Song, by Toad

So, finally some more sessions happening – this week we have Edinburgh’s most tippediest new band The Last Battle popping in.  There are something like seven of them, I think, so I hope they’ve either limited their numbers for this evening or I suddenly develop into a technical genius, because recording seven musicians with two microphones might prove to be somewhat tricky.

Ruth and I are still trying to think up a suitably hybrid name for the show.  Song, by Toad is basically my thing, and calling the show that rather underplays her role in it, so we thought we’d try and find another name if we could.

Last week’s suggestions included the Princess and the Toad and the current favourite: Toad on a Hot Tin Ruth.  Any further suggestions will be most welcome – please just pop ‘em in the comments below.

Live on Air 8pm-9.30pm – Listen live here.

I’ll fill in the playlist live below from 8pm onwards, so please come and say hello, shout mindless abuse or whatever else it is you internet people spend your time doing.

1. Clem Snide – Moment In The Sun
2. Amanaz – Sunday Morning
3. The Last Battle – Nature’s Glorious Rage (Live in Session)
4. Joni Mitchell – Carey
5. Slow Club – Lets Fall Back In Love
6. The Last Battle- Black Waterfall (Live in Session)
7. Dr. Dog – Shadow People
8. The Last Battle – Cutlass (Live in Session)
9. Hailey Beavis – In Any Case
10. Yo La Tengo – Yellow Sarong
11. The Beatles – Sexy Sadie
12. The Last Battle – Oh Best Beloved (Live in Session)
13. The Akron Family – River
14. The Last Battle – Soul of The Sea (Live in Session)
15. Lambchop – Every Time I Bring it Up it Seems to Bring You Down

Thanks people, see you next week for the Mammoeth session.

This, a little like Eels’ last album, is going to be a slightly difficult one for me to review, because my relationship with The Meat of Life is about my relationship with an entire back catalogue and the last ten years of my life, rather than just my relationship to a single album of new Clem Snide songs.

Musically, Clem Snide pretty much stopped surprising me with End of Love, back in 2005 or so.  That was a great album, but it wasn’t particularly varied in texture, and took me a long time to get into.  Eef Barzelay’s phenomenal solo debut, Bitter Honey, stripped everything back to the barest of bones, but his follow up, and subsequent Clem Snide stuff has been very uniform of pace and mood.

That sounds like a criticism, and I suppose it is, in the sense that I can’t imagine someone who is new to Clem Snide being as excited by this album as I was by Your Favourite Music and Ghost of Fashion.  Given that it’s not exactly riff- or hook-heavy music, which is the most common fall-back position for bands with a very straightforward sound, you could be forgiven for finding their recent stuff a bit stodgy and lacking in a certain spark, I suppose.

That probably sounds like an almighty slagging off to deliver about an album which I actually like an awful lot, but I suppose I’m just trying to say this: I can understand people finding this musically very plain vanilla, and in a sense I would agree, but that’s not really why I think Clem Snide have been one of the best bands on the planet for the last ten years, and why I go back again and again to listen to their music.

It’s not just the obvious stuff: that the lyrics are fucking brilliant.  Barzelay does have an inspired way with the language – cutting and sympathetic at the same time; devastated and yet bitterly amused; vulnerable and defiant – but I think it might be the actual delivery which does it for me.  Because for all the music may not offer a lot of innovation in the way it is put together, it does put across the emotion of the songwriting with tremendous impact.  I don’t know many bands who can make you feel what they are feeling with anything like the clarity and compulsion of Clem Snide.

Songs like BFF, Denver and Please are as good as anything these guys have written, and Song For Mary, for all it sounds like a song they’re already recorded half a dozen times already, still has that ability to take exactly what the song is trying to express and just embed it directly into your psyche.  There may be a couple of songs on this which I’m not so keen on, and particularly if you’re new to the band it may take you a while to get into, but this really is a very good record.

Clem Snide – Denise

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Clem Snide – Denver

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One drink, home early, not staying out, want to take it easy tonight… it’s just never going to bloody happen, is it.  Pure fantasy.

Last night’s escapades mean that I had far too little sleep last night, and something of a hangover this morning.  This puts me in no fucking mood to piss about with my cunting colleagues, who seem to have decided that answering the fucking phone is beneath them.  Our receptionist is off today, which means that we all have to take turns answering the phone, but apparently ‘taking turns’ needs to be explained in really big letters, and preferably with pictorial aids.  Apprently some people simply don’t hear and some people ‘have a deadline’.

