Okay, so this one is a massively late Friday Fives, but there’s enough of a day to waste if you still feel like wasting it with me.  On this week’s podcast we will be kicking off with Thee Single Spy’s new single OK Corral, and Alice kindly sent me the video through for it this morning so I figured I would share it with you on this week’s Five.

The five songs I have chosen today are from a compilation named Arlington Baths, so called because I used to live in a basement flat on Arlington Street in Glasgow.  It was a truly abominable flat, cold damp, shitty and with tramps frequently to be found curled up asleep outside the front door.  This was back in about 1995, at about the height of Britpop, or at the beginning of its decline, whichever way you want to look at it.

Anyhow, at the end of Arlington Street there was an unassuming building which went under the title of the Arlington Baths Club.  Now, we knew that it was there and we were vaguely curious about what went on there, but we never thought that much about it until about a year after we moved out.  We didn’t move that far though, and our new flat may have been on a different street, but the kitchen window still actually overlooked the Arlington Baths Club.

Then one day we were slouching around watching telly, as students do, and this documentary came on about an amazingly preserved old Turkish baths.  There was shot after shot of amazingly preserved interiors, tiling, black-watered pools and deck chairs in steam rooms.  It was the Arlington Baths Club.  They didn’t mention this until after we’d been watching for about ten minutes and I remember when they did we all rushed to the kitchen window, as if to check that the place really was still there.

So delurk yourselves, don’t be like the Arlington Baths Club, all hidden behind a facade of Victorian stone, come and make a silly comment on the Friday Fives and then fritter away the rest of the afternoon talking pish on the internet with everyone else.

1. Worst place you’ve ever lived.
2. Ever been surprised to see somewhere you know on the telly?
3. Name a big pop hit from your student days which you like, sneakily or otherwise (yes, now counts if you’re still a student – Wilf and I Are Scientist, you don’t count as students even though you are at university).
4. Strangest accidental student flatmate.
5. Student living feature you miss most (if you’re still a student, take a guess).

Blur – There’s no Other Way

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Elastica – Connection

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The La’s – I Can’t Sleep

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The Bluetones – The Fountainhead

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Sleeper – Inbetweener

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Because of electiony things and my trip down South this weekend I am writing this after an evening out drinking gin, and a night spent watching the election and drinking wine whilst Mrs. Toad snoozes on the couch.

Voting for the fucking Tories, honestly what a bunch of idiots this country has turned out to be (see graphic).  If you’re minted, you can afford to vote with your conscience.  If you’re less than wealthy then voting Conservative is basically just voting for aggressive, hostile rhetoric over self-interest, which is just weird.

I am getting sick of this ‘voting for change’ pish which is being dropped into chat all over the place.  Change?  Change?  Seriously?  Are you fucking kidding me?  Change would have meant the Lib Dems becoming a serious third party, which I actually think would have been good news.  Multiple parties implies something closer to proportional representation, and it happens and works across Europe.

Adversarial two-party politics is a weird concept, when you look at it.  You end up with Celtic v Rangers, United v City, God Bless America vs Evil Communist Russia – it’s just such a simplistic and superficial narrative to apply to a question which is actually quite nuanced and complex I am not sure how we ended up here.

Anyway, delurking, that’s the message for today.  Delurk, unlurk, exlurk and say hello.  That’s what these Friday posts are for, and I will be on a train all afternoon and eager for some sort of entertainment so please come out with some bollocks.  Any old bollocks will do!

1. Name your independent political party.
2. Make a spurious election promise.
3. Suitable insult for your opponent.
4. Something vs what?  Name a new deathmatch!
5. What the fucking fuck happened to the fucking Lib Dems?  Eh?  Fucksake.

