It may be getting dark now, but this morning was one of those days where I began to question my decision to put the office in a North-facing room.  Really, when it’s this sunny I just want to be able to enjoy the sunshine.  Mind you, I wouldn’t be able to read my computer screen, but that strikes me as a very small price to pay.

I am getting ready to go to Austin this week, leaving the house, the cats, the label and this weekend’s Ides of Toad gig in the hands of young Ian.  What, I hear you wondering, could possibly go wrong?

Actually, just getting ready to be out of the country for a couple of weeks is a major headache.  A lot of label and blog stuff can be done from foreign parts easily enough – they do have the internet in America after all – but there are a lot of practical things which I need to wrap up before I leave, so the next couple of days are going to be bloody mental, I fear.

And also, I miss all these fine gigs, which is annoying:

Thursday 8th March: Born to Be Wide Music Journalist Seminar at the Electric Circus.

If you’re in a band and you don’t want to know more about how music journalists think, what they like and don’t like, and stuff like that then frankly you’re an idiot.  At this month’s seminar will be: Claire Sawers (Music Editor, The List), Gary Flockhart (Evening News), David Pollock (Everyone) and Sue Wilson (Sunday Herald, Songlines, The Scotsman).

Friday 9th March: The Ides of Toad, with Adam Stafford, So Many Wizards & LeThug at Henry’s Cellar Bar.

I am really looking forward to this one.  Or at least, I would be if I weren’t going to be in Austin instead.  Instead, I leave this rather excellent lineup in the hands of Ian and yourselves, and I trust none of you will let me down.  So Many Wizards are touring from the States, Adam Stafford was one of my favourite performers I saw all of last year and LeThug are a highly, highly promising new droney, electronic pop band from Glasgow.

Lose Your Mind by so many wizards

Saturday 10th March: Loch Lomond & Frances McKee from The Vaselines at Sneaky Pete’s.

It’s highly frustrating that, given I was responsible for getting Loch Lomond over here in the first place, I have found it impossible to get to any of their gigs ever since they signed with Chemikal Underground.  After a stripped back tour earlier in the year, this is apparently a full band show, and their lush, orchestral pop is bloody gorgeous, so get down to it.

Loch Lomond – Wax & Wire

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Sunday 11th March: Lach at the Third Door.

Lach is finally legal and can finally legally work in the UK, and to celebrate he has booked a UK tour for April, and to warm up his musical muscles after a couple of spoken word sets, he’ll be playing at the Third Door this weekend.

Lach – Blue Overcoat by Song, by Toad

The Muppets win at everything.  That’s all I have to say on the matter.

In other news, Mrs. Toad and I went out into the garden this weekend, to try and tackle the small jungle which has slowly been developing since the Summer.  The weather has been so spectacularly shit since July and August that we just haven’t been out there, so our window boxes have all died and every bed was overrun with weeds.

Still, due to our particularly indelicate methods of gardening – a little closer to slash and burn than anything you might see on Gardeners’ World – we managed to get through an awful lot and also to shove some rather late bulbs into the ground, albeit more in hope than expectation.  It was nice though, especially because we haven’t been out there for months now.  Although fuck knows what we’re going to with all the piles of cuttings and various other crap we generated.

Anyway, after the extreme rock ‘n’ roll of a spot of gardening, I’m not sure that booze and drugs and gigs will impress me all that much.  But let’s give it a go, eh…

Thursday 2nd Feb: Born to Be Wide Festival Seminar at the Electric Circus.

The guests for this one include Dave Corbet (T In The Park/The Edge Festival), Katch Holmes (Knockengorroch Festival), Gordon Reilly (Insider Festival), Shaun Arnold (Go North). So if you want to know how best to get on festival bills and to hear some chat about what it can actually do for you, then I strongly recommend you come to this one.

Thursday 2nd Feb: Lady North play Sick Note at Cabaret Voltaire.

This is a late night club show, and I actually think this might be one of the best ways to experience Lady North’s thumping rhythms and hypnotic guitars.  And for those of you getting soused at Born to Be Wide ealier, then this would be an ideal place to stagger onto next.

Saturday 4th Feb: Love Your Library Day at Penicuik Library, with The Last Battle and Matt Norris and the Moon.

