Don’t worry, this podcast really isn’t about football.  I might have been tempted, but in all honesty, but I can’t really think of all that many good songs about football and if I am being truthful with myself I can’t imagine you lot really enjoying a podcast about football all that much.

More to the point, I am back playing football myself now, after something like two years out with back problems.  Two years really is a long time to miss out on something you love doing, and even more so when you’re past your mid-thirties and every year you miss is one of the last you’ll get the chance to play at all.

So, in amongst the new songs and all the usual things you would expect from a Toadcast (i.e. mostly swearing) there are a couple of songs which represent my reaction to getting back to playing football again, and my reaction to some of the more newsworthy moments of the footballing week as well.

Direct download: Toadcast #213 – The Footiecast

Subscribe to the Toadcasts on iTunes

Subscribe to the Toadcasts on Mixcloud

01. Morris Major – Seymour Grove (00.17)
02. Chris Devotion and the Expectations – A Modest Refusal (07.27)
03. Billy Bragg – A Lover Sings (20.13)
04. Bob Dylan – Oxford Town (24.07)
05. PAWS – Bainz (30.17)
06. Coast Jumper – Lawless (37.49)
07. That Ghost – Morning Now (42.09)
08. Now Wakes the Sea – Propranolol (50.31)
09. Smackvan – 4am (54.19)
10. Mark Lanegan Band – Bleeding Muddy Water (64.01)

I happened across that fascinating little video this week sometime, and it’s a really odd mixture of hypnotic, fascinating and really quite unsettling.

The video is simply a plot of nuclear explosions over time, and despite being ten minutes in length, is nevertheless really difficult to turn away from.  What’s particularly disturbing is watching how a flurry of test detonations in any one country seems to trigger a retaliatory fit of posturing in another.

It’s also kind of chilling to watch the increases in activity triggered by events like the Cuban Missile Crisis.  It’s easy to think now that they’d never have really done it, but human beings are not particularly good at measuring self-interest when they decide that someone needs to be taught a lesson.  In fact being willing to inflict harm on yourself just to punish someone else with sufficient force is a notable quirk of how collective morality is maintained by social animals. So umm… yes, it was probably closer than we allow ourselves to think from the safe distance of 2011.

Human beings seem to have particularly laughable memories when it comes to this sort of thing actually.  I was spectacularly annoyed by all the financial analysts proclaiming the worst recession since the Great Depression, when the housing and credit markets collapsed a few years back.  Fuck, were none of these cunts alive during the eighties?

I know we remember the eighties as being full of comical haircuts, synth pop and twats from ‘The City’* making shitloads of money, but it was also the decade which spawned the Miners’ Strikes, the Poll Tax Riots (just) and Boys From the Black Stuff.

And even as a kid I remember the threat of nuclear annihilation feeling very, very real.  All this chat about the world not being a safe place now because of the ever-present terrorist threat is total bollocks.  The IRA were extremely active during the eighties, and they’ve killed more people than fucking Al Qaeda (thanks America, sucks when people harbour terrorists, doesn’t it), but beyond that we all lived with that constant feeling of low-level dread that at some point the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. might actual just melt humanity clean off the face of the fucking planet.

So umm, how about some fun, after that little rant then.

1. Can you think of a decent song about nuclear armageddon?
2. Name someone nowadays you would least trust with the Big Red Button.
3. Was there anything good about the Cold War?
4. Where were you when the Wall came down?
5. Who seems most likely to go fucking mental and nuke someone in the current political landscape?

M.J. Hibbett and the Validators – The Fight for History

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.

 

Phil Ochs – Talking Cuban Crisis

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.

Tom Lehrer – We Will All Go Together When We Go

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.

Billy Bragg – Think Again (Dick Gaughan Cover)

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 Piranhas – Tom Hark

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 City?  That’s lovely, which one?

Yep, I am off down to London to schmooze like a lickspittle get plastered and see some excellent bands.  And to catch up with one of my best and oldest friends.  Good times. And to watch the Champions League final.  Possibly slightly less good times.

I am running the gauntlet of the British Rail ticketing system as well.  For those who aren’t familiar with this particular challenge, in the UK they try and make it as difficult as possible for you to buy a/ the cheap tickets which they advertise so aggressively (£35 London-Edinburgh return, aye right!) or b/ the actual, right ticket for the train you happen to take.

I went on the website and specifically selected the 08:30 train, which is the one I am on, but when I collected my tickets they said ‘Off-peak Return’ on them, and I am highly dubious about any service leaving at 08:30 in the morning being classified as ‘off-peak’. And if I’m wrong presumably they will try and force me to buy a ‘full price’ single (i.e. about £300, instead of the £114 return I actually bought).  Ah well, I’ve had this argument before, so I suppose I can have it again if need be.