Blur – Death of a Party

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Supergrass – In it for the Money

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Pulp – Pencil Skirt

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Belly – Gepeto

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The Bluetones – The Fountainhead

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It’s that time of the week once again.  At 6.30pm, British Summer Time, myself and Dylan from Blueback Hotrod will be live on Fresh Air, Edinburgh’s student radio station.  There will be no theme, no coherence and no real attempt to do anything more dynamic than just chatter about music, so please do tune in and listen to us blether.

Rather than emailing or (grrr) tweeting, I thought I might just leave this as an open thread for those who want to contribute, and I’ll add the playlist live as we go along.

Click the big ‘Listen Live’ button on this page to tune in, between 6.30pm and 8pm tonight.

01. The Bluetones – Glad to See You Back Again
02. James – Sound
03. Emily Scott – Pageant Queen
04. Frightened Rabbit – Old Old Fashioned (Live)
05. Kid Canaveral – Teenage Fanclub Song
06. Popup – Lucy, What are You Trying to Say?
07. Blur w. Francoise Hardy – To the End
08. Gene – Dolce & Gabanna or Nowt
09. Meursault – Hard On (Charles Latham Cover)
10. Charles Latham – Nite Man
11. Withered Hand – Religious Songs
12. Boo Radleys – Almost Nearly There
13. White Antelope – Silver Dagger
14. Cancel the Astronauts – I am the President of Your Fanclub and Last Night I Followed You Home

Cheers, see you next week at the same time.

The third in this series of posts addresses hype, and the excesses thereof to which we seem to be constantly subjected at the moment. It’s certainly a common enough complaint at the moment, but I seem to remember there being plenty of hype overload well before the internet.

Once again, here are the various articles that prompted this little festival of self-indulgence, so you have some idea what to expect:
A Penny For Your Thoughts by The Vinyl Villain (read the comments as well, because some of them are very thought-provoking.
Does the World Need Another Indie Band? by Tim Walker, writing in The Independent.
Why Has Modern Music Lost So Much Impact? by the Kings of A&R.
This comment, from a reader called Alex in the comment thread of my recent podcast – The Tribecast.

And here are the other posts in the series:
1. Fragmentation
2. Over Saturation
3. Hype Overload
4. Decreasing Quality

#3 Hype Overload

Hype overload is something I’m a little divided on. In one sense, an excess of shrill hysterics about how wonderful the brand new somethingorother is had become annoyingly prevalent in modern society. You can see it in just about every form of advertising known to man, and advertising itself has pretty much infested every foetid little nook and cranny of our worthless souls, so maybe it is arguable that excessive hype really is everywhere.

In all honestly though, I just don’t think that’s really the case. Yes, media-wise whatever there is, there’s more of it, but that’s a factor of there being more media in general rather than anything that I would say is particular to the world of music. Is the hype shriller, more bombastic, more needlessly over-stated than before? Well, I don’t actually know, but I genuinely have my doubts. The only real touchstones I have with which to compare this would be the pre-Napster, largely analogue world. I am only 32 and during this period. the early to mid-90s, I was only just evolving into the sort of unbalanced music obsessive I am now.

The first really hysterically anticipated stuff I remember was probably the when The Bluetones and Gene were releasing their first albums. Leaking was far less prevalent back then – or at least it penetrated less far into the popular consciousness – and after the release of two or three blinding singles all we could do was sit and wait. Stoked by the anticipation of the press, the NME in particular, I remember charging off to the record shop at lunch time on the day of both of these releases in order to get my hands on a copy. I also remember the claustrophobic disappointment as it slowly dawned on me that the genius I was anticipating just hadn’t materialised.

Basically, it’s pretty easy to write a couple of great songs, or so it appears judging by the number of groups who seem to be able to do it. Often, inevitably, these are amongst the first couple of songs a group writes, so it can be very difficult to judge whether or not they have any more in them. B-sides help, as do live shows, but basically when you hear a new group you are making wild extrapolations based on very little information. If this couple of songs happens to be brilliant, there is no way you aren’t going to be excited and, nowadays, talk about it.