Ed from 17 Seconds has organised a couple of great events for National Libraries Day.  The first is a comedy night involving Frankie Boyle and Miles Jupp, but that’s sold out now, and the second is a musical event out in Penicuik, with a couple of 17 Seconds Records bands.  The 37, 47 or X47 will take you there really easily from the centre of Edinburgh, so I don’t want any whinging excuses about the enormity of the journey, it’s just not that hard.

Sunday 5th Feb: Dam Mantle plays Superclub at Sneaky Pete’s.

Dam Mantle is probably on the fringes of my taste for electronic music, truth be told, but for those of you with better knowledge of this kind of stuff I reckon this should be a very good bet.

One thing about going away on holiday is that I seem to have lost all grip on my Facebook invites.  And whilst I know that Facebook invites have become just another form of tedious spam for most of you, for me they are still a pretty handy way of staying on top of the week’s gigging activities.

The week’s gigging activites are relatively thin on the ground this week, however.  There is, of course, the BBC Scotland SXSW documentary tomorrow at 9pm.  There is plenty of Withered Hand, Kid Canaveral, Rachel Sermanni and Unicorn Kid to go around, as well as the likes of Vic Galloway, the Twilight Sad and of course my good self.  My parents will be watching and will no doubt very proud.  Or at least, hopefully a little less ashamed than usual.

As well as that there are a couple of gigs on, and the return of Born to Be Wide, whose sync panel takes place on Thursday.

Thursday 7th July 2011: Born to Be Wide Sync Panel at the Electric Circus.

Sync deals in adverts and TV shows are probably one of the few ways left for bands to make grown-up money in the modern music industry, but as a consequence, there are now a fuck of a lot of people rather greedily eyeing that money.  Giving us some advice on pinching a little for ourselves will be: Gerry Farrell (creative director of the Leith Agency), David Harron (Executive producer at BBC Scotland), Caroline Gorman (Rage Music), David McGinnis (A&R and head of licensing at Mute Song).

Thursday 7th July 2011: Alex Cornish at The Caves.

Alex starts his UK tour this week, and anyone who saw his amazing performance at the recent Song, by Toad house gig will presumably be up for this one, performed with a full band at Edinburgh’s snazziest venue.

Friday 8th July 2011: Plastic Animals Dark Spring EP launch with Trapped Mice & Yusuf Azak at The Wee Red Bar.

I first came across Plastic Animals only recently, but they were excellent supporting Milk Maid and PAWS at Henry’s a while back, and they have a new EP to promote as well, which you can buy here. It will also be a pleasure to see Yusuf Azak back in Edinburgh as well – he has a new album recorded and it’s bloody brilliant.

Plastic Animals – It Fell Apart

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If you’re reading this for tips, I’m afraid you’ve already missed the best gig in Edinburgh this week: Yo La Tengo at the Queen’s Hall, tonight.  Sorry about that.

There’s not much else, unfortunately, although Sneaky’s have Talons, Lady North and Jackie Treehorn on Wednesday, followed by Thomas Tantrum, New Fiction and Acrylic iQon the following day. Both of those look pretty interesting, but I can’t honestly claim to know much about any of the bands.

We also have a couple of Ides of Toad gigs next week, starting with Fatcat’s new signings Milk Maid on Monday 13th June at Henry’s Cellar Bar, supported by the awesome PAWS and new Edinburgh band Plastic Animals.  Then on Friday 17th June we have Meursault and Inspector Tapehead at The Caves.  Tickets for both of these can be found here, or at Avalanche down on the Grassmarket.

As for myself, this week I will be heading to GoNorth in Inverness. I’ll be participating in a couple of seminars, in case the shit I talk on Song, by Toad isn’t enough for you, so it would be nice if you fancied swinging by to say hello.

On Wednesday we have the Fringe events, where I’ll be on a panel on starting your own record label, alongside Jen from Euphonios and Lloyd from Olive Grove Records.  So if you want the kind of runaway global success we’ve achieved then I can tell you how to get it.

On Wednesday I am also involved in some one-to-one mentoring sessions, so if you want to sit down and go through the stages of my Guide to Self-Releasing an Album, or indeed talk about anything else, then send an email to jennifer@hailmusic.com.

