Tomorr… yesterday I flew out to Paris to see Mrs. Toad, who has been stuck in God Bless America for the last two weeks because of Iceland’s seismic indiscipline.  We are going to have dinner and walk together and hold hands and generally act like a couple of idiots.  More or less like we always do.  For a couple of curmudgeonly old fuckers who spend their entire lives swearing at one another, we are a pretty sentimental pair, really.

This podcast is mostly based around my Dad and his music.  For my early years I was well into my Mum’s stuff, but as I got older I got more into my Dad’s kind of stuff – Tom Waits, Dylan, Neil Young and all that.  When I really, really got into music it was never into contemporary, modern or trendy stuff, it was always the old shite my parents were into.

I repay them the favour nowadays, or at least, I try to, but I never really picked up on music from my peers, it was always from my folks.  Hence this podcast.

Toadcast #119 – The Popcast

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01. Bruce Springsteen – Thunder Road (05.16)
02. The Band – The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (13.27)
03. Willie Nelson – Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys (16.53)
04. Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Walking Song (24.12)
05. Tom Waits & Thelonious Monster – Adios Lounge (32.54)
06. Elton John – Ballad of a Well Known Gun (41.21)
07. Bob Dylan – Days of 49 (46.07)
08. Elvis Perkins in Dearland – I Heard Your Voice in Dresden (53.49)
09. The Builders & the Butchers – Barcelona (57.51)
10. Jackson Browne – Fountain of Sorrow (66.15)

There is a betting shop under the house next door who once offered us something like seven or eight grand, or something like that, to build a fire exit out of their place into our back garden.  Quite apart from whether or not that compensation would actually match the resulting devaluation of the house, which it probably wouldn’t have, the idea of having Ladbrokes employees peering into our garden while we were sitting out there with a cup of tea didn’t really sound appealing.

Also, they claimed that the door would be alarmed, but we didn’t really have a lot of faith in that, and rather feared the employees finding a way around this and spending a lot of time smoking fags in our back garden.  In the words of Han Solo: “No reward is worth this!”

Anyway, betting shops have always kinda fascinated me.  They always look so desperate, like the people inside are clutching to the last tiny strand of courage they have left and vesting it all in some ropey old nag in the 4.30 at Doncaster.  It’s that haunted, defeated kind of look and the 1980s cross-channel ferry decor that just makes them look like the most appalling joy-sinks imaginable.

In any case, gambling is something I have never been drawn to in the slightest, primarily because games of chance are governed by mathematics and in the long run you will lose, and when it comes to placing bets based on close inside knowledge, I always seem to be surprised no matter how much I know about the topic in hand.

I mean, I know football inside out, particularly the English Premiership and I seem to have absolutely no ability whatsoever to predict the results.  I know the Scottish music scene pretty well these days, but would I honestly have faith in my ability to pick the Next Big Thing Out of Scotland?  No, probably not, not to the extent that I’d bet on it anyway.

Now you may say that in starting a record label that this is exactly what I’m doing, but I’m not, I’m making a different kind of bet altogether.  I have noticed over time that for all I like alternative stuff, my taste still conforms to a certain part of the mainstream, and I am betting that if I just stick to releasing stuff I really like, rather than trying to second-guess a band’s potential for making it big, then my natural overlap with the mainstream will mean that we release enough music people like to make the whole venture financially sensible.

That’s the theory anyway.

So, there are some good gigs this week, so please attend them and take the opportunity to take photos of hipsters looking hip and enter them into our competition to win a copy of the wonderful Communion Compilation.  Just email your pictures (old or new) to me at songbytoad -*- hotmail.co.uk, and we’ll pick a winner in a week or so.

Oh, and please do de-lurk, that’s what this thread is for, y’know.  You’ve read the comments before, you know the kind of clowns I’ll be stuck with if you don’t!

1. Ever bet on anything and won?
2. Which kind of gambling might you be tempted by?
3. Kind of gambling you’ll never understand.
4. What are your odds of scoring on Valentine’s Day?
5. Name your favourite underdog of all time (doesn’t matter what field).