Maybe the jump from bedroom recording to chart assault is being made a lot faster these days, and this may not give groups enough time to develop, settle and figure out who they are as a band, so perhaps the hype can seem out of proportion with the professionalism or presence of the groups itself. Groups like this can seem like they appear from nowhere, with the weight of expectation around them that you would expect from a band with a couple of records behind them, but then people used to overreact to a promising 7″ single as well. Maybe because music criticism and music dialogue is much more participative now, people feel more caught up in the hype.

Maybe we feel more pressure to conform to media expectations because, with music in particular, often our friends are the media, instead of just friends who make you a few too many mixtapes. I know I find it harder to turn around to a blogger I’ve exchanged emails and comments with and say ‘No, I think your new favourite band are shite, actually’ because it just feels mean, but we’d never have hesitated to sneer at the NME’s latest favourites, even ten years ago when they had a shred of credibility still intact.

In the grand scheme of things though, I remember people getting just as over-excited about new releases in the days of vinyl and fanzines, so I just don’t buy this ‘too much hype’ stuff. Yes people are prone to over-reaction, and yes the big labels are a bit desperate for love at the moment and prone to a bit of leg-humping, but really, I just think humans have always been excitable, particularly where music is concerned.

Gene – Be My Light, Be My Guide
Gene – Sleep Well Tonight
The Bluetones – Bluetonic
The Bluetones – Cut Some Rug

Had a good rummage recently?

Well Davy H, from the truly excellent Ghost of Electricity started rummaging about in his 90s CD singles last week, and wrote this. Following that we had Mick from Raiding the Vinyl Archive, with his contribution.  And this weekend everyone’s favourite superannuated Weegie – JC from The Vinyl Villain – has got stuck in as well.

So now I have had a rummage through my own box of 90s CD singles, and unearthed a gem.  The CD single is a much-maligned animal, the distant, buck-toothed cousin to its urbane vinyl counterpart.  But it had something of a heyday in the 90s, before the re-birth of the 7″ and after the cassette tape had been effectively seen off.  I didn’t have a record player anyway so I had a huge pile of these things, and of course the 90s was when I first started getting into music with real determination.

It’s not an original purchase I’m afraid, because most of those were stolen when someone broke into our Glasgow basement flat, but it is one of many I have since painstakingly re-acquired with the aid of eBay and Amazon Marketplace in the years since.  There were many choices I could have made.  Gene would be an obvious example, I had Pulp’s masterpiece Common People too, and the unbelievably good Where the Wild Roses Grow by Nick Cave, but I thought I’d go for The Bluetones.

The Bluteones, like Gene before them, were the quintessential singles band.  Their albums were disappointing, but there was a period in about 1995 when a couple of superb singles had us all convinced that they were going to be the next massive thing in Britpop – a scene which had already peaked, but which still very much dominated the musical landscape.  The Bluetones have proved to be oddly long-lived actually, and still release albums today to a hard-core of dedicated fans, so it’s unfair to imply that they couldn’t cut the mustard.  One thing is for sure though, they have never ever matched the heady hype of those first few singles, and Bluetonic was the first and the best of the lot.

Rough Outline, a collection of their singles and b-sides can be bought from Amazon unless you want to scour eBay where there are both some vinyl and CD versions knocking around.

The Bluteones – Bluetonic
The Bluteones – Colorado Beetle
The Bluteones – Glad to See Y’Back Again

The wench is away and I am here by myself, managing the last few days of our house project. You can imagine what fun that must be, I’m sure.  Still, we move back in this weekend, so it may be a crap couple of days but it’ll all be over soon and then you’ll be relieved of me constantly whinging about it, which will be nice for you.

Given we’re living in a basement flat on a short term let for a month I got quite into the basementy idea with this playlist. I digressed into The Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan and the Band, but mostly it’s music from ’95/6 when I was living in a damp, grotty basement flat in Glasgow with a mate and the girl I was seeing at the time.

