undecided mp3s or albums and it can get a bit too full.  By the start of last week it was so bad it contained a second folder call ‘New’, containing all the previous week’s zip downloads and so on.

Now, you will have noticed, as did I, that that is a slippery slope, and a potentially infinite set of Russian Dolls full of new music.  So this week I systematically went through all the top level albums and either reviewed or deleted them, so yesterday I was able to unzip all the folders in ‘New’, move them to ‘On Trial’, and nip this little problem in the bud.  I still have an overflowing inbox, but I feel that it is at least back under control again, which is a relief, because I like to give everyone a fair listen rather than miss them because I have too much to listen to.

So I was standing there having a p… no, there I was contemplating this week’s efficiency and I smugly compared it to being like a combine harvester.  Ho ho, I thought to myself, more like a combine harvester wielding a giant axe.  Yeah, a combine harvester with an axe, that’s what I was like.  And the only place I could imagine seeing a combine harvester with an axe was one of those Disney films like Cars or some such, where there would probably be a big bad combine harvester (probably a thug, so not very bright) wielding and axe and using it to threaten our plucky hero, who is probably something wholesome and American like a Dodge or a Chevrolet*.

So, yes, a cartoon combine harvester dreamt up while I was hav… , that is how this week’s five was born.  And you thought it was magic, eh?  Sheesh!  So if that’s how clever the five tend to be, there’s no excuse not to delurk and chip in five frivolous answers to these questions, and then while away the afternoon bickering about them in the comments.

1. Favourite computer animated film (these can probably all be ads or music videos and stuff, why restrict ourselves).
2. Favourite hand-drawn animated film.
3. Favourite live-action version of a cartoon character.
4. Favourite hero from one of those Disney/Pixar new animations.
5. As a kid what was your favourite picture book?

This week’s five songs are from a compilation called 12″ 80s.  No I don’t really get it either, don’t worry, I’ve not suddenly tried to become cooler than I really am.

Stephen Tin Tin Duffy – Kiss Me (Mixe Plural)

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Lloyd Cole – My Bag (Dancing Mix)

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Echo & the Bunnymen – Never Stop (Discotheque)

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ABC – Tears Are Not Enough (12″ Mix)

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Kid Creole & the Coconuts – I’m a Wonderful Thing (Baby) (12″ Mix)

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*As opposed to something which actually fucking works, like a Volkswagen, but those are made in Socialist Yurp, aren’t they.  Which might be why they work in the first place.

I bloody love Elbow. I don’t like all of their music, and I am not always a committed lover of their albums, but I love a bloody good chunk of it and as a band I reckon they genuinely are the dog’s bollocks. They emerged from Manchester at about the same time as the briefly phenomenal Doves, but their own brand of slightly more melancholy epic indie rock has decisively outlasted their contemporaries.

I struggled a little for the word epic, because it implies bombast and pomposity, of which Elbow seem to be entirely devoid, but I couldn’t think of a better way to describe the grand sweep of their music without making it seem pretentious, which it genuinely isn’t. In fact, as a band, using the word pretentious would seem like the greatest travesty known to man. I’m not sure if it’s possible to be an internationally famous indie rock band whilst remaining normal, down to earth nice blokes, but if it is possible to be such a band, that band is Elbow.

Having drunkenly accosted Guy Garvey in a club in Edinburgh a couple of years back and miraculously not having been told to fuck right off, despite eminently deserving it, I always suspected he might actually be a genuinely nice bloke. Anyone listening to his show on 6Music will probably confirm this. He’s a handsome devil too – a genuine rock star – albeit in his own slightly portly, dishevelled, disarming Manchester way. In other words, these guys honestly are the Real Deal.

Elbow write music that grabs the heartstrings more than pretty much any other group you can mention, but they do it in such an unassuming way that it only now starts to dawn on me the extent to which they will rightfully be remembered as one of this era’s great bands. Personal, political, grand or small, there’s something about their best songs which simply transport you, take hold of you, and pour every ounce of emotion in the song straight into the very core of your soul.

Now, again, I don’t claim to love every song they’ve ever writtten and I will go so far as to state that Cast of Thousands is a downright mediocre album, but listening to this performance, and the number of euphorically brilliant songs they are able to draw upon, it’s like a massive great big slap in the face reminding me how good this band really are. Sensitive, emotional, sad, and then when they need to crank it up a notch, all hell breaks loose.

And did I mention what nice blokes they seemed. Really, genuinely unaffected by all that ‘being famous’ bollocks. Great, great gig, and I was sober all the way through, believe it or not!

Elbow – Leaders of the Free World
Elbow – Newborn
Elbow – Fugitive Motel Perhaps one of the best songs in the universe. Really.