Well, I am now eight working days away from shiftless unemployment becoming a wildly successful entrepreneur, and as mental a move as this might be I am very, very excited to get going.  I am an obssessive type, as you probably know by now, and I need projects to get just a little bit too focussed on, so this should be perfect.

Anyhow, the inital lineup for the Edge Festival has been announced.  So far so moderately interesting, with bands like Eels, The Low Anthem, Broken Records and Beirut on the bill.  These things tend to get better as they get closer, so I reckon that’s a pretty bloody solid start – now we just need to talk Eels into a Toad Session!

Eels – Not Ready Yet

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In other news, The Pop Cop (see image, but with added sexy) is back online.  After Google decided that simply being accused of something was at least as good as actually doing it and deleted the Pop Cop’s entire original site there was an extensive campaign on Jason’s behalf, but Google did precisely nothing.  I know the appalling DMCA obliges them to remove material accused of copyright violation (not actually in violation of copyright, you understand, merely accused of being so) but it does not dictate their customer service policy, and I have to say their ‘fuck off customers’ approach is an interesting one.  Not entirely novel of course, the music industry have been at it for years, but interesting nevertheless.

Oh, and in terms of festivals, the Leith Festival is now underway, with eagleowl and Blueflint at the Village tonight.  That’s a really nice venue actually, and I really do recommend getting along if you can.  The rest of the musical events can be found here, so have a dig through them – Leith is by some distance my favourite place for a pint in and around Edinburgh, and the Leith Festival will hopefully be less overrun by Southern students and their zany antics than the Edinburgh Festival.  Zany fucking antics.  Yeuch.

Oh, and at the Roxy on Wednesday 16th we have Pekko Kappi and Alasdair Roberts in another Braw Trails gig -  a collaboration between Tracer Trails and Braw Gigs, as well as Lissie, Alan Pownall and The Boy Who Trapped the Sun at the Electric Circus.

Alan Pownall – The Others

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And then on Thursday we have El Mató A Un Policía Motorizado, Debutant and Plastic Animals at the Voodoo Rooms, which also looks rather interesting. And that, Toaderinos, is that.

Phew, what a fucking brain fuck of a weekend that was.  From the house gig (and drinking) on Wednesday night, to the Wide Days conference (with lots of drinking) on Thursday night, to the work night out (with an awful lot of drinking) on Friday and finally the launch night for the new Meursault album on Saturday night (at which there was, somewhat inevitably, an awful lot of drinking) I think that by the time Sunday rolled around I either needed to never drink again, or just embrace it and pour beer on my bloody cornflakes.

Still, the gig was fucking incredible, and we’re pretty much out of the limited editions already.  The sooner those fuckers bugger off on tour so I can get some rest the better.

Friday 16th April 2010: John Knox Sex Club, Deserters Deserve Death & Jocky Venkataraman play TrampolineWee Red Bar.

at the Sex Club?  Fair enough.  Euan wrote about Jocky Venkataraman when he was looking after the site last Summer, and I really liked the sound of him then.

Saturday 17th April 2010: Zoey Van Goey, Chris Bradley & X-Lion Tamer play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms, with 17 Seconds DJs.

A bit of a 17 Seconds Records special at Limbo this week, with Ed DJing and two of his acts on the bill.  It’s an eclectic lineup, with a bit of indie from Zoey Van Goey, some singer-songwritery stuff from Chris Bradley and techno-pop (or whatever, exactly, you’re supposed to call it) from the splendid X-Lion Tamer.  I have to question the hyphenation of the name, however, because it looks a lot to me like Tony is claiming to tame ex-lions, which doesn’t strike me as being all that hard.

X-Lion Tamer – Life Support Machine

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Sunday 18th April 2010: Inspector Tapehead, Natalie Stern & The Japanese War Effort at the Roxy Room.

Inspector Tapehead have agreed to release their (bloody brilliant) debut album on Song, by Toad Records some time around August this year.  I still have no real idea how I am going to pigeonhole their music for the easy consumption of lazy journalists when I send out the promos, but I think ‘fucking ace’ should do the trick.  It will certainly be the jolliest record on the label by some distance.

Inspector Tapehead – A Fillet of Bozo

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Sunday 18th April 2010: Angus & Julia Stone & Alan Pownall at Cabaret Voltaire.

I honestly find Angus & Julia Stone a bit nice for my taste, but you might be keener on that yourselves.  Also of interest is Alan Pownall, who I don’t know that much about, but in The Others has produced a truly gorgeous song:

Alan Pownall – The Others

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Sunday 18th April 2010: Manky Bands at The Hive.

I was given an interesting (and entirely good-natured, don’t worry) dressing down by a fella called Murray, perhaps better known as Edinburgh promoter Manky Bastard, on Thursday.  He was just pointing out that my Drowned in Sound piece on Edinburgh (and this site in general) was pretty narrowly focussed, in terms of genre and the community which it represented and stuff like that.

He’s absolutely right of course, but the trouble is that I really only write about music I like, which means that it is by nature going to be somewhat limited in scope. The problem is that because of being so busy with the expansion of the blog and the label (we’ve recently grown to the status of ‘micro-indie’ apparently – a fine achievement if ever there was one – is there such a thing as smaller than an indie?) that I just haven’t been able to go to gigs at all for almost a year.  You can probably tell this from the decline in live reviews on the site.

This means that I am just not out and about sniffing out new things like I should be, and consequently I know barely a single thing about the bands Murray is so keen on and, to cut a very long story short, he recommended this gig as being a really good representation of the scene he himself is working within at the moment.  That, for me, is as good a reason as any to attend – it’s about time I challenged what I already know I like.

It’s annoying though, because I cannot find the actual fucking lineup written down anywhere.  I think they actually require you to sign into the damn website to see the bloody listings.  And if that is the case then they can fuck off, quite frankly.  Unless I am being dense, in which case the slow onset of old age and the technological paralysis which goes with are encroaching even faster than I thought.

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

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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)