I bought stacks of CD singles back then and lost them all when someone broke into the flat.  Thanks to the joys of the internet I’ve been able to track most of them down recently, so you get a few of those, as well as some of the stuff I was listening to at the time.

It’s interesting as a historical document, to me anyway, but I am not sure how well the playlist itself works.  There’s something about this podcast that I’m not sure I like as much as the others, even though I like all the songs on it.  I don’t know, let me know what you think.  Perhaps Tears of Rage, Oasis and the Cranberries aren’t good enough songs to have all on the same podcast.

Toadcast #17 – The Cellarcast

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01. Blur w. Francoise Hardy – To the End (03.33)
02. Oasis – Rocking Chair (10.54)
03. Bob Dylan & the Band – Tears of Rage (17.59)
04. Bob Dylan – Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (Live) (25.54)
05. The Band – Rockin’ Chair (29.17)
06. Lloyd Cole – Unhappy Song (37.59)
07. Hootie & the Blowfish – Sad Caper (48.40)
08. Elvis Costello & the Attractions – Shallow Grave (54.03)
09. Tom Waits – November (55.55)
10. Barenaked Ladies – The Old Apartment (63.26)
11. Ray’s Vast Basement – Black Cotton (68.33)
12. The Bluetones – Colorado Beetle (71.08)
13. The Boo Radleys – Almost Nearly There (79.35)
14. The Cranberries – Joe (87.07)
15. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Ballad of Robert Moore & Betty Coltrane (96.13)

There are some more people to vote for in the Digital Music Awards, so get going. If you actually go to the site and see the excruciating list of utter shit listed under ‘blogs’ then you will see why it’s so important to get actual blogs by actual people with actual brain cells voted for on this bastard. Unbelievable, the shit that is listed there – preening, self-important, utterly vacuous and dripping in corporate jism. Fuck them, and the horse they rode in on.

So, vote for me.

And the Growl.
And the Hum.
And the Dance.
And the Rawk.
And the Sex.
And the Sweep.

And the tunes:

As a shameless incentive, I’ve thrown together a wee pile of songs from my first couple of years in Glasgow. I bought loads of CD singles at the time, half of which got pinched, but there was some cracking stuff around at this time, really there was.

The Bluetones – The Fountainhead
Blur – There’s No Other Way
Elastica – Vaseline
Sleeper – Vegas
The La’s – Son of a Gun (No, I checked, and apparently this one is a little debatable. When it’s a plural of a word as a word, rather than the object it represents then you use an apostrophe. So fuck off, smart-arse. Besides, The Las looks like a different band altogether.)

I’m down in Manchester this weekend, so I have edited the timestamp on this post to appear some time on Saturday. This way your daily dose of pompous sermonising can still come your way, despite the absence of the Toad. But no more posts until Monday evening after this one.

I am visiting my Granddad and showing him pictures of our garden which, as an old duffer with the very greenest of fingers, I think he will enjoy. He is a lovely man, my Granddad. Very old fashioned, caring, generous and the perfect gentleman. Quite brilliantly, he is also something of a ladies’ man, even at his age. All the women down at the club get quite twittery over him, so I shall be taking studious notes on his tricks of the trade and hope to translate them into similar results in my own dotage.

Here are some songs I listened to a lot while living in a shitty, damp, freezing cold basement flat on Arlington Street in Glasgow. Drunks used to sleep outside our front door, which didn’t lock properly and the close stunk of piss. Lovely.

[Edit: Erm, for those of you who aren't Scottish: the close more or less translates as the stairwell in a block of flats.]

Sleeper – Vegas
Blur – There’s No Other Way
Lionrock – The Guide
The Bluetones – The Fountainhead

I think Lionrock’s Instinct For Detection might have been just about the first ever vaguely electronic album I ever bought, and I think I only did so because I loved the cover. How characteristically shallow!