On Thursday 9th there is the Scottish Music Bloggers Showcase night at a place called Flames. Jason, Lloyd and I looked through the successful applicants (I wasn’t part of that process, just picking the showcase once the shortlist had been made, so if you aren’t on there and I like your music I am denying all responsibility) and chose Indian Red Lopez, LightGuides, PAWS and Kid Canaveral.

And finally I’m also on the Music Blog panel on Friday at 2pm, talking to Lloyd again, who’ll be wearing his Peenko hat this time, Jason from The Pop Cop and John Robb about the effect of music blogging on the industry, and how best to get through to them if you are trying to promote your music.

So there you go – a busy fucking week.  If the posting schedule gets a little erratic you’ll know why, but I’ll try and keep things ticking over properly while I’m up North.

I have a lot of scrappy little bits of news to bring you today, so I figured one post with lots of those new-fangled bullet-point things the corporations seem so excited about would be the best way to do it.  Where is my Powerpoint?  My clipart?  My laser pointer?

1. Born to Be Wide

This month’s Born to be Wide takes place on Thursday 5th May at the Electric Circus myself, Lloyd from Peenko, Jason from The Popcop and Scott from Frightened Rabbit will be discussing music blogs for your, er, education and entertainment. *cough* Stuffs. Tickets can be had here.  I am putting together a very quick presentation on how easy music blogs are to set up, the various platforms you can use, and one or two pointers on what to consider before starting.

2. BRNLV Festival

Brainlove Records are one of my favourite indie labels from down South, and they have very kindly invited a collection of Toad-related nonsense down to the BRNLV Festival on Saturday the 28th of May.  Meursault are going down to play, as is Rob St. John, and I will be DJing at the event as well.   If anyone wants to come up and say hello, I will presumably be the one with the beard who plays about half a dozen songs before politely being invited to return to the bar and resume drinking.

3. Scottish Music Industry Awards

Voting for the Scottish Music Industry Awards is open now.  Song, by Toad has been nominated for best blog, and Song, by Toad Records for best label, but there are loads of other Toad favourites there to be voted for, although they sadly rejected my nomination of this as best music video of the year.

4. Wikio UK Blog Rankings

My immediate reaction to praise tends to be mistrust.  I think this is mostly a reaction to the small part of me which immediately punches the air and goes ‘yessss, I am that awesome!’, and the need to keep that kind of vainglorious self-congratulation as under control as possible.  So I was reading about the Wikio blog rankings which placed this blog as the twelfth most read music blog in the UK across all genres and I have to confess my immediate reactions were all along the lines of who they’d missed out, how reliable their rankings were and anything else I could think to avoid taking the results at face value.  So the below results are nice, but ummm, I still kind of assume they can’t be right.

1 Musicrooms.net
2 SoulCulture.co.uk
3 St. Peter’s View
4 Lil Wayne HQ
5 Alter The Press!
6 Matrixsynth
7 No Rock And Roll Fun
8 LondonJazz
9 Word Magazine blogs
10 Sweeping The Nation
11 Live4ever – The Brit Rock Daily
12 Song, by Toad
13 uncarved.org blog
14 We Plug G.O.O.D Music
15 Intermezzo
16 Southern Hospitality
17 Tom Service on classical music
18 Stereoboard.com Music & Tour News
19 We Are Pop Slags
20 Popjustice
Ranking made by Wikio

It’s relatively quiet in Edinburgh this week, but next week is going to be a bit mental, so perhaps taking it a bit easy for a few days is advisable, eh.  Oh well, perhaps not then.

First up is the Lets Get Lyrical Festival.  A bit more cerebral than your average stale beer-scented alternative music show, and hopefully as far as possible from the Drew Barrymore/Hugh Grant carnival of horror you see illustrated on the right.

Their full lineup of events can be found here, although sadly the King Creosote/Ziggy Campbell one at the Caves to tomorrow is apparently sold out.  And then I am away down South for the rest of the week.  Arse.

On the plus side, though, I am away down South to do a wee interview with BBC Introducing on Wednesday and then hang out with some of my long-neglected London pals for the next few days, so it should be an extremely good week for me, I reckon.

Thursday 3rd February: Born to Be Wide Music Photographers Night at Electric Circus.

