Song, by Toad

So, good people of the internets, this Friday I am going to be getting mind-meltingly bladdered at my works night out from about lunch time today, so my comments might go downhill even more sharply than usual this afternoon.  Fortunately, it won’t be the teeth-grindingly awful teambuilding nonsense implied by that picture because basically my work are a bunch of total pissants.  So it will be drunken mayhem, which will be far better.  We even have two new people to torment, which will be splendid.  Mwaah hah haaa!  Actually, we’ll probably all be far too drunk to give them a hard time, but it’s the thought that counts.

For those of you who are interested, this weekend’s plans include sorting out most of the Found Toad Session, DJing at this excellent gig on Sunday and doing the Toad Records accounting so that we can pay Meursault the vast sums of money their godlike genius requires.

Also, I may masturbate and eat some pickled onions.

Not at the same time.

Why why does it always get to past two o’clock in the morning and I am still fucking awake and doing shit?  Fucking hell that’s annoying.  I’m soooo sleepy too, but I just can’t seem to get to bed at a normal time, it’s ridiculous.

Mrs. Toad and I had our anniversary this week – three years.  We first met in 1991, so we’ve taken our time.  I celebrated by going out with my mates, getting pished and breathing beer on her at two in the morning.  I’m a fucking great husband, I am.  She celebrated by forgetting about it and wishing me happy anniversary this morning – a day late.  So it’s safe to say we don’t take this stuff that seriously in our house.  It’s still nice to think about though.

DE-LURK!  Please!  Honestly, the voices are starting to get to me, please jump in and say hello.   Friday is de-lurking day.  I promise you Chutters won’t be boorish, Dylan won’t be pretentious, DC won’t be needlessly verbose and Euan won’t be sulky.  I can’t promise you Bart won’t be funny though.  Five yourselves all to pieces, people.

1. Work social events – good, bad or indifferent?
2. Do you like your baths scalding, warmish or cool?
3. Have you ever heard a better dismissal of a whole musical genre than ‘ethnic sex music’?
4. Favourite kind of fruit.
5. Best ever mix tape you made.

This week’s five songs are all from a mix I made for my brother… bloody years ago, I’m not quite sure when.

Snow Patrol – Fifteen Minutes Old

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.

Lionrock – Straight at Yer Head

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.

Arnold – Windsor Park

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.

Delakota – The Rock

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.

The Divine Comedy – Thrillseeker

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.

This album is one I bought years ago.  It was from a time when the Beta Band were making quiet waves in Scotland – although I wasn’t quite cool and hip enough to know anything more about them than that they existed.  Arnold don’t have much in common with The Beta Band, apart from the fact that, looking back, it feels like at this point we were starting to see the breakup of the Britpop juggernaut.  It had, as a movement, peaked.  And now, by 1998, it was well and truly petering out.

Bands like Arnold and The Beta Band seem, in retrospect, like the first inklings of what indie was going to become after Britpop: introspective, slightly more atmospheric than pop, and generally quite a bit less brash.  They weren’t entirely indie though, given that this album was released on Creation Records.  Well, let’s rephrase that, Creation were still indie at that point, but they were surfing the Oasis wave and were within a year of selling out to Sony BMG, so they were pretty influential and well-established for an independent record label.

Personally, I have to confess that there is really only one reason I bought this: that cover.  I love the proportions, that shade of blue, and the drawing style.  The album itself I only found myself half liking, but there are some great songs on it.  It reminds me of a time when I still actually went into HMV from time to time, although I was largely shopping at Fopp (before they were HMV), Echo and Lost in Music at this point.  I wasn’t reading zines, but I had started to take note of which record labels and which producers were involved with bands.  I bought loads of CD singles – an unfairly maligned format.  I found music by browsing in record shops, not from the big magazines, not from the telly and not from either radio or the web, which barely existed at this point.

Looking back, the era of the CD single seems like a sort of lost time, in between the indie era of home-packaged vinyl releases and fanzines, and the internet era and subsequent territorial battle between the industry and its consumers.  Britpop was waning, and there was yet to to emerge an obvious successor to dominate our landscape, so it was like a little lull in the world of music.  Not that the music was all crap by any means, just that there seemed to be no coherent ‘movement’ to define the time.  A bit like the 90s as a whole, really.

Arnold – Goodbye Grey
Arnold – Windsor Park
Arnold – Fleas Don’t Fly

You can still buy their stuff on Amazon incidentally – look at the second hand prices though.

It’s not from a great album, but Windsor Park is a thoroughly decent bit of lost late-90s British indie which I really rather like.  Why do I like it so?  Well, because I put two or three of the best songs on a really good mix tape for my brother which I ended up listening to myself an awful lot, and I also happen to associate it incredibly strongly with a particularly nasty, damp and cold basement flat in Arlington Street.

The Hillside Album is not, as I said, a great record, but there are some good bits on it and it can be acquired from Amazon Marketplace for a rather ludicrously low 98 pence at the moment.  It is a also an example, not nearly as rare as it should be, of an album I bought almost exclusively because I loved the illustration on the cover.  So shallow.

Arnold – Windsor Park

[Disclaimer: I am actually on holiday at the moment, probably fucking up my brother's wedding by swearing too much in the best man's speech, so it's all a bit minimal at the moment. Normal service will be resumed after we return on about the 25th July]