To put you in the picture, there are only about twenty of us in our office in the first place, and we are a consultancy – every single fucking one of us is working to a fucking deadline, because that’s what our damn clients pay us for: to do their panicking for them.  I actually had to reach over some cunt’s desk this morning in order to answer the incoming call on his fucking phone.

“Hi, SuperdesignCo…  yes just a moment, who’s speaking please… yes I’ll put you through.”  Hardly enormously time consuming or intellectually fucking challenging you would fucking well think.  It reminds me of those cunts who are forever boasting about how many emails they bloody well have.  Yes, don’t worry, we all know how jolly clever and important you are.  There’s time for a chat, time for a coffee, time to fanny about pissing and moaning about how fucking busy they are, but not enough time to spend a minute answering the fucking telephone.

So for the rest of the day, I am far too busy and have decided that I am going to be pointedly too important to answer the damn phone.  Fuck it, it isn’t going to be for me anyway, so if anyone wants me I am going to be having a nap in the loo.

1. Name the worst violation of workplace etiquette which regularly gets your goat at your job.
2. And confess to the one you are most guilty of yourself.
3. Which office charicature is most prevalent in your place of work.
4. You have one bullet, and the world has promised to turn a blind eye… who’s for the chop?
5. How many hours of actual work do you tend to accomplish on hangover days?

The Sequins – Let’s Go Drinking in the Morning

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Clem Snide – Don’t Be Afraid of Your Anger

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The Divine Comedy – A Drinking Song

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John Cooper Clarke – Twat

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The Notwist – Pick Up the Phone

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Bloody hell the year has started slowly in the world of Edinburgh live music.  The weekend just gone was very good, or at least it would have been if I hadn’t missed most of the good music in order to sit in the office here at Proper Job and stare at my computer while it stumbled through renderings for most of the day.

Other than that though there has been very little on since the new year, which is becoming a bit of a worry.  With the Roxy yet to show any real sign that they are going to pick up where the Bowery left off, Henry’s yet to announce their February gigs and the Liquid Rooms burned to the bloody ground, things are looking a little thin at the moment.

Trampoline are still putting on gigs at the Wee Red, but little seems to happen there beyond that monthly night.  Cabaret Voltaire have been told to focus their booking effort on enticing outside promoters to work with them (what outside bloody promoters, I can’t help but wonder).  Sneaky’s are trying their best, but things have still been a little quiet there too, truth be told.  All in all, it adds up to a rather worrying picture, honestly.  There is simply a considerable dearth of promoters in Edinburgh at the moment.  No-one has replaced Spitfires, Tracer Trails are showing signs of returning, but very slowly, Black Tape have packed it in, and I may do a quarterly night for the label, but that’s hardly enough.

In mitigation, there are apparently soon to be developments at the Roxy for the booking of the downstairs gig space, so hopefully we should see a big upswing there shortly, and coming out of recession a lot of bands have been cancelling tours due to money issues, so these problems aren’t ours alone.  I’ve been keeping an eye on the listings at Tut’s and Sleazy’s and the ABC in Glasgow and they too are not showing many signs of life.

So maybe I should just shut up moaning and wait it out like everyone else.  Maybe I should even take advantage of the quiet to get some label work done and finish the eagleowl Toad Session.  Still, I’m not bloody happy.  Not bloody happy at all.

Thursday 4th February 2010: Born to Be Wide’s German Night at the Voodoo Rooms, with Jeans Team.

This is Born to Be Wide’s sixth birthday celebration, so the usual seminar will be downstairs in the Speakeasy before the gig things kick off upstairs in what I think is called the Ballroom.  I don’t know much about German music, apart from the ludicrous excellence of Die Aertzte, so I had to settle for a couple of songs with the word German in them.  They’re good songs, but I am as aware as you are just how much of a cop-out it is to post them.

Clem Snide – The Sound of German Hip-Hop

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Germans – I am the Teacher

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Sunday 7th February 2010: Still Flyin’ at Sneaky Pete’s.

These chaps are pretty good actually – bouncy indie pop and infectious choruses.  Of all the gigs this week this would probably be my pick.

Still Flyin’ – Good Thing it’s a Ghost Town Around Here

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Mrs. Toad has been away in China for the last week or so and, frankly, I am jealous.  I am wedded to Edinburgh now, for fairly obvious reasons, but I have always been something of a gypsy, as have my parents, and as such China has held a pretty significant fascination for several years now.

I spent three years in Singapore between the ages of eleven and fourteen and I absolutely loved the place.  Not just Singapore, but all the travelling we did in South East Asia – I was absolutely captivated.

Honestly, if it were not for you musical muppets I would be pestering Mrs. Toad for us to move to China already.