The Pogues – Bottle of Smoke

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The Clash – The Card Cheat

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Bob Dylan – Rambling Gambling Willie

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Bruce Springsteen – Meeting Across the River

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Hem – Betting on Trains

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I remember reading an article in Metro recently where someone actually did the sums on just how much Father Christmas would have to drink, how many miles he would have to cover and how many present he would have to carry in order to deliver presents to every little child in the world in one night (not the Muslim, Hindu or otherwise slightly dusky-skinned babies of course, because Jesus doesn’t love those babies and the chapter on Father Christmas came right after the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John in the Bible as we all know – Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Saint Nick, as they are more properly known).

Anyway, the bit which amazed be about that article was the sheer banality of it.  Every child has a bit of an epiphany quite early in their lives when they realise the monumental job FC would have getting round to every child in the world in one evening (the divisive bigotry of religion tends to be something we pick up later, so we still think the poor babies from heathen countries might be included at this stage – sadly this is not the case – poor heathen babies).  ”Really?” we say to ourselves, or more usually to our Mums and Dads, “all the children in the whole world?” and that first little bit of the Father Christmas myth begins to crumble.  It’s a short leap from that to setting fire to kittens as a teenager, and so the diabolical spiral to a cynical, loveless death alone in a bedsit, bony, transulcent fingers clutching that one last bottle of gin desperately in our dying grasp has begun.

So, er, anyhow, how was your Christmas?  This is going to a deserted, surreal Friday Five I think.  Most normal people will be enjoying nurturing time at home with their family and friends, leaving the internet to the desperate and the lonely and obsessive internet weirdos like myself. And, hopefully, you.  The deserted plains of Planet Toad will be forgiving place to introduce yourself to the fives this week I would imagine, given the usual cacophony of ridiculous nonsense will presumably be somewhat dampened, so what better time to delurk, chip in, and relieve the belly-bursting gluttony of the immediately surounding forty-eight hour period.

1. Which day do you predict will bring your worst hangover of the Christmas period?
2. Describe your worst present (if you dare).
3. Favourite Christmas trilogy you absolutely have to watch over the Festive period?
4. Favourite TV programme Christmas Special.
5. At what time will you get sick of all this festive shit and just fuck off down the pub to get scooshed

Johnny Cash – Solitary Man

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The Holy Modal Rounders – The Cuckoo

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Horsefeathers – Hardwood Pews

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Bob Dylan – Tangled Up in Blue

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Alela Diane – Pieces of String

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These are all taken from my parents’ music collection.  Admittedly, some of it might be in my parents’ music collection because I insisted they put it there, but that still counts.  Obviously, I can’t take credit for Bob Dylan, The Holy Modal Rounders or Johnny Cash.

I will actually be doing a podcast tomorrow, but it may be a little late as I am finally going skiing for the first fucking time in about ten fucking years.

When we were out in Italy on our holidays Mrs. Toad and I had very few CDs with us but one of them was an Uncut compilation of prison blues and murder ballads which, amazingly, given the very promising subject matter, really wasn’t very good.  In fact, it was rotten, so I’ve made a podcast based on the self same concept, but with what I personally think are vastly better songs.

Most  obviously, to my mind, there were very few contemporary songs in there, and I thought that was a little weird.  Now, I actually think that the level of political commentary in popular music is just a little weak at the moment, but there are nevertheless some amazingly good prison and criminal justice-related songs to be had, and certainly some exceptional murder ballads, although I must confess that the most recent bit of genuine social commentary here pre-dates the 1990s by a couple of years.  There was probably more recent material I could have used, it just didn’t spring to mind at the time I’m afraid.

So here we have the Jailcast, complete with some largely incoherent ranting about politics and my own stupid fucking jail story which Mr.s Toad takes such delight in sniggering about at every available opportunity, the bitch.  It’s not that exciting, really it isn’t.