Anyhow, since the demise of the humble dining car (actually, balls to humble, I always preferred the more ostentatious dining cars) I see train journeys as things to tolerate rather than enjoy.  Mrs. Toad and I used to very much enjoy getting quietly pickled in the dining car as the Northumberland countryside rolled past the window, and somehow a little bag of goodies from Marks & Spencer at the station doesn’t quite make up for its loss.

1. Where, other than where you currently live, do you have the most friends.
2. How old were you when you met your oldest (non-blood relative) friend.
3. Least glamorous place you’ve ever travelled for business.
4. How many cups of grey, watery meeting coffee can you have before your bladder commits suicide?
5. What’s the highest proportion of fun to business you have ever achieved on what is nominally a business trip?

This week’s five songs ar… oh just look at the titles, you don’t need me to tell you I just searched for ‘train’ in my iTunes library and just lazily slapped up any old five from the results do you?

Tom Waits – Train Song 

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.

Half Man Half Biscuit – Time Flies By (When You’re the Driver of a Train)

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.

Hem – Betting on Trains

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 – Europe By Train

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.

Billy Bragg – Train Train

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 podcast is, as you will already know, very, very late.  Personally I blame a combination of the RNLI, gin, and the fact that Mrs. Toad is away all week, which meant that yesterday wasn’t really available for blog things.

It’s also not very new music-orientated either, so hopefully those of you who come here pretty much just for that won’t be too disappointed.

I think what happened was that I got so into a handful of new releases recently that I neglected all the others, so when I came to sit down and write about tunes last week I suddenly realised I had nothing to write about.  For blogging that makes things a little challenging, but from a podcast point of view I am always happy to just fuck it and play some oldies, which is what I’ll do here.

Direct download: Toadcast #172 – The Oldiecast

01. Mad Melvin (00.17)
02. Chumbawamba – Farewell the Crown (01.43)
03. Billy Bragg – Walk Away Renee (07.37)
04. The Left Banke – Walk Away Renee (09.59)
05. Bruce Springsteen – Growin’ Up (17.07)
06. Psychedelic Horseshit – Rat Poison (24.17)
07. The Chesterfields – Ask Johnny Dee (32.21)
08. The Close Lobsters – Just Too Bloody Stupid (35.23)
09. The Delgados – Everything Goes Around the Water (43.45)
10. The Sleepy Jackson – Acid in My Heart (50.19)
11. Calexico – Si Tu Disais (56.17)

I am Ruthless for this week’s show on Fresh Air Radio, so it will just be me prattling on by myself instead.  I have a John Darnielle tribute to the assault on organised labour in Wisconsion, I have the original version of that song, and I have some Withered Hand, in honour of his SXSW visa troubles.

Other than that, I am pretty worn out from a night of epic drinking in Stockton (which is not even Middlesbrough) last night after the excellent seminar thingy hosted by The Generator at which I (inevitably) drank and talked far too much.  There is a certain inevitability to these things, isn’t there.

Live from 8pm UK time – click here to listen.

As per usual the playlist will appear below as I play things, and feel free to swing by the comments and have your say.

1. Lil Daggers – Give Me the Pill
2. King Post Kitsch – Don’t You Touch My Fucking Honeytone
3. Meursault – And Butter Would Not Melt (from Jonnie Common’s Deskjob)
4. Withered Hand – No Cigarettes
5. Tom Waits – Anywhere I Lay My Head
6. John Darnielle – There is Power in a Union
7. The Louche FC – Only in a Dream
8. Irk the River – Mind That Child
9. The Son(s) – Radar
10. REM – It Happened Today
11. Billy Bragg – There is Power in a Union
12. Elbow – Jesus is a Rochdale Girl
13. David Thomas Broughton – Ain’t Got no Sole
14. Clem Snide – Pale Blue Eyes
15. Warm Ghost – Open the Wormhole in Your Heart
16. Dam Mantle – Grey
17. Dolfish – Your Love is Bummin’ Me Out
18. The Honey Pies – Hair of the Dog

The Crapcast is so named because I am in one of the dingiest hotel rooms I have ever been in.  In isn’t even entertainingly bad, which would be something, just like being dressed in clothes from Marks and Spencer and being trapped inside a grey cardboard box listening to Keane’s greatest hits.

Anyhow, the shower was really good, and I can forgive almost any other atrocity in a hotel room, as long as the shower is hot and the pressure is good.