Toadcast #106 – The Sinocast

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01. T’Pau – China in Your Hand (5.12)
02. I Am Oak – Ohayo (10.49)
03. Django Django – Love’s Dart (13.27)
04. Django Reinhart – China Boy (22.49)
05. Clem Snide – Wal-Mart Parking Lot (31.22)
06. Frightened Rabbit – Fun Stuff (33.51)
07. The Shop Assistants – Somewhere in China (41.07)
08. David Bowie – China Girl (46.26)
09. Lincoln – Great Wall of China (51.47)
10. Snapline – S2 (65.31)

Instead of being at a friend’s stag do in Berlin I am stranded in Edinburgh.  Even more frustrating, this stag do was going to involve going to a football match and indie clubs instead of strip bars and nightclubs, so would almost certainly have been excellent fun.  Given my general terror of stag nights, I was actually rather looking forward to this one.

I actually didn’t bother to have a stag do, largely because I couldn’t be bothered, but also I have never had enough of a predominance of male friends to make it seem anything other than awkward.  Contrary to the suspicions of the feminists I have outraged on these pages, I have always got along very well with women in general.  Presumably this is because I tend to judge people entirely on whether they irritate the shit out of me or not, so despite being an offensive bastard, I’m not all that prejudiced really.  So erm, how do you decide to head off with all your male pals and leave the women behind, especially when, like myself, you would have no intention of doing anything especially blokey in the first place.

My brother had an excellent stag do actually (more of that later), and Mrs. Toad got absolutely wrecked with her family and ended up dancing around the kitchen with her sister-in-law and niece bellowing pop classics into mop-head microphones.  There are pictures and no, no they aren’t good.

The reason I am not in Berlin an hammered off my tits at this precise moment in time is because we are having something of a mental panic at Proper Job, motivated by our most incredible client.  They should give up on medical devices and turn their attention to a perpetual motion machine, because the sheer inexhaustible power of their knee-jerking just never seems to run out.  It’s not even a complicated product, but there you go.  The decision paralysis that descends upon large groups of people is a powerful force indeed.

Ach, so take pity on me and de-lurk.  Last weekend lots of new London people de-lurked at the Meursault shows and said hello, which was rather nice.  And just last night Jesus H. Foxx de-lurked as well, opening their new blog to the public, where they are going to post news on the recording of their new album as well as demos and works in progress from the recording sessions, so I recommend you keep an eye on that one.

1. Ideal stag/hen do.
2. Stag/hen do from hell (anecdotal or imaginary).
3. Most dubious place you’ve ever allowed a partner to go, unsupervised.
4. Marriage: is there really any point (this is not a loaded question; I am married myself, remember, and I still don’t think I have an answer).
5. Proportion of your life you’ve known your current/last partner.

Billy Bragg – The Marriage

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Tom Waits – Better off Without a Wife (Yes, I know I always play this one.)

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Mark Lanegan – Wedding Dress

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Clem Snide – Forever, Now & Then

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Snow Patrol – Make Love to Me Forever

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I posted a spot of video yesterday, which I don’t normally do.  Not that I don’t get sent videos by people, more that… well, I don’t know why, really.  I guess I spend enough time trying to figure out what I want to write about albums, I don’t really make time to think about videos much.  Besides, at the level of music I am generally interested in most videos are just a vehicle for the song anyway.  And I can listen to albums whilst doing my proper job, which also hel… you’ve dozed off haven’t you?  Sorry.

Anyhow, this week I have posted a massive THREE videos.  Three!  How ’bout that.  And this weekend there will be another eight going up, from the New Year’s House Gig, including something of an exclusive: a new Broken Records song.  So there you go, we’ve turned into some sort of multimedia news-whore hipster haven in the new year, shocking isn’t it.

So, on yesterday’s posting of the new OK Go video, Bart suggested that I ask about favourite music videos for this week’s Friday Fives.  I thought I answered him politely enough, but the poor fellow’s gone completely off the rails.  I tried to get to the bottom of what he was burbling on about in that inscrutable ginger way of his, but all he said was this:

And erm, tee hee, sorry!  Gingers – the last ethnic minority it’s okay to ritualistically make fun of.  Anyhow, minor mentalist distractions aside, I thought this was an excellent idea, so this week’s five will all be about music videos.  This should be as good an opportunity to de-lurk as any, and of course, that’s what the Friday Fives are for – getting people out of the woodwork and onto the page – so have a go at these five.  the easiest way to answer is probably to just link to the YouTube videos where appropriate, I guess, but please don’t try and embed them in the comments.  I have no idea if it would work, and it will make the whole thread an ungodly mess – just paste in the URL and the link will be added automatically.