Toadcast #80 – The Jailcast

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01. Tom Waits – Jockey Full of Bourbon (02.05)
02. Willard Grant Conspiracy – Drunkard’s Prayer (08.37)
03. Pulp – Down by the River (16.14)
04. Bob Dylan & the Rolling Thunder Revue – The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Live, 1975) (19.42)
05. The Pogues – Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six (31.36)
06. Bruce Springsteen – Vigilante Man (Woody Guthrie Cover) (39.33)
07. The Radiators – Prison Bars (43.34)
08. Enfant Bastard – Compilation Tapes (50.10)
09. Nightjar – The Hanging Tree (55.30)
10. Pete Wylie – Stay Free (Clash Cover) (60.49)

Instead of simply vanishing this afternoon, Mrs. Toad and I will be stopping by the Edinburgh College of Art to see the degree show before we fuck off. The exhibition isn’t officially until tomorrow, but as we are going away we have been given special permission to attend the friends and family viewing. If that hadn’t worked out I was all up for crashing it, frankly, because really, just how fucking hard is an art school bouncer going to be?

“Fuck off out of my way you malnourished, over-emotional little cunt, I’m going to see some fucking art and you aren’t going to stand in my way.” Virtually a First Class with Honours performance piece in itself, if you ask me.

Needless to say, I wasn’t too popular at the Glasgow School of Art when I was there.

This week’s five are entirely unrelated to the songs for a change.  This week I have chosen five songs which are deeply intertwined with our relationship.  Not really for any good reason, but the prospect of finally getting away from everything to spend a couple of unbroken weeks with your young lady after weeks and weeks of working late, editing video into the night, uploading this, going to that gig, all the things I find myself doing far too much of these days, is not just a bit of a treat, it’s really quite romantic.  What are you two doing this week? Nothing.  Hanging out together, because we get on.  We get on really, really well.  So there.

And, er, five thingies and so on… de-lurk if you fancy, this is the weekly amnesty for people who don’t want to jump into the somewhat cliquey weekly arguments about whether or not some particular record may or may not be under-produced.  Spit out your five, interesting, entertaining, witty or just banal, no-one cares.  Then talk pish to your heart’s content.  It’s fucking Friday, after all.

1.  What is the smelliest cheese you can handle?
2. If you had to choose between clean pants (no, Americans) or clean socks, which would it be.
3. Worst smell you can remember enduring.
4. Which foodstuff gives you the stinkiest shites in the morning?
5. Which foodstuff can you simply not stand the smell of to begin with?

Tom Waits & Crystal Gale – Take Me Home

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Billy Bragg & Wilco – Hesitating Beauty

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Bob Dylan – Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You

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Tom Waits – All the World is Green

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Clem Snide – All Green

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Live recordings – in fact, specifically, live albums – came up in a recent post on Song, by Toad and the idea of doing a podcast composed entirely of live recordings really appealed to me because there are so many great ones.

That said, on the post in question there arose a debate, one voice expressing my deepest hatreds of the genre, and another being perhaps over-generous in the other direction.  Frankly, I despise the vast majority of live albums.  Mostly they are shit recordings of songs we already know, released for the sole reason of fleecing fans whose devotion has already been established, and whose wallets can clearly be plundered for a few more empty sheckles.

Despite that, of course, there are some truly stunning live recordings.  In fact, I’d argue that some of the most memorable, legendary recordings of all  time are in fact live ones.  Bob Dylan live at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1966.  Bruce Springsteen pretty much any time in the seventies.  Basically, for all live recordings are mostly rip-off bollocks, there are some truly phenomenal live albums, ones which open your eyes to the artist, ones which fill in that artist’s musical upbringing, and some which are just genuinely amazingly wonderful recordings in their own right.  Therefore we bring to you the Livecast.  Enjoy, Toadlings…

Toadcast #57 – Production Values

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01. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – 10th Avenue Freeze Out (04.09)
02. Andrew Bird – Why (11.47)
03. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Papa Won’t Leave You Henry (16.22)
04. The Moulettes – Country Joy Song (25.29)
05. Colin Meloy – Blues Run the Game (32.49)
06. Quasar Wut-Wut – The Partisan (35.45)
07. Jeff Mangum – Two Headed Boy (43.04)
08. Tom Waits – Diamonds on My Windshield (54.37)
09. Billy Bragg – Days Like These (DC Remix) (56.46)
10. Ben Folds Five – Satan is My Master (60.15)
11. Bob Dylan – Like a Rolling Stone (64.16)

First things first: business, I’m afraid.  We are trying to organise a UK tour for Meursault.  Given I have never organised a tour before, I thought I might enlist the help of my Toady friends, because you know about the place where you live far better than I do.

