Song, by Toad

On New Year’s Eve 2009, instead of fighting the crowds in the centre of Edinburgh, we decided to take it a little bit easier and stay back in the house.  By sheer coincidence Jon Rooney from Virgin of the Birds got in touch to say that he would be visiting Edinburgh and to ask if there was any possibility of doing something, like a live show or a Toad Session while he was over.  We were somewhat restricted by the fact that Mrs. Toad and I were only getting back from visiting the Toads -in-Law on New Year’s Eve itself, so we thought that a house gig would be the perfect solution.

Jamie and Rory from Broken Records also agreed to play, giving us a really strong lineup, and their videos will be going up later in the week.  We actually broadcast the gig itself live on the internet, and have now figured out how to do it using the really posh camera we use for the Toad Sessions, so in future the live stream should genuinely be worth watching.

These are the four videos we made of the Virgin of the Birds set.  The photos used for the titles were taken by Dylan from Blueback Hotrod, and the full set can be viewed over at his site.  Virgin of the Birds’ last two (brilliant) EPs can be downloaded from Abandoned Love Records, and their previous album can be bought there as well.  Enjoy.

[The first part of this week's Sunday Supplement was written by Blueback Hotrod photographer and all-round pish-talker Dylan]

Earlier this week, Liam Maher, frontman of Flowered Up, died aged 41.

As any good student of the baggy scene will recall, London’s Flowered Up rose to a brief period of prominence at the ecstasy-fuelled, rave-influenced periphery of indie music in the early 1990s. A commonly used description of the band is the “cockney Happy Mondays”.

With just one album and a couple of singles making up the band’s complete discography, it’s difficult to draw anything other than such broad comparisons. In fact, theirs might have been the briefest of footnotes in the story of alternative music, had it not been for one of those singles in particular; their exquisitely daft, magnificently bemusing and utterly irresistible opus, Weekender.

With the full-length version clocking-in at a jaw-dropping 13 minutes, Weekender was quite literally one of the baggy scene’s biggest anthems. Astonishingly, given its epic proportions, there’s barely a wasted bar of music in the song. Raucous guitar riffs soar as the song rollercoasters from one sequence to the next, powerfully driven forward by the piledriving locomotive provided by the rhythm section.

The song; a bittersweet, condescending ballad of the nation’s working class twenty-somethings, stuck in their offices and factories five days a week, and only escaping as far as the local bars and clubs each weekend, could have easily ended up as another of the countless lumpen, turgid facsimiles anonymous young boys in baggy jeans and brightly-coloured sweatshirts were pumping onto Top Of the Pops on a weekly basis at the time, had it not been for a sense of wild inventiveness in the composition and arrangement coupled –crucially – with a disciplined craftsmanship in the performance and musicianship.

The syncopated drum pattern is classic indie, but delivered with imagination, expression and vigour, while the bassline is remarkably accomplished throughout the entirety of the track, providing a swaggering, funky groove sadly missing from so much of today’s guitar music.

The song itself is something of a ‘concept’ piece. The sections are meant to loosely illustrate a week in work, leading to a night in the pub in the first instrumental passage, on to a nightclub for the trancey, electronica bit, then a noisy hangover before returning to work on Monday. If it wasn’t for such high concepts, they might not have got away with the splashes of brass and – ahem – jazz oboe that lend the song its sense of identity and drama.

For me personally, it was a key part of the soundtrack to my adolescence, regularly reverberating around the prefab walls of our sixth form block’s demountable hut. Me and my mate Rob would gleefully sneer the line “Weekender, fuck off! Fuck off and die!” at each other, revelling in our impersonation of Maher’s venomous gibe, and relishing the rebelliousness of such clearly pronounced profanity in a pop song, still uncommon back then.

Few details have so far been released about the circumstances of Liam Maher’s death, but he had been a habitual drug-user for much of his life, as suggested by the article in The Guardian written by his friend, Robin Turner of Heavenly Records.

