Song, by Toad

I seem to have two modes of sleep it seems – well rested and relatively funtional.  As I discovered over Christmas, I can happily sleep for about ten hours a night if possible, and I feel rested and chipper and happy.  That was great.  Oh how I miss those heady days – bed at one, pished, up by ooh, nearly noon just in time for lunch.  That was special.  I actually woke up in the morning of Monday 4th to come back to work and experienced a stunning sensation: I actually felt okay.  It wasn’t even a wrench to actually wake up!

This morning I experienced something similar.  It seems that I have a more commonplace sleep pattern as well – one which is not ideal, but with which I can live quite happily: six hours.  When the blog and the label are going full pelt I tend to go to sleep either exhausted or pished – working until the very small hours or, alternatively, taking the opportunity to blow off some steam.  This means a lot of three and four hour nights, which takes its toll on you, really it does.  Then there are times when I make a point of going to bed early and getting seven or eight hours and you know what? It doesn’t help.

What does seem to do the trick is six hours.  It’s not ideal, but I just seem to wake up feeling a bit shagged but basically alright – like this morning – and it seems to be a pretty consistent phenomenon.  Apparently this is thought to be largely down to the natural sleep cycle of your body – we all have one and they are all slightly different.  It seems that about six and a half hours kind of suits me, for some reason.

I don’t know much about this, but apparently there are theories that a lot of insomnia might be linked to the differences between the world’s twenty-four cycle and a person’s natural cycle, which may be twenty-two hours, or twenty-five and a half or whatever, and sometimes the two cycles interact incredibly disruptively, making it difficult for insomniacs to to find a sleep cycle which interacts positively with their body’s natural cycle.  So it’s not a problem with sleeping, exactly, more a disruptive interaction of the two frequencies, which can be very interesting mathematics in itself.  None of this, as is presumably evident, is anything I know much about, but I read about it once in a book and found it all very interesting.  Feel free to tell me I’m talking shit in the comments of course, because it’s quite possible, but make sure and do your five first because that’s the rules.

So, erm, not quite sure how that leads into five silly questions to invite the lurkers out of the shadows, but here goes…

1. When do you get your best lie-ins?
2. Strangest place you’ve ever had a night’s sleep.
3. Most inappropriate sleeping you’ve ever managed.
4. Longest time you’ve managed without sleep.
5. Last interesting science stuff you read about.  Nothing ’sciencey’ like the Daily Mail and their ‘official saddest day of the year, as sponsored by shitey travel agents though please.  I am tipping Becky to win this one.

The Boo Radleys – Martin, Doom! It’s Seven O’Clock

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Ben Folds Five – Narcolepsy

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Bonnie Prince Billy – Cursed Sleep

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Dan of Green Gables – Nothing Could Stop You From Sleeping Tonight

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The Beatles – I’m So Tired

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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 missus and I got pished and did a podcast! Huzzah! It was a lovely Summery day on Wednesday and we sat out and had a meal in the back garden and then when it got chilly we came inside and did a podcast.

There’s not much of a theme this week because I can get a little bored of them, and from time to time it’s nice to just throw some tracks together that you like. And then get hammered and ramble on about them at interminable length. Sorry about that.

Toadcast #29 – The Summercast

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01. Lemonjelly – Nice Weather For Ducks (01.47)
02. Elbow – Station Approach (10.47)
03. The Eighteenth Day of May – Cold Early Morning (19.07)
04. Aberfeldy – Tom Weir (25.56)
05. Tiny Tim – Tiptoe Through the Tulips (27.47)
06. Uncle Moon – Pepper (34.41)
07. Lo-Fidelity Allstars – On the Pier (41.32)
08. The Boo Radleys – Find the Answer Within (48.17)
09. The Libertines – The Good Old Days (56.41)
10. The Undertones – Teenage Kicks (65.51)
11. The Von Bondies – C’Mon C’Mon (68.11)
12. The Builders & the Butchers – Spanish Death Song (76.41)
13. The Walkmen – The Rat (82.59)
14. Calexico – Corona (93.33)
15. Lloyd Cole – You’re a Big Girl Now (106.46)