Basically, if there is a venue or a promoter in your neck of the woods who you think I should get in touch with, please let me know.  We’re just looking for someone who puts on vaguely Toad-friendly lineups in half-decent places and is likely to draw a reasonable crowd.  Not massive, of course, but they don’t want to be playing in front of five neds in the local Slug & Lettuce if we can avoid it.  The venues don’t have to be massive – 50 would do the trick, as long as it is likely to be quite busy.  Basically, you know the kind of gigs myself and my Edinburgh pals go to around here, so if you think you can hook us up with one of those please let me know – no matter if it’s Dundee, Dubai or Droylsden.  Well actually, not Dubai, because we can’t afford the air fare.  So there we go, if you want to see Meursault appear in a town near you in May, just point me in the right direction and I’ll do the rest.

Now, back to the more serious business of disrupting everyone’s Friday productivity, which I don’t believe for a second was up to much to begin with.  Are you all looking forward to our Valentine’s podcast tomorrow?  It won’t be pretty, I can promise you that.  We will get home, heat up some fine scran, pour a couple of whopping gins and burble our way through an hour of misanthropy and cynicism for your listening pleasure.  Fantastic.  Then, in the evening, I will leave Mrs. Toad by herself in the house and bugger off out to a gig by myself.  Romantic as fuck, aren’t we?

Now, I’ve seen your conversations on Facebook walls, there is no privacy in the 21st Century, so I know there are lurkers out there who can’t quite be arsed to join in.   Well fuck you, get off your lazy backsides and play along!  Haven’t you heard of the ancient Chinese proverb which states that ‘Those who do not play nicely with the other Toadlings will not get their hole on Valentine’s Day’.  So unless you want to be chasing the witless, pig-ugly, incoherently drunken dregs of humanity around the dancefloor at a quarter to three on Sunday morning peruse our five questions below, mull it over intelligently for a while, and then jump and say something inappropriate and make a tit of yourself.  Makes a change from me doing it all the time.

1. Most evil elbow you have given.
2. Most evil elbow you have had.
3. Best Valentines present.
4. Most failed attempt at an exotic sexual practice (chocolate smearing etc).
5. Best single sad sack Valentine’s day.

The Wedding Present – Don’t Take Me Home Until I’m Drunk

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Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash – Girl From the North Country

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Girl at the Bottom of My Glass

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No Age – My Life’s Alright Without You

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And one for my girl, because she fucking loves this song, and always reaches for this one first when we start playing vinyl in the evening:
Stiff Little Fingers – Alternative Ulster

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Oh thank fuck it’s Christmas. Or, any holiday really. I am so fucking incredibly tired I could pitch face first on the tarmac and sleep for six months without so much as coming up for air.

I have been reading, with some amusement, the bickering over the religious nature of Christmas which seems to take place in the American press with monotonous regularity. Apparently the Christians are adamant that we remember the religious nature of a pagan festival, which seems a little odd considering that the Christianisation of Christmas itself was basically the Christian colonists’ acceptance that they could never defeat local pagan religions. So basically they adopted Yuletide and tried to wedge their amusing Biblical myths into a story that their conquered people would never give up, and then waited a few years for it to degrade into some sort of carnival of aquisitiveness which they could have a tantrum about.

So it’s a pagan festival which has turned into an unbridled celebration of Western consumerist greed… erm, which part of this came up in the Bible again?

Personally, as an atheist, I love Christmas. It’s got nothing to do with that Jeebus character, it’s closer akin to the the pagan celebration of light and life in the middle of the darkest part of the year. As a family we have always come together and spent peaceful time together at this time of year. We play music, we read books, we cook together, but above all we rest. We get together and enjoy one another’s company. Mrs. Toad and I will, this year, be doing nothing more than snuggling up on the couch and wasting time. And that time wasting together is oddly one of the most important things you can do to forge a strong relationship. Just taking time to be together and enjoy one another’s company is, after the year we’ve had, going to be a rare treat, and one which I intend to enjoy immensely.

