I feel like one of those email boasters this week.  You know the sort of unspeakable cunt who constantly goes about telling you how many emails they get and how marvellously important they must therefore be and blah blah blah blah blah…?  Well, that’s me.

Not entirely, I hope, but close.  I made a concerted effort while we were away to keep my inbox as pruned as possible, by deleting anything with the word remix in it, and all those stupid invitations to parties in New York and London people seem to send.  ‘What, really?  Yes, I’d love to come, will you book the flights or would you rather reimburse me when I get there?’  Fuck off.

Anyhow, the issue with my inbox is not so much the quantity – it’s not that crazy, if I’m being honest – it’s actually a slightly different problem: that of time.  See, it’s not enough just to rattle through all the emails, read ‘em, reply to those which need replies and so on.  Most of the emails I get are musical, so I actually have to sit down, clear my head a bit and listen to the songs which are sent through and make a reasonable enough decision about whether or not I actually like the stuff in question.  So even clearing ten or twenty emails can take absolutely ages, because I want to be certain I’m giving bands a fair crack.

So, as you can probably tell, there will be no five tunes this week, just five pictures from my iPhone Hipstamatic frenzy from our week in China.  As I confessed in my previous China post, I got a little overly carried away with that particular app, to the point that Mrs. Toad would roll her eyes at me and make that face every time I broke out the iPhone to take picture.

The picture at the top, incidentally, is of a place called Moon Hill, which we climbed, right to the very top of that doughnutty bit at the very top.  Given that we both suffer quite badly from vertigo and blubber that was something of an achievement, I think, although I have never, ever in my life been so sweaty as I was by the time we got to the top.  I could actually wring out my t-shirt and get a fucking glass of water.

So, erm, yes the whole gallery can be seen here, for those of you who are interested.  We did take some proper pictures too, but they need a bit of pruning and editing so they won’t be ready for a while.  Once more, I owe a massive thank you to Dylan for both tending the site in my absence and for stepping in at the last minute to drive Meursault to End of the Road, and to Martin and Bart for contributing posts in my absence.  I think it’s important to keep the blog pottering along, whether or not I’m around, so their help is much appreciated.

Oh, and of course, I need five questions, don’t I, to encourage you to delurk and waste your Friday talk garbage on the internet with my good self and anyone else who happens to be passing.  I am addressing promo copies this afternoon, so my concentration span will almost certainly be pitiful and I will almost certainly be desperately grateful for even the flimsiest excuse to procrastinate.

1. Instead of that cadaverous old goblin who scuttled his way around Edinburgh yesterday, who would actually head your church?
2. Office boast which makes you most want to punch someone.
3. How has a travelling companion most irritated you in the past?
4. As my brother and I used to say: ‘Ah, photographs.  So much better than actual memories.’  Upon which side of this fence do you sit?
5. Worst thing about returning from holiday.

Oh balls to it, alright then, six pictures.  But that’s yer lot, dammit.

The Sunday Supplements were supposed to be the opportunity for people other than myself to chip in to Song, by Toad. Basically, it was supposed to make the site more interesting and to make this a bit less like my own personal carnival of tedious navel-gazing.

Mrs. Toad and I have been away in China for a couple of weeks now though so, with huge thanks to Martin, Bart and Dylan, the site has been in other people’s hands for the last little while, so I suppose it makes a degree of sense for me to be writing the Sunday Supplement for a change.

I’ll write a longer, more in-depth post when I get back, but for now I figured I might chip in with a few pictures and five quick things I have learned about China in the last week or so.

In terms of pictures, I have been utterly obsessed with the ridiculously addictive Hipstamatic app for my iPhone, which basically just vintageifies your pictures and makes them look a million times cooler than your mere photographic skill alone might allow. I’ve uploaded a rather excessively large gallery of them here, for those of you who are interested. Some of them really are very cool though, although I am not sure how much credit I myself can take for that; not much I suppose.

Anyhow, five quick facts about China for you…

1. Beijing is shit, and it doesn’t care.

Despite hosting the (shit) Tiananmen Square and the (boring) Forbidden Palace, two of China’s best known landmarks, all trace of concession to tourists both foreign and domestic dissipates within a street of these places.

Even the hutongs, which flank the Forbidden Palace East and West and are fascinating islands of old fashioned life in the middle of a modern city of fifty million inhabitants, are entirely devoid of curious wanderers.

Basically Beijing is a gigantic, buzzing centre of commerce and industry and doesn’t give a fuck about being picturesque or easy on the senses. It’s busy, it’s got its own shit going on, you won’t be impressed and it doesn’t care a fig for your lack of enthusiasm.

