So here were are once again on another distinctly mediocre morning in one of the most utterly unremarkable months of the calendar.  I was born in November and at least November is pretty reliably completely shit, whereas October doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be.  It’s not even consistently rubbish enough to hate.

So far so fucking splendid.  I have been driven away from Facebook today by an over-abundance (i.e. one person) of grown fucking adults talking in fucking babyspeak.  “U cud of come 2 [insert name of some shit club or other].”  Dear lord, that makes me want to stamp on something fluffy and cute.

How much fucking time can you possibly be saving yourself by deliberately spelling things like a fucking clueless, infantile fucktard?  Just suppressing the urge to commit suicide for being such a shallow, vapid, hateful cunt must take more energy than just using the English language properly in the fucking first place. The universe will catch up with you twats, you know.  That kind of imbecility won’t go unpunished in a just world. Karma hates adults who think they’re illiterate twelve-year-olds, and you will get yours eventually.

Fuck it, that’s all I’ve got this week.  Here are some gigs.  Go to them.

Tuesday 11th October 2011: Lach performs at the Storytelling Night at The Stand.

Having hosted an open mic night in New York for the last thirty-odd years Lach not only has a lot to tell, but also has developed a knack for telling it.  He the kind of guy who can be funny without actually having to tell jokes – just a natural storyteller, really.

Lach – Blue Overcoat

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Thursday 13th October 2011: Men Diamler at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

Men Diamler, for those of you who live in St. Andrews, will be playing on an amazing bill on the 11th, with Jeffrey Lewis and Withered Hand, but for those of us Edinburgh-bound you can catch him here on Thursday at Henry’s Cellar Bar. Rich plays solo acoustic music, but that doesn’t really even begin to describe it – he can be singing tragic ballads one minute, and bellowing in your face the next.

Men Diamler – Naughty Songwriter Blues

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Thursday 13th October 2011: Vic Galloway presents Bwani Junction, Miniature Dinosaurs & Blank Canvas at the Electric Circus.

This is the first in a series of monthly gigs hosted by Vic at the Electric Circus. He’ll be introducing and interviewing the bands from the stage as well, so you’ll get to hear the voice of Scottish music radio coming from an actual person for a change, instead of a set of speakers.

Friday 14th October 2011: Michelle Shocked at the Caves.

I genuinely have no idea what Michelle Shocked is up to these days, and I haven’t listened to her music in ages, I have to confess.  But on hearing she was playing here I happened serendipitously upon a copy of Short Sharp Shocked in a secondhand record shop, and it reminds me how much I enjoyed her early records, which I discovered back when I first moved the UK in the early nineties.

Michelle Shocked – Black Widow

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sunday 16th October 2011: Alasdair Roberts, Aileen Campbell & Wounded Knee at the Scottish Storytelling Center.

This is the Edinburgh leg of the Archive Trails tour, which I believe is a project organised by the artists and the ever-impressive Tracer Trails, creating new work inspired by the contents of the archives at the School of Scottish Studies.

 Sometimes the Edinburgh weather frustrates me, but sometimes it genuinely makes me laugh – like today.  It pissed down with rain all the way through the Festival and now, the minute the tourists leave town, blazing sunshine!  Excellent.

Sadly the joke is on me as much as any tourist, because all I’ve really been able to do with the sunshine is sit in my office and stare out the window at it, which is hardly very inspiring, but umm… well, there you go.

Anyhow, I am really not certain there’s all that much on in Edinburgh this week actually.  Which is probably a good thing, because a nice easy week would be very welcome as I have a lot to catch up on after the Festival.

Saturday 10th September 2011:  ‘Rebel Landscapes’ : An evening of film and folklore, Pilrig St Paul’s Church.

This one looks rather interesting.  Screen Banditas have selected some footage from the Scottish Screen Archive, and these films will be shown in the church hall and, to quote their blurb: “Projecting the films from archival 16mm prints, live accompaniment will be provided by Alasdair Roberts, Cath & Phil Tyler, Rob St John and Wounded Knee.”  Count me in.

Saturday 10th September 2011: Roy’s Iron DNA at the Electric Circus.

I know little about Roy’s Iron DNA, but from a quick listen to the Soundcloud samples on their website they sound pretty good to me.  It’s electronic pop music, at times synthy and at times more atmospheric, but in general they have good tunes and if Rebel Landscapes ain’t your thing I reckon this would be well worth a punt.

Roy’s Iron DNA – Silent Majority

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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.