Anyhow, I am abandoning the Hotel of Beige for a friend’s house tonight, and then tootling back up to Edinburgh tomorrow evening to see my nice lady again.  It makes a bit of change for me to be away on business instead of her, so I can go back and gloat about being a mover and a shaker… until she puts me firmly back in my place my reminding me that when she goes away it is to China and New York and Australia, not just a long weekend in London.

And yes, I do refer to a bit of ‘verbal writing’ in this.  Don’t judge me too harshly.  I was wrecked.

Direct download: Toadcast #160 – The Crapcast

01. Billy Bragg – The Saturday Boy (00.56)
02. Pet Ghost Project – Glitch Shake (10.09)
03. We Are Losers – Cheerleaders (18.27)
04. Yuck – Rubber (21.15)
05. King James – A Big Black Dog (30.41)
06. Eef Barzelay – Ballad of Bitter Honey (37.13)
07. Elbow – Station Approach (41.04)
08. David Dondero – Don’t Cry No Tears (47.37)
09. The Veils – Bloom (52.00)
10. Micachu & the Shapes – Everything (58.19)

The Let’s Get Lyrical campaign was born of a desire to combine Edinburgh’s status as an official City of Literature, with Glasgow’s as a City of Music.  There are events being held throughout February and it will come as no surprise to discover that they are a bit of a step up from the dreary indie pish I usually feature on these pages.

As you can imagine, there are an awful lot of scholarly things that can be written about this topic and, as you can probably also imagine, you aren’t going to read them here.  Nothing about all the value of oral traditions, the role of lyrics in folk music, or even the emotional impact of the details of the lyrics versus the more abstract emotions generated by the music – I have stuff to say about all of these things, but I am down visiting my folks in London at the moment, so settling in to write an essay would be considered somewhat uncouth, I suspect.

Instead, I have picked six fairly random songs by six of my favourite lyricists, and will write just a little bit about why they resonate with me so much.  I find it amazing how important I can find lyrics – to the extent that I would suggest that music can make you love a song, but only lyrics can make it a part of your soul – and yet there are vast swathes of my music collection where I am neither aware of, nor particularly interested in the lyrics.  A lot of the time they’re just plain indecipherable, and in the absence of liner notes in the digital age, tracking them down seems like an awful lot of work and I rarely do it; I doubt I am alone.

What it tends to take is a particular hook.  I hear a phrase which snags me, and then I am pulled in.  But for a lot of music I am happy enough for that not to happen, and just to enjoy the tunes.  When you really do connect with the lyrics, though, the impact of a song changes totally.

Eef Barzelay – The Ballad of Bitter Honey (Amazon)

Eef Barzelay, whether with Clem Snide or solo, has written some of the best, cleverest, wryest, most cutting lyrics I have ever heard.  This is the man responsible for the phrase ‘the root canal music of a prom night disaster’, but this song might just be his greatest.  Written from the point of view of a dancer whose ‘ass you saw bouncing next to Ludacris’ it manages to create the portrait of a sweet natured, shallow girl trying her very, very best to wring some sense of self-worth out of life, and failing.  Horribly.  It manages a particularly remarkable trick of being at once utterly excoriating in its description of the mores of the modern world, and yet tenderly sympathetic of the person who both embodies them and bears their burden.  So much sympathy and so much rage.  But that’s Eef Barzelay for you.

Eef Barzelay – The Ballad of Bitter Honey

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.

Barton Carroll – Shadowman (Amazon)

I don’t know how closely this song draws from real life, but this is a portrait of an over-shadowed, jealous and weak younger brother so well constructed and harrowing as to make me feel a little bit sick every time I hear it. As I have written many times before when describing this song, the absence of any shred of redemption is just plain merciless.  Very few people in pop music seem to have the sensitivity to construct such a believable relationship and such a real protagonist as this, and yet also the courage to eschew the mandatory happy ending.  It really is a brutally nasty, mean song.

Barton Carroll – Shadowman

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.

Songdog – Gene Autry’s Ghost (Amazon)

Songdog are a different kettle of fish.  Their lyrics are cryptic, clever and acerbic.  I remember listening to the start of this song, tum-te-tumming along, and suddenly doing a double-take.  ’What the fuck did they just say?’  I rewound the song and yes, they really did sing: “I’m nobody special, but I give pretty good head.” Songdog do this all the time.  They are dark, horribly (by which, of course, I mean awesomely) cynical and you always get the impression that you are a step or two behind what they are trying to tell you.  There’s such resignation to the music that this never seems pretentious or condescending however, just the work of a band who are woefully underappreciated and seem to have stopped expecting you to get it.