2. The Chinese will not touch the floor. Ever.

Laying newspaper out on the floor of a railway station to avoid the arse of your jeans touching the floor may seem a little over-precious, but it is at least understandable.

On the overnight train to Guilin, however, our fellow passengers would go to all sorts of extreme lengths to ensure that when they climbed down from their bunks it was to step straight into a waiting slipper rather than, shock horror, the actual floor.

They must have thought we were right mucky fuckers, hopping down without a care and fishing about for our shoes afterwards.

3. The Chinese Make the Best Fried Chicken Anywhere, Ever.

I haven’t tasted your country’s local fried chicken recipe, but I can absolutely guarantee you that you are at best scrapping over fifth place in the Worldwide Chicken Hall of Fame. All the top four places (at least) are occupied by the Chinese.

Yesterday our chicken had star anise and a cinnamon stick in it. Today there were about fifty dried chilis on the plate with it and a fistful of Szechuan pepper, one of the most wonderfully fragrant spices known to man.

And always garlic. Lots and lots of garlic. Fucking delicious.

4. ‘No Sweat’ Pace

When we first got here we quickly became frustrated by just how incredibly fucking slow everyone was, walking along the street. I myself amble along at a far from urgent pace, but over here I felt like was rattling along at a brisk march.

A week of pouring sweat later we finally began to understand why they walk so slowly. And we quickly mended our ways.

5. Chinese Massage is Fucking Torture

I don’t kid myself I’m some sort of hard man, but I have never been so badly beaten up by a teenage girl before. Fucking hell. I have no idea who the fuck does this for enjoyment, but Chinese massage is excruciatingly painful.

Some people would say that it ‘releases the tension’ in tight muscles, but I am calling total bullshit on that. Just because it is an incredible relief when someone stops inflicting unbearable pain on you does not mean you are being cured of anything, it’s just nice that the agony abates from time to time. I am not believing any of that ‘releases tension’ bullshit until I’ve seen some graphs, dammit.

I am no fan of the limp, half-arsed rub-downs administered by orange ladies from Livingston which pass for massages in Scotland, but Christ, I swear I have never been so close to punching a pretty four stone waif in the face as I was at two o’clock this afternoon.

Ha! Any excuse to shoe-horn a bit of vintage REM into the equation! Although I’ve probably desecrated five millennia of Chinese mythology by misappropriating it like that. Sorry!

So… Mr. and Mrs. Toad have invaded China to spread the good word of the amphibian god, Toad-Ra, and left Toad Enterprises Inc.â„¢ to its own devices, which leaves me in charge of copying-and-pasting stuff up onto the blog.

If you’d like to see your name up in lights on here over the next couple of weeks, like Martin did yesterday with his excellent gig review, just drop me a line - probably best to use the sunday(at)songbytoad(dot)com email address. Basically I’m trying to avoid writing too much and would prefer it if you lot did it all instead!

That photo of the little Feng Shui toad reminds me of a guy I used to work for in Cardiff. He ran a small but fairly successful chain of bars and restaurants, but then got all mystical on us and got into Feng Shui and all that self-help shit. He decided that what Cardiff really needed was a shop half-filled with distressingly hippy-dippy life-enhancement tat like healing crytals and dozens of little toads like that one in the picture, while the other half of the shop was filled with heaps of American self-help Anthony Robbins bollocks retailing at around £150 for a pack of six audio cassettes. The fella was forced to close the shop within a year. Fucking idiot.

Anyway, it wouldn’t be Friday without a five, would it? So here we go. Remember to delurkify yourself and get stuck into the bizarre, unpredicatable and frankly suggestive banter that usually occurs on a Friday. Hey, beats working.

1. If you were to visit China, what in particular would you make sure you experienced while you were there? (If you’ve already been - you can tell us what you enjoyed most.)

2. What dish do you always order from the Chinese take-away?

3. And the oddest Chinese thing you’ve ever eaten.

4. Do you practise any Feng Shui at home?

5. Happy-clappy shiny-shiny hippy-dippy Anthony Robbins self help plans. A genuine method to improve your life or a pile of hoary old arse?

And, look! Here’s five delicious tunes!

REM – Seven Chinese Brothers

China Drum – Wuthering Heights

China Crisis – Black Man Ray

Ed Harcourt – Shanghai

David Bowie – China Girl

So there are two huge international festivals of comedy currently underway. One of them is here in Edinburgh now that the Festival Fringe is well up to steam. (The only thing more annoying than trying to navigate pavements packed with thousands of lost tourists not looking where they’re going as you try and go about your daily business, is trying to navigate pavements packed with thousands of lost tourists not looking where they’re going and all carrying umbrellas.)

The other is in Beijing where the games of the 29th olympiad look to have got off to an unsurprisingly farcical start. Despite the Chinese authorities’ attempts to polish their turd of a regime while it’s on display to the world, flaws are rapidly beginning to appear.