This is almost sold out, apparently, so if you want to go I would recommend getting your tickets in advance.  Sitting through seminars may not seem like the best way to go about doing something which most people do as a creative outlet, but I promise you that these things can be extremely useful either the more you go to, or the more specific the

Friday 4th February: Esben & the Witch, Trophy Wife & Wintergreens at Sneaky Pete’s.

Presumably because of the name I think I dismissed Esben and the Witch as just another London (slightly)alternative folk band, but actually they are a bit more of a somewhat shoegazey guitar band.  I’m not massively familiar with the album yet, but what I have heard sounds really quite promising. The Wintergreens are an Edinburgh band who are a little less loud, but who also make rather promising sounding atmospheric guitar songs – they’ve been around for a while actually, and I have still not managed to see them play live.  Shame on me, I think it’s safe to say.

Esben & the Witch – Marching Song

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Friday 4th February: The Go Team at the Liquid Room.

This should be really quite fun.  I’ve always been a passive fan of the Go Team for ages – never wildly excited, but nevertheless happy to enjoy their stuff as and when it has crossed my path.  They have a new album out shortly too – in a week, I think – which I will review as and when I have had a chance to listen to it, which isn’t quite yet.  Still, there’s a four hour train ride to London to deal with.

The Go Team – Buy Nothing Day

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Here we are once more, another week closer to the darkest day of the year, which will be upon us scarily soon. Actually, it’s not the darkest day at all, is it, just the shortest one.  But I think you’ll agree that darkest sounds better.

The week just gone has seen the collapse of the Edinburgh Settlement, a charity which had existed for over a hundred years.  They seemed to hold a rather irresponsibly large number of expensive mortgages, which I can only guess played a significant role in their collapse, and indeed The Forest Cafe, Bristo Hall, The GRV and The Roxy Art House had been on the market for quite a while before the charity finally felt the chop late last week.

That’s all just me speculating of course, so don’t take it too seriously, but at the very least, carrying a lot of debt would not have helped at all as things became progressively tighter towards the end.

More to the point, Edinburgh is now down three venues, and we didn’t really have enough to begin with.  One very important point made in Drowned in Sound’s recent Glasgow love-a-thon was that we suffer very much for a lack of good venues over on this side of the M8.  We’re also pretty bloody short of active promoters at the moment, and this is just going to make it worse, leaving just one or two people to be responsible for the entire musical life of the city, which is really no good at all.

So good luck to all the now unemployed staff, and as for the rest of us (myself included): time to get things happening again please, because otherwise we’re going to end up with no bands at all putting Edinburgh on their tour itinerary.

Tuesday 2nd November 2010: Happy Birthday, Mitchell Museum & Morris Major at Sneaky Pete’s.

This will be straightforward, boisterous, bouncy indie pop from start to finish.  If you can’t have fun at this gig, I am tempted to suggest that you can’t have fun at all.

Mitchell Museum – Take the Tongue Out

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Tuesday 2nd November 2010: Michelle Shocked at the Queen’s Hall.

Michelle Shocked? I hear you ask.  Yes, Michelle Shocked.  She’s possibly gone a bit gospelly, rocky, souly recently – just look at the rather worrying blurb on the QH page – but in her early, acoustic days she wrote some truly wonderful songs.  So approach this with a little caution, but it could be really good.

Michelle Shocked – The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore

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Thursday 4th November 2010: Born to Be Wide: Playing Away at the Electric Circus.

The B2BW team bring us more practical tips and advice from the experts in the field.  After briefly shoehorning my way into the back of their A&R one last month, before remembering that I am not in a band and hence have no interest in getting signed and promptly fucking off to the pub instead, I am thinking that this one will be a little quieter and, from my perspective at least, a lot more directly relevant.  It’s about booking tours and getting gigs in faraway places.  Skills it would greatly improve our label to have at our disposal.

Thursday 4th November 2010: The Last Battle, The Scottish Enlightenment & Very Well at the Wee Red Bar.

Two bands you already know fine well I like, with the Scottish Enlightenment mere weeks away from their debut album launch.  A debut album which is, in case you were wondering, very very good indeed.  Very Well, though.  Anyone know anything about them?