Perhaps Weekender is a fitting legacy for a largely unfulfilled life led to excessive hedonism; perhaps it’s a tribute to a unique moment in the development and diversification of British guitar music. Maybe, after all that, it’s just a great way to spend quarter of an hour.

Flowered Up – Weekender

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After rather unfortunately having to cancel a fully-blown Toad Night, it looks like Saturday will be replete with quality musical entertainments after all.  Ruth, Dylan from Blueback Hotrod and myself have been concocting a really nice evening of musical fun, with four (at least) acoustic sets in the bar, DJing (ie choosing some songs for the stereo, nothing fancy) from some of Edinburgh’s finest music snobs, and a generally convivial atmosphere at the Bowery all round.

Musically we have acoustic sets from two Toad Records bands, one of which is a secret and one of which will be Meursault at about 7pm, on their way through to Glasgow to play at the Arches.  We have the recently (and mercifully) renamed Team Turnip making an appearance under his new moniker of Mammoth, and Thomas Western, who has recently moved up here and will I think be making his official Edinburgh debut.  His music is gentle and folky, but sounds very promising indeed, so this should be a nice new treat for everyone.  Ruth has booked him to play a full set at the Bowery in November, in case anyone was considering a sort of try before you buy approach.

So please come along.  It’ll be free entry, and the sets will be relatively short and interspersed throughout the night, so it won’t be like going for a pint in a library where fun and conversation are frowned upon.  And the Bowery closes pretty early anyway so if you really want to get shitfaced and shag whoever the hell you’re prepared to make do with at 3am when you’re so drunk you can’t even pick your own nose without poking yourself in the eye then there’ll be plenty of time for that afterwards.

Team Turnip – Wendy House

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I should start by apologising to Matthew and to you, dear reader, for how late this Sunday Supplement has been delivered. It’s been a mental busy day, so busy in fact that I’ve had to abandon my plan to be at Toad Hall this evening for the inaugural home gig. Unfortunately Animal Magic Tricks had to cancel, but some eleventh-hour negotiations last night, combined with heroic dedication from The Japanese War Effort and Jonnie Common of Inspector Tapehead, both volunteering to step into the breach, has meant the show can go on. I’m gutted I can’t be there, but I’m sure Matthew will have a lot to say about the evening in due course. Watch this space, as they say.

Like Clockwork

Part of the reason the day has got away from me is, inevitably enough, the fact I was up until daft o’clock last night and then slept in this morning. Saturday had been a long day which led into an even longer night.

Moody, unpredictable and obsessed with its online popularity, and the other one's an antique cupboard! (Ba-dam! Tssh..)

I’d planned to pop up into town to take some photos of Cybraphon during the day, and Matthew, Neil (Meursault) and Fee (Mrs. Neil (Meursault)) all joined me. Matthew offered to drive and, as the Toad Van tortuously inched its way through the devil’s own Scalextric set that used to be Leith Walk before the tramworks arrived, people were actually singing the A-Team theme at us from the pavements.

There’s little that can I can write about Cybraphon that hasn’t already been said in the national papers or on CNN, but it was wonderful to finally meet the ingenious machine and to watch the hypnotic movements of its components as it came to life.

Keeping The Faith

Later, I went to photograph Mumford & Sons at Cabaret Voltaire while the others headed for the second night of Trampoline’s brilliant festival line-up.

There have been some hesitant notes of concern raised about The Mumfords on these very pages since His Royal Toadiness and I were first treated to their gobsmacking live show in Glasgow last year. While the general concensus is that the recorded output to date has been great, greying clouds of doubt have appeared on the horizon regarding whether they could keep up that sort of momentum, or indeed generate the variation in sound and texture needed to produce a really good album.

Were they a one-trick-pony or some sort of flash-in-the-pan novelty act?