Of course, there’s the hullaballoo erupting about elements of the opening ceremony being faked. The story regarding one little girl miming to another little girl’s singing voice simply because the organisers thought she was prettier, along with the bit about the ’live’ fireworks displays that were created with CGI beforehand then cut into the live TV images being transmitted around the world; are both hilarious, but hardly surprising. As some commentators have said; China are trying to present an acceptable image of their country for western audiences to digest, and when so much of our media output in the west is faked or subverted, why shouldn’t they adopt a similar approach? The problem seems to be just that the Chinese aren’t very good at it.

Perhaps more worryingly, there are reports of a British TV journalist being arrested and ‘roughed up’ by Chinese police, and having his equipment confiscated, for merely being nearby when someone unfurled a Tibetan flag.

The most worrying for me though are the reports of large groups of locals being – ahem – shanghaied into attending Olympic events to fill up empty stadia. I saw a terribly sad TV report from a journalist who had interviewed some of these unfortunate souls at the fencing event. I mean; who the fuck wants to go and see fencing?!

REM – King Of Comedy
Ed Harcourt – Shanghai

As the Western economy lurches about like a sea bird caught in an oil slick, pathetically flapping its leaden wings in a desperate attempt to become airborne again, one nation, even more so than usual, is being mentioned in almost every conversation: China.

I work with a lot of manufacturing companies, and a lot of people whose bread and butter comes from technical innovation, and for a long time they were downright scared by China.  This seems to be lessening now, as it inevitably emerges that, while the Chinese are brilliant at some things, they are dreadful at others.  Slowly something of an ecosystem appears to be developing, instead of the swarm of locusts that many feared.

This might all change as the Western economy tanks, of course, but that’s largely by the by.  One of the things that has always struck me when working with the Chinese has been their cheerful disregard for the notion of intellectual property.  This has caused problems for manufacturers of course: just have a look at these iPhone imitators, released almost simultaneously with the original.  But intellectual property is such a hot potato within the entertainment and particularly the music industry at the moment that it has always intrigued me what will happen when Chinese indifference meets Western protectionism.

One thing is for sure, the Chinese will not give a septic purple fuck about the major record labels.  They are content to completely ignore Apple, remember, and the combined turnover of the big four records labels actually fell below that of Apple Computers this year*, for the first time, so the chances of their imaginary financial muscle holding any great sway with the Chinese government seem slim.  One of the few benefits of the Chinese political system , of course, is that their government is less cravenly beholden to the avaricious agenda of big business than their Western counterparts.

So how does this apply to the music industry?  Well I don’t think it’s particularly great news, to be honest.  I am not really convinced by the complete and unlimited free download model, because I have yet to see real money being made by people who embrace it, although that is changing. Nine Inch Nails recently sold out of the premium version of their recent release, after making a basic digital version available for nothing on Bittorrent sites.  Radiohead are another obvious example, so the business models may be slowly emerging.

But if the Chinese do embrace Glamorous Indie Rock ‘n’ Roll then it may become less about just their influence on the business model, which may be more predictable, than about their influence on trends and fashions.  Regionalised music markets have never made much impression on me, despite MTV starting bespoke Asian, Spanish and Russian channels, among others.  What is going to happen to Western music’s cultural hegemony when the Indian and Chinese artists start to make serious inroads into the market?  We’ve already seen the Bollywood film industry gain a significant foothold in the world of movies, so I’ve been curious for a while to know what’s actually going on in the Chinese music scene.

Well the answer, according to both my own MySpace investigations, and this recent Guardian article, is not all that much and far, far too much of it is emo.  It appears to be something of a marginalised industry, not least because participating seems to imply more rebellion in China than it does here, and this is something they are often keen to avoid.  There are a couple of decent record labels – Fly Fast, Suyin Records, Scream Records and a few more -  and a couple of groups we would recognise as indie rock, but that was about all I could find.  I tried not to reproduce that Guardian list in my mp3s, but it was hard as there wasn’t much to find, half the MySpace players refused to load properly, and I do have a proper job to do during the day of course.

So I don’t think I’ve found much in the way of answers, but the whole idea is fascinating me a bit and I think I’ll keep exploring for a while. In the meantime, check out this lot and see what you think.  Not all great, but I am intrigued nevertheless.

New Pants – Forgot Yesterday MySpace
Carsick Cars – Darkland’s Feedback MySpace
Snapline – Catch You Low MySpace
Joyside – Dong Dong Dong MySpace
Too Koo – Rusty MySpace

*I don’t have a source for this right at this moment, but I am confident of the fact and will provide a source as soon as I dig it up.