The Scottish Enlightenment – The First Will Be Last

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Whenever the digital revolution gets mentioned in the press, or indeed in conversation, it tends to be closely accompanied by murmurings about declining CD sales and questions about whether or not the rise in digital sales makes up for that shortfall and whether or not anyone will actually need to own music in five years and so on and so forth.

The answers to the above questions are both simply ‘no’.  There is no need to own music anymore and digital sales will probably not make up for the revenue generated by the somewhat false heights of the CD industry.  So what.

What doesn’t get mentioned too often, though, is what an incredible benefit the mp3 has been to the CD in another sense: it has liberated it from the constraints of being a commodity product.  The mp3 is now the commodity, needing to be as cheap and readily available as possible, with price and availability considerably trumping any questions of quality.  High bitrate mp3s and lossless file formats don’t seem to have made any impression on the digital market when they have been provided at a premium price, and I don’t really think people care that much.  An mp3 is merely a commodity, shunted about in large quantities, and exists simply to reach as many people as possible and to generate revenue.  It is important, but very unglamorous work.

That used to be the job of the vinyl record, of course.  Then for a while it was the job of the cassette tape, although to a lesser extent, and by the nineties it was pretty much entirely the job of the CD.  What did that mean for the little shiny silver disc? Well as with any commodity product, it put pressure on price.  It was all about how cheaply you could make them, and in what volumes.  At those numbers any kind of increase in the manufacturing price has a massive knock-on effect on revenue generation, which is by its very nature what the ‘industry’ part of the industry cared about, no criticism implied.

Now, of course, no-one ever needs to buy a CD; it is as obsolete as vinyl and tapes.  There are still plenty of CD players around of course, and it will take a while to fully die out, but basically the CD has had its day as a delivery medium for music, as has any and every physical medium.  And for these various media that is a liberation, not a condemnation.

As we’ve seen recently, there has been a significant rise in vinyl releases and vinyl sales.  In the last year or so we’ve seen all sorts of things released on tape as well.  I wouldn’t be wholly surprised to see something released on DAT tape or something stupid like that in the near future, provided it still comes with a digital download.  I seem to recall someone from Domino boasting recently at a Born to Be Wide seminar that they had recently released something on a tin of beans.

Basically, it is no longer enough for a CD to be a mere delivery mechanism for the songs, because the mp3 does it cheaper, faster, and with more flexibility – better, in other words.   A physical product nowadays has to justify its existence in its own right, because the music contained thereon is not enough anymore, and this challenge has been risen to with some alacrity by the more forward-thinking record labels and self-releasing bands.  No-one needs to buy a CD these days, so if you are going to bother going to the trouble of making them then you have to make them worth owning.  The packaging has to be beautiful.  There has to be something extra.  It must, in itself, be something which is a pleasure to own and to use.

It reminds me a little of the argument about wine bottle sealing technology.  Screw-tops are, I seem to recall, actually better at preserving the wine properly, but they haven’t really made as much headway as they might.  Simply, they cannot compete with the satisfaction of cutting and removing the foil, and then uncorking a bottle of wine.  It’s a tactile pleasure, and I feel the same about music.

Vinyl may not reproduce music as faithfully as a CD or a high quality digital file, but there is a ritual to putting a record on the record player which mp3s and playlists can never match.  When it comes to opening a CD package to play an album the same has to be true.  Click on the picture above and have a look at the gorgeous packaging of the Now Owl album.  Apart from being an excellent piece of music (buy it here), that album is a pleasure to own, and a pleasure simply to open up and play.

Now, I think the CD has a few years left where people will buy it simply as a commodity – because that’s what they can play in their cars or their living rooms, perhaps.  In general the technology isn’t quite obsolete just yet.  But we are getting ever closer to the point where a physical medium for music is more of a hindrance than a help, and soon it will not be enough to simply put together some graphics and duplicate the music.

And in a way that will be a blessing, because freed from the rather brutal economics of the commodity product, where all is dependent on keeping costs down, you are now selling a luxury item, and the economics of that are rather different.  All of a sudden it makes sense to spend a little more on paper; to think of new ways to package your music; to release on tape, on CD on vinyl, on wax cylinder, on whatever you want; to sit there and hand-fold a few hundred copies and sell them for a little more; to hand-stitch your vinyl sleeves; to superglue actual sequins to your album cover…

When no-one has to buy your product anymore, the people who do buy are the ones who really want to, and they are great people to be working with as they will spend a little more money, and they will appreciate and reward that extra effort.  The whole transaction becomes a little bit more rewarding for everyone, which in my eyes is a very good thing indeed.