1. Favourite music video
2. Favourite laughably dated music video.
3. Favourite massively DIY music video.
4. Strongest memory of MTV.
5. Favourite band-related moment in an actual motion picture.

Clem Snide – Made for TV Movie

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Ben Folds Five – Video

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Nirvana – Dumb (MTV Unplugged)

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Bruce Springsteen – Thunder Road (MTV Unplugged)

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The A-Team Theme (Okay, the movie looks awful, but I couldn’t resist posting this)

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Unfortunately due to technological disasters there was no recording, and not even any broadcasting, of last week’s Mammoeth session I’m afraid.  So I’d like to apologise to Russell, and promise to get him back in next year at the first available opportunity to have another go. I suppose it’s no consolation to any of you for me to tell you that he was really good?  No, thought not.

As for this week, we were supposed to have Dan from Withered Hand and Neil from Meursault doing a joint session, because they are recording a joint EP in the near future and it seemed like a nice idea.  Dan is unable to make it unfortunately, so you will have to make do with Neil I’m afraid.  Fortunately the lad can sing a bit so it’s unlikely to ruin your evening.

As per usual the playlist below will be updated live as we go along, and the comments section will be the best place for all your usual abuse/sniping/snide remarks.

Live on Air 7pm-8.30pm – Listen live here.

This week’s playlist:
1. Shearwater – Castaways
2. Navigator- Work Is Done
3. Meursault – Love or Limb (live in session)
4. Kath Bloom – Come Here
5. Clem Snide – I Heard My Mother  Praying For Me
6. Meursault – An untitled triptych! (live in session)
7. The Libertines – Tell The King
8. The Streets – Same Old Thing
9. Samamidon – Head Over Heels
10. Meursault- What You Don’t Have (live in session)
11. Wounded Knee – Oh My Captain!
12. Meursault – Heaven Waits (live in session)
13. Eagleowl – Sleep the Winter

For those of you who aren’t blind it should be rather obvious that we’ve had something of a facelift around here.  Massive thanks are due to Andy from Nonimage for his work on the site, not least for his patience in dealing with my pernickety* nature.  As a designer, I can promise you that having another designer for a client is an unspeakable nightmare, and he really has been very patient.

There may be a few kinks to work out over the next day or so, but if you have any obvious functional issues then drop me an email and we’ll get on them.  Or you could just leave a comment on this post I guess, that might do the trick too.

Thanks Andy.  Sorry for being such a colossal pain in the arse.

Clem Snide – Beautiful

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* Sorry, Americans, there’s no ’s’ – don’t know where you get that nonsense from.

Nah don’t be daft, of course it doesn’t.  Friday loves you. It loves your Mum too.  Does your Mum have great tits?  I reckon she probably does.

Today technology is King.  I remember my first few days being properly employed and how far away the things we take for granted really are.  I was working on concepts for this kind of stuff years ago, and it may not have ever come into production,  but it’s amazingly exciting to see the future actually happen, right before your eyes.  Honestly, we would sit and have meetings on just how feasible video calling was and how much the ubiquitous ‘do-it-all PDA’ would be able to do for you.  It’s odd to look back on because now, pretty much all of it is here.

Yesterday I saw my silly old folks on Skype.  I have an iPhone too, which means that despite the mild embarrassment of being an iPhone person, I can always reach people.  It’s downright bizarre – basically technology has overtaken the popular imagination in the last few years, and now all these things which seemed downright stupid a year or so ago now seem kind of sensible.  And many of them exist already.

Had it not been for technology like email and SMS messages Mrs. Toad and I might not be together at all.  For the first two and a half years of our relationship I lived in London and she in Edinburgh, so texts and emails pretty much held us together during the week, as we waited for the chance to travel 400 miles on the weekend to see one another.  I know social networking sites have their critics (mostly idiots) but their capabilities are pretty amazing, when you think where technology was even just five years ago.

So, erm, good luck with the rest of your lives and hopefully this week’s technology-based five will be up your street:

1. Name your favourite scientific theory.  Or just name one – any one.
2. Favourite gadget.
3. Do you know what the term ‘anecdotal evidence’ means?  Why the FUCK NOT?
4. Most Star Trekky bit of technology in common use today.
5. Which technology on the ‘coming soon’ list are you most looking forward to?

1. Trips & Falls – In Real Life He Wears Corduroy Pants

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2. Clem Snide – The Dairy Queen

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3. Maxwell Panther – Too Many Magazines

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4. The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Going Back to Coventry

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5. Enfant Bastard – Gremlin

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