Toadcast #51 – The Yulecast

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01. Yo La Tengo – On Our Way to Fall (03.12)
02. Tom Waits – Soldier’s Things (07.21)
03. Pale Young Gentlemen – We Will Meet (15.23)
04. The Felice Brothers – Greatest Show on Earth (19.15)
05. Eels – Beautiful Freak (27.27)
06. Clem Snide – The Dairy Queen (35.25)
07. Bob Dylan – Tangled Up in Blue (43.13)
08. A.A. Bondy – Black Rain, Black Rain (48.45)
09. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Brompton Oratory (54.19)
10. Sufjan Stevens – Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother (60.06)

Ah, mates.  Can’t live with ‘em, can’t kill ‘em.  Mrs. Toad’s best friend from her reckless yoof is visiting us here in Edinburgh with her gentleman friend, and consequently I got to thinking about my own old friends, and all the people who, over the years, have introduced me to so much brilliant music.  So I started to patch together a playlist of all the important friends who have added a lot of music to my life.  The problem is that it became way too long for my one hour restriction, so for this week I cast that aside, and allowed myself an extra ten minutes.

Honestly though, old friends are so important, this could have gone on for two hours, easily.  Every one of the people I mention here has a whole story of their own, and it was quite difficult to resist telling all of them in proper detail.  It seems such a shame, actually, to reduce all of these people to a two-minute link.  I could almost do a whole podcast for any one of these scenarios really, and maybe I’ll do that in future.  For now, though, you’ll have to make do with this.  It may be shabby, but it really could have been so much worse.  Meanwhile, Mrs. Toad is fucking plastered.  Oh good.  Enjoy!

Toadcast #50 – The Friendcast

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01. Pink Floyd – On the Turning Away (02.27)
02. Pearl Jam – Black (11.23)
03. The Tragically Hip – Wheat Kings (18.30)
04. Gene – Her Fifteen Years (25.23)
05. Radiohead – Black Star (28.04)
06. Verve – Lucky Man (34.41)
07. Weeping Willows – Eternal Flames (39.19)
08. Billy Bragg – Days Like These (DC Remix) (45.41)
09. Bob Dylan – Po’ Boy (49.42)
10. Elbow – Newborn (55.46)
11. Blanche – Do You Trust Me? (63.19)
12. Maximo Park – Apply Some Pressure (69.07)

This post isn’t supposed to be quite as portentous as the title might imply. It’s actually more of a casual observation: basically there are some songs, and quite often they are early Bob Dylan ones, where all I hear is the legend, and I can’t really hear them as songs any more.

The two most obvious ones are both on the same album: With God On Our Side and The Times They Are a-Changin’. I think it might be because my parents talked such a lot about the importance of these two songs in particular when they were introducing me to Bob Dylan, and consequently I actually have no idea whether or not I like either track. I actually think that as pieces of music I am not that keen on either.

I’ve always thought, in fact, that I just didn’t like that entire album all that much but that is, or at least should be, nonsense. It sounds so much like so much stuff I love, and is pretty much an anti-folk album, despite the fact that he was considered by many to be a folk singer. Mind you that boundary is so fuzzy anyway that it makes very little difference in the first place. In any case though, you get the point: given what I else I love, I really should like it.

And looking at the tracklist before writing this I realised that actually, maybe I do. When the Ship Comes In and Hattie Carroll are two of my favourite Dylan songs, so maybe it really is just their status that puts me off those two tracks. Maybe they really are so famous and such iconic songs that I just can’t hear the song anymore. Maybe it’s similar to the way some actors become so famous that you can’t watch them as characters anymore, and simply see someone so famous that they have actually transcended any artistic achievements they might manage by virtue of being such powerful symbols in and of themselves.

Bob Dylan – The Times They are a-Changin’
Bob Dylan – When the Ship Comes In
Bob Dylan – The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
And here’s something of a surprise cover, from the Pogues last ever album. This was two albums after the departure of Shane MacGowan and pretty much sank without trace, but there were some good things on it, like this Dylan cover.
The Pogues – When the Ship Comes In