For those of you not so keen on the cut and thrust of the bleeding edge of alt-folk, there is the opportunity to do something to satisfy a couple of the other senses this week.   On Thursday 5th August there is a bit of a foodie event taking place at the Drill Hall on Dalmeny Street, called World Kitchen. Also, on Thursday, after having your ears assaulted by my dubious DJing skills, you may wish to pop down to the Wee Red Bar for the inaugural Chops club night.

Myself and Mrs. Toad are taking a bit of holiday too, bravely leaving our house and retarded cat in the hand of Mrs. Toad’s brother.  It works quite well actually.  He crashes with us for a bit, we get the house and cat looked after, and he gets to make a bit of money renting out his house during the Festival.  And then I’ll be back just in time to bugger off to Haarfest in Anstruther for a week and erm… well, there is a Festival in Edinburgh in August isn’t there?  It looks like I might actually miss most of it, although by an odd coincidence  I will be around every Sunday.

And that is a convenient happenstance, because for the month of August Ruth and my good self will be returning to Fresh Air Radio for our Toad and Ruth’s Toad and Ruth Show with Toad and Ruth, with shows from seven to half eight in the evening on Sundays the 15th, 22nd and 29th August, and a kick-off preview show which will be broadcast (Ruthlessly, unfortunately) this Wednesday 4th August from half eight.  As usual we’ll be looking to get guests and live music on the show, starting with legendary New York anti-folker Lach on the 15th, who will hopefully play a few songs and chat about Lach’s Anti-hoot, his Festival show in which he will be trying to recreate the spirit of New York anti-folk in Edinburgh.  Kinda like the Bowery, then.

Wednesday 4th August 2010: Calvin Johnson, Ben Butler & Mousepad and eagleowl at Pilrig St. Paul’s Church.

Pilrig St. Paul’s is on the corner of Leith Walk and Pilrig Street, and is just the latest in a long list of gorgeous venues sniffed out by Jillian and Emily from Tracer Trails.  It will also be the venue for this year’s christonafuckingbikeimohsoveryexcited Retreat Festival (free sampler of some of the bands involved to be found here), so this will be a chance to sneak preview the place before committing to a weekend of unspeakable joy and drunken liver-punches later in the month.  I know little about this particular lineup, I have to confess, apart from the fact that Calvin Johnson shares a label with the utterly unspeakable and profoundly punchable Jeremy Jay.  But I assume Mr. Johnson himself is a hell of a lot nicer or the Tracer Trails team would never be dealing with him in the first place.

Thursday 5th August 2010:Born to Be Wide Festival Special at the Electric Circus, with all sorts of DJs and bands.

This night is a preview night for Retreat, the Forest Fringe and Acoustic Edinburgh and a general statement that, Festival and imported musical exotica aside, there is plenty of awfy good stuff to be found here the rest of the year too.  There will be mini acoustic sets by a selection of bands on the hour, interspersed with equally mini DJ sets of local music toilers such as myself playing five-song sets of our favourite Edinburgh records. Enfant Bastard, Meursault, Emily Scott and the brilliantly named Haftor Medboe stand out for me on the list of artists booked to play.

Meursault – Love or Limb

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Friday 6th August 2010: Villagers at Sneaky Pete’s.

Villagers were very nearly reviewed on Song, by Toad when they released their debut album a month or so ago.  I found it all just a tad too nice, to be honest, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be genuinely interested to hear them live.  A live performance is often a little more raw than a recorded song, which often leads to me quite considerably preferring a live setting for some of the current rash of polished folk-pop.

Villagers – Becoming a Jackal

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Friday 6th – Sunday 15th August: Acoustic Cafe at the Roxy Art House.

This acoustic mini-festival starts this weekend and runs through to the end of the following one.  On Friday we have Iona Marshall and the Last Battle, Saturday is The One Ensemble and Yusuf Azak and Sunday Meursault (solo) and Esperi.  As well as Electric Circus, Ed from the Roxy seems to be one of the few committed to supporting local music during the tidal wave of imported bumph which swamps the place in August.