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)

Sometimes promo people send me stuff so mismatched to my tastes I really shake my head at the waste of plastic, packaging and postage. Save yourselves the time and just sling it straight in the trash yourselves, for fuck’s sake. Sometimes, instead of just to me, this happens to the whole world at once. Meet the Hoosiers. If ever an album needed to go straight in the bin it is this garbage. It makes Athlete and Hard Fi seem like serious bands. It even suffers when compared to the scrotum-shrivellingly awful Maroon 5.

And it is Maroon 5 who perhaps are the most interesting comparison. Just look at the comments under this BBC review of the Hoosiers’ album. Poking about the internets, these lads just can’t buy a good review, and for very good reason: they’re rubbish. Limp, lifeless, criminally derivative and absolutely devoid of the barest scrapings of charm needed to moisten even Paris Hilton’s gusset. But look at those comments on the Beeb, and check out that other everyman review site, Amazon. This is a popular album. It’s even – *gulp* – in the charts.

The Guardian wrote a piece recently about Maroon 5 which opened with the following line: “They’ve sold 2m albums in the UK, 10m in the US. But they can’t get a good review.” Again, perhaps this might have something to do with the fact that they peddle a sort of spineless, neutered Argos Catalogue pop that carries all the emotional impact of a half-eaten Pot Noodle. But it is popular, and so are the Hoosiers.

It is easy in our insulated internet world of like-minded folks – who, let’s face it, we would never have found were it not for the wonders of the Information Super-cul-de-sac – to forget that things are popular because lots of people like them. Lots and lots of people. Remember how XFM used to be a really good radio station? Well since they were bought out and had the sperm drained from their testicles they have simply become more and more popular instead of, more deservingly, being dropped like a ginger step-child.

Basically, people like utter garbage and the general population’s taste is woefully bland. People are fucking shit. They shop at WalMart and Morrison’s, they buy Supermarket Pop like this dross, they watch Big Brother, and I’m a Celebrity, Tuck an Angry Hornet Under My Foreskin*. They buy a Ford Focus and drink in the Hogshead and All Bar One. They shop as a pastime, not as an obligation. Most people are fucking dismal, boring, dead, spiritless fucking ghosts.

And to communicate with them in a cool an unpretentious manner, record label marketing people write shite like this, from the Hoosiers’ RCA label page:

For those of you who have only just discovered The Hoosiers I will start at the start, for those who claim prior knowledge of The Hoosiers, I suggest you skip this bit and join us at the next paragraph. Deal?

Quickly, for I have little time as I must pop to the shop to pick up some milk: The Hoosiers (formerly The Hoosier Complex) are a triumvirate of odd-pop from Exeter, Reading and Stockholm. Before they were a three piece, they were a two piece and before that they were three one pieces. Its simple maths really, not rocket surgery – which, ironically, is where Irwin, (vocal “assaultist”) met Alfonso – formerly Alan (stick-ferret/drums) – ten years prior, in a local school band named Ronnie Rocket and the Rocket Surgeons.

No, no fucking deal. You make this deal with what remains of the empty shell of achingly meaningless tedium that you call a life if you so please, but only if you truly have not one last spark of spirit or dignity left in your dead soul.

What depresses me the most is that in most people’s view, the title of this album is entirely accurate. The Trick to Life for most people, it would appear, is to aspire to this sort of hellish existence, sound-tracked by, erm, whom, I wonder? Well at the bottom of the Hoosiers’ RCA page it recommends that, if you like the Hoosiers, try the following: Backstreet Boys, Kelly Clarkson, Natasha Bedingfield, Sandi Thom, Lil’ Chris and The Fray. These people do their research depressingly well.

The Boo Radleys – Wake Up Boo!
Johnny Boy – You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve
Radiohead – No Surprises
Dave Matthews Band – Ants Marching

*The actual program may be called something slightly different.