Songdog – Gene Autry’s Ghost

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.

Billy Bragg – The Saturday Boy (Amazon)

I must be one of thousands of young men who heard this song and thought ‘Fucking hell, that was me!  I am the Saturday Boy!’ Billy Bragg does this all the time, particularly in his early work, and this is far from alone in its ability to absolutely and utterly nail what it feels like to be male and lacking in both sexual confidence and skills.  Almost every man I know has in his past a girl on whom they had the most unspeakable crush and who, for all she may have enjoyed our company as much as the attention, had about as much intention of going out with us as she did of flying to the moon.  The closing line sums it up so well: “While she was giving herself for free/ At a party to which I was never invited”.  People think of Bragg as a bit of a caricature of himself these days, but that’s massively unfair.  Political songs aside, his love songs show a writer more gifted than anyone I know at taking all sorts of complex emotions, and entanglements and distilling them into a single line, full of warmth, a bit of humour and, most of all, the knowledge that he absolutely, undoubtedly Got It.

Billy Bragg – The Saturday Boy

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 Mountain Goats – Dance Music (Amazon)

I am not a particularly committed fan of Darnielle’s wider canon, but The Sunset Tree is a stone cold classic.  There are a lot of tender, heartwarming  and heartbreaking moments on the record, but one of those stop-dead-in-your-tracks moments occurs early in this short, perfect song.  Coming from a stable family background as I do, I would never be so stupid as to suggest that I can really grasp the kind of domestic horror described here: “I’m in the living room watching the Watergate hearings/ while my step father yells at my mother./ launches a glass across the room, straight at her head/ and I dash upstairs to take cover./ lean in close to my little record player on the floor./ so this is what the volume knob’s for.” It is short, direct, unflinching and does what all great writing should: finds not just details, but the one crucial detail.  I remember that one short verse bringing me so much clarity: the violence, the fear, the intense relationship with music.  I am sure I still don’t entirely grasp what this kind of life is really like, but this song has done more for my understanding than any advertising campaign or newspaper article I have ever come across.

The Mountain Goats – Dance Music

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.

Tom Waits – Fish and Bird (Amazon)

In this particular case, it is not so much just about the lyrics themselves, as the personal context.  I bought Alice just as Mrs. Toad and I were getting together and listened to it constantly.  She lived in Edinburgh, I in London, and we went back and forth every couple of weeks – it was a rather improbable romance in many ways, but a complete whirlwind nevertheless.  It was pretty obvious to both of us, I think, that this was something special, but as the months wore on it slowly became clearer and clearer that resolving our geographical problem was going to be a very, very significant challenge.  Mrs. Toad was a touch more spooked by this than I was and the relationship suddenly became very, very shaky indeed – you know when you can hear the tension in someone’s voice and you know that something is up, even if you can’t dig the details out of them. Anyway, after Christmas of the first year of our relationship she decided she couldn’t face it and packed it all in, putting an end to over a month of looming unease which had taken the shine off eight months of thrilled, giddy romance.  Fortunately for me (and her I suppose) she saw the error of her ways two or three months later and came crawling (hey, this is my story, so that’s how I’m telling it okay – so what if it wasn’t exactly crawling per se, but I digress…) back.  However, in those months before she saw sense I was trying to come to terms with the fact that it seemed I had lost the girl I was absolutely certain I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  And I drank gin and listened to this song.  A lot.

Tom Waits – Fish and Bird

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.

I may only have lived in the Wiltshire village of Seend for about four or five months about ten years ago (seriously, ten?) but the fact that I had no job, nor was able to find one, meant that the music I listened to ended up with an extra resonance.

Apart from looking for jobs I didn’t know how to find, I spent an inordinate amount of time browsing through copies of Uncut magazine, back before it turned to shit, and buying albums based on how well I liked the songs they chose for their covermount CDs.

There are a couple of other songs on this podcast, but I think the memories of Seend (including my goal in a 3-2 victory, having been 2-0 behind at half time) are still surprisingly strong.

Direct download: Toadcast #137 – The Seendcast

01. Meursault – Bulletproof (La Roux/Radiohead Cover) (02.52)
02.The Czars – Lullaby 6000 (09.19)
03. Hamell on Trial – Choochtown (20.30)
04. Lambchop – Bon Soir, Bon Soir (24.10)
05. The Savings and Loan – The Virgin’s Lullaby (31.09)
06. Phillistine’s Jr. – The Bus Stop Song (36.55)
07. Vado in Messico – Sisma (38.50)
08. Billy Bragg – Take Down the Union Jack (47.12)
09. Kevin Tihista’s Red Terror – Sucker (51.46)
10. Cinerama – Health and Efficiency (58.49)

We have been collecting for the lifeboats today and as usual we have had a massive, lovely meal prepared by my darling Mrs. Toad.  It was fucking awesome, I have to tell you, and anyone who wasn’t here truly did miss out.