Yusuf Azak – Eastern Sun

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Saturday 7th August 2010: FOUND & Milk (I’m not sure that’s the right MySpace link) at the Electric Circus.

FOUND’s rather fantastic (Machine Age Dancing!  MACHINE AGE DANCING!!!) new album is out soon.  How soon I don’t quite know I have to confess, but I can tell you this about it: it’s more of an abrasive indie-rock album that I ever expected from these lads which, frankly, is just showing off.  Get back in your pigeonhole you alt-folk glitch-hopsters!

FOUND – Freaky Freaky Chancer

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Ah the cooling touch of sweet, clean porcelain.  And it may well be hot in our house, but dammit I have never experienced such an unpleasant sleeping experience as being baked alive inside a tent when the sun comes up as fiercely as it did this weekend at Glastonbury. Dear God almighty that was a nasty way to wake up, especially with a vindictive little bastard of a hangover kicking away at the inside of your head.

We didn’t do too badly for facilities actually – it’s the single greatest advantage of going to festivals with a band – but I am reminded of a daft little toilet story from my old job (no, STOP IT, it’s nothing like that, honestly) which I have intended to mention for a while and always forgotten.

Scotland is a very long way north, a very, very long way north in fact, and this means that during the Winter you arrive and leave work in the dark.  It can be lighter in the mornings, but by the time four in the afternoon rolls around, it is generally pitch fucking black outside.  Add to that the fact that we used to do most of our work on computers, even when the sun was shining the blinds were generally pulled right down so that people could see their monitors.

So yes, it was quite a dark place to work, with one glorious exception: you guessed it, the men’s toilet.  I’m not kidding.  That side of the building was south-facing so, you could be sitting in a dingy office with the blinds drawn all day, arrive and depart in the dark, but every once in a while, on one of those beautifully clear sunny days that Scotland has, you would walk into the loo and be confronted by this blaze of sunshine.  It was great.  It just lifted your spirits.

Now I’ve managed to tell you that little story in total sincerity and with a (largely) straight face, do you think I can trust you to be grown ups about it in the comments?  No, probably not.   Honestly, you people…

Thursday 1st July 2010: The Last Battle single launch at the Wee Red Bar, with Meursault and Jonnie Common.

The Last Battle’s new album is due out on 17 Seconds Records, and this is the first single from that record.  They play quite traditional folk, with cello and lovely male/female vocals but this song is a bit rockier in that ‘Christ alive, is that an electric guitar?’ sense, and a good, beefy introduction to the band.  I have a feeling the Meursault might be solo acoustic, but I am not entirely sure.

The Last Battle – Ward 119

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Thursday 1st July 2010: Born to Be Wide Booking Agent Special at the Electric Circus.

To be brutally frank, my little experience in the music industry has taught me that the following is as close to a cast iron rule as there exists: labels and PR, cannot make you famous, only you can make you famous.  You can only do that if you play as often and as well as possible, and in doing so build up enough momentum and buzz around your band that everyone else, be it press, radio, fans, whatever, absolutely has to take notice, or they simply wouldn’t be doing their jobs.  There are exceptions of course, there always are, but that is pretty close to a hard and fast rule.  Booking tours and getting gigs is far from easy however, I’ve done it myself and it was shit and I was shit at it, so I strongly recommend you come along to this and pick the brains of some professional booking agents.

Thursday 1st July 2010: Stringjammer at the Roxy Room.

This may be a little more related to the likes of blues and traditional folk than most of you are used to, but I think there’s a lot of good stuff going on in Stringjammer’s music.  Long Road Home, on their MySpace page, is a case in point, and there is more there like that.  There’s a lot of experimental and strange stuff in there, but they obviously started from quite traditional base material before they went and made it all weird, so I think this one should appeal to readers of Toad.

Saturday 3rd July 2010: Kid Canaveral album launch at the Roxy Room, with Come on Gang! and the Scottish Enlightenment.

Tickets for this can be bought from the band here, and I recommend you do so. Kid Canaveral are not exactly a fashionable band – they’re not even close to being arch enough for that – but they have an amazingly consistent talent for writing infectious indie-pop melodies.   Also, The Scottish Enlightenment – I might finally get a chance to see the bastards play!

Kid Canaveral – Stretching the Line

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