Well fortunately, after their performance last night, I’m pleased to report that I’m reassured and that I’m a believer again. A fully-fledged, card carrying, fundamentalist Mumfordian. There’s new material to match anything we’ve heard so far in terms of quality, but importantly there’s variation to the sound. They haven’t stopped sounding like Mumford & Sons. They never could with those vocals. However, they’ve introduced new senses of tone, direction and nuance which bode well for the forthcoming album.

So you can happily ditch that “one-trick-pony” tag if you were tempted to start using it. I learned a lot about the band last night. I didn’t know, for example that double-bassist Ted could play the drums, or that banjo-toting ‘Country’ Winston could play bass. Or, indeed, that Marcus Mumford owned an electric guitar.

That’s right. Electric.

The Mumfords preach to the converted

Hang on. Bass, drums, electric guitar? That sounds like a regular rock-band line up, not a nice dependable waistcoat-wearing, barefoot, beardy alt. folk troupe. However, there were no cries of ‘Judas’ from the Cab Vol crowd, just rapt attention, an eagerness to embrace the new ideas, and that unmistakeable sense of communion that a band with a genuine following tends to create in a small, dark, sweaty venue.

Things are looking promising for Mumford & Sons. I’m sure they have something special in store for us when that album comes out.

My own personal credit crunch

I’ve tried to give myself a strict budget for August, in order to make sure I make it through to the end of the month without spending more than my pocket money will allow. However, unless I can get through the rest of the week on just eight quid, I’ve blown it already. This month is clearly going to be one big, daft, expensive horror story.

I can’t wait.

Cybraphon – The Balkan Bazaar

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Mumford & Sons – Little Lion Man

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Bedouin Soundclash – Money Worries

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As pretty much all of you know, Mrs. Toad and I have been away on holiday in Italy for the last couple of weeks.  In our absence Euan (from The Steinberg Principle, Trampoline and The Kays Lavelle) very kindly agreed to write Song, by Toad for me (and for you) to make sure things kept ticking over in our absence.  In this he was ably assisted by Bart (from, erm, eagleowl* and pretty much every other band in Scotland), assisted by Dylan (from Blueback Hotrod) and rescued by Tart (from Love Shack, Baby).

Apart from merely thanking them, which I genuinely do, I wanted to say what a fucking great job they did.  I knew Bart would do a fine job of the Monday listings because, before he packed it in, his Magic Marker listings page was always the first page I checked before writing my own.  Dylan’s general oversight was much appreciated as well, particularly as he wrote Toad himself for two weeks last year, so it was really nice of him to supervise generally, and provide training and the Friday Fives.  And Tart, thanks for stepping in and sorting out the filehosting issue, it really is much appreciated.

Most of all, though, it really has to be said and said again what a fantastic job I think Euan did with the site.  He and I agree on a lot of music, and disagree on a lot as well, and I think he was a little concerned that he might in some way alienate my readers by posting slightly off-message stuff.  Honestly, I think that was actually the strength of his choices.  From my perspective, and hopefully from yours, it felt a little like a fresh breeze in a dusty room – I actually thought it was brilliant that he posted slightly different stuff and gave everyone a change.

I also appreciate how much of a community we seem to have, that people are willing to donate their time for no real benefit to themselves and help out, and that really the whole site didn’t skip a beat in my absence.  I’ve been trying to think of ways to broaden the participation a little on this site, but have always been a little nervous of loosening the reins, and this was a really good sign that this wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

So thanks so much guys, Euan in particular, it really was appreciated and I thought you did a superb job.  And for those of you who want to read a little more, please go and check out Euan’s blog, because it really is worth reading.

And while we’re at it, congratulations are in order to Dylan, who has parlayed what began as ‘helping out with some pictures for the Toad Sessions’ into a first paid photography gig.  Go here to have a look.  They aren’t all his, just “most of the good ones” to quote the man himself.

Maximilian Hecker – Sunburnt Days

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And just to show you that things really are back to normal:

* Bart, you should know that it pains me every single time I have to respectfully decline to capitalise the name of your bloody band.  Every damn time.