We, and the RNLI, owe a massive debt of thanks to Sharon from the Wirral, Euan from The Kays Lavelle (and many other things), Peter from next door, Matthew from Glasgow (as of last week), Ella from the Last Battle, Lucy and Catherine from Mrs. Toad’s Finance Corp., Jamie from Broken Records, and Dylan and Ed who turned up and were nice but didn’t really do much, and of course the internationally renowned musical expert, the esteemed Dr. Millar.

In terms of actually making a difference, it’s worth pointing out that the collection in Stockbridge has hovered around the £200 mark for about the last thirty years, but since us young ‘uns have been involved that number has almost tripled, which is sort of nice.  It actually does make a big difference when you all turn up and show some enthusiasm and commit even just a few hours to helping out.  Charity people can be a bit pushy at times, so it gets a bit of a bad rap, but it really does make an important difference.  So thank you.  And hopefully we’ll see you all again next year.

Toadcast #120 – The Swing-O-Cast

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.

1. The Bonzo Dog Band – No Matter Who You Vote For, the Government Always Gets In (5.35)
2. Billy Bragg – The Marching Song of the Covert Battalions (13.27)
3. Wham! – Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do) (22.23)
4. Pet Shop Boys – Opportunites (28.59)
5. The Dead Kennedys – Kill the Poor (41.00)
6. Bruce Springsteen – Atlantic City (44.04)
7. REM – Ignoreland (52.33)
8. Pearl Jam – Bu$hleaguer (60.39)
9. Gao Yuqian, Liu Changyu, Qian Haoliang – The Party Has Taught Your Son to be a Man of Iron (80.01)
10. Erase Errata – Another Genius Idea from our Government (81.44)

Hooray for us – possibly the vilest and least romantic Valentine’s Day Podcast yet!  And before anyone whinges about that picture, go to fucking Wikipedia and complain, because that’s where we bloody got it from.  I know!  Scandalous!  Someone should complain.

So erm, yes.  I don’t think we left anyone unoffended this year.  I sincerely hope not because I don’t like to think of people out there nurturing an anticipated false outrage complex only to be let down.

We do not like romance, we do not like being told when to have fun by people who are simply hoping to exploit our disposable income, we do not like it being implied that being single is some sort of failure, we do not like people measuring their self-worth by how much their partner can be emotionally blackmailed into spending on them, we do not like having to live up to commercially defined standards to demonstrate that we love one another, we do not like having to skip the football just cos we’re supposed to behave one some particular day or other, we do not like fucking teddy bears or fucking chocolates, we do not like sitting in tumbleweed-infested restaurants whilst people glance nervously around them wondering if they’ve done it right, and we do not like having a list of things to live up to before our relationship is considered functional thank you very fucking much.

We do like lazy Saturdays in the garden, swearing at the fire for twenty minutes trying to get it to light with damp logs, meals with friends, new places, listening to vinyl so loud the floor shakes, a bit too much to drink with people that we really like, laughing/shouting at films, arguing about the side of the bed, swearing blind it’s not your turn with the chores when you know damn well it is, drinking coffee in the garden when it’s sunny, slagging off almost everyone, shouting at reactionaries on TV, emailing one another stupid stuff all day, insulting the cat, surprise cups of tea, buying shit on the internet when we’re drunk, only coping with the washing mountain when it threatens to start a SARs epidemic, watering the plants mere minutes before death and walking hand in hand through the park and peering at cool old dudes chuntering around at the allotments or sailing model boats in the park pond.

Oh, and getting pished and recording offensive podcasts for Valentine’s Day… enjoy!

Toadcast #108 – The Boabycast

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.

01. Cracker – Mr. Wrong (03.10)
02. Billy Bragg & Wilco – Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key (09.57)
03. The Smiths – Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me (17.11)
04. Eels – Love of the Loveless (20.16)
05. The Clash – Brand New Cadillac (29.40)
06. Bill Hicks – Pussywhipped Satan (31.41)
07. Evan Dando – Hard Drive (44.33)
08. The Coathangers – Nestle in My Boobies (48.11)
09. Virgin of the Birds – She’s in the Moon Again (59.10)
10. David Cross – Your Baby is FUCKING BORING! (65.59)