Cakecast? Yes, the Cakecast, because I turn thirty-six today, and in the absence of a real cake and in honour of the fact that I have a gig tonight at the Wee Red and will hence be working, I decided that at least a picture of some cake was in order. I don’t worry about age particularly, but I have to confess that thirty-six sounds suspiciously more like ‘nearly forty’ than it does like ‘thirty-something’.  Curse you time and your unrelentingly linear nature!

Anyhow, as I said, tonight we have Gummy Stumps, Weird Era and Battery Face at the Wee Red Bar for a fiver, so those of you wishing to come along and help me get pished and make a fool of myself will have plenty of opportunity to do so.  A can of Red Stripe will do the trick, there’s none of your fancy micro-brew pish at the Wee Red.

Direct download: Toadcast #201 – The Cakecast

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01. Clem Snide – Happy Birthday (00.16)
02. The Quiet Americans – Be Alone (07.10)
03. Bottle of Evil – The Boatman (11.52)
04. Tropic of Cancer – Distorted Horizon (15.55)
05. Islet – This Fortune (21.20)
06. Samantha Crain – Traipsing Through the Isles (Daytrotter Session) (29.54)
07. Bos Angeles – Beach Slalom (35.16)
08. Ghost Outfit – I Was Good When I Was Young (38.11)
09. The Sleepy Jackson – Tell the Girls That I’m Not Hanging Out (49.29)
10. The Louche FC – Hands (56.42)

Frankly, I’ve no fucking idea what Friday is this week.  Between our Electric Circus gigs (yes, good guess, the second of which is indeed tonight, and look, only a fiver in – what value!) keeping up with the blog and the minor matter of actually trying to run a record label I don’t know whether I’m bloody coming or going at the moment.

One of things I like about putting on gigs at the Electric Circus is that I get to DJ inbetween and after the bands.  It’s much like writing a blog, releasing records or putting on gigs – effectively you’re trying to insist to everyone how awesome all the music you like is.  I don’t know if the actual audience enjoys it as much as I do, but umm… well, they were very patient with me at the gig on Wednesday anyway.

I am also just about managing to preserve a sliver of Festival bonhomie, despite the associated bollocks, but it is hanging on by the skin of its teeth.  There is fun, to be sure, but the whole thing is such a carnival of over-priced commercialism I can’t help but wonder if it might start to suffer from the malaise afflicting many of the big music festivals this year.  The Fringe has become such a juggernaut that people felt obliged to start the Free Fringe, just so the Fringe would itself have some sort of Fringe – sort of a festival ouroboros in a sense.

Ah well, balls to that.  Get thee down to the Circus tonight and we’ll have drinks and party like it was early June.

1. If you were DJ what would you insist on playing that no-one would really get.
2. What was the last thing you slept through and shouldn’t have.
3. Name a really pointless album reissue.
4. And a really good one.
5. What’s made you laugh recently?

This week’s five songs are daft cover versions:

Richard Cheese – Rape Me

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Clem Snide – Beautiful

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The Lance Gambit Trio – Barbie Girl

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Me First & the Gimme Gimmes – Stand By Your Man

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The Flaming Lips – Can’t Get You Out of My Head

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 The Raincast is so called because we have had three days of sporadic, but at times absolutely torrential rain here in Edinburgh this week.  The leak in our ceiling has sprung back into action with some vigour, although this time it manifested itself in a manner which didn’t ruin all sorts of my vinyl, which was generous of it.  We really must get that looked at before the whole bloody ceiling comes crashing down.

The rest of my day will be spent sticking things into envelopes to publicise the Lach release, which is really, really soon, as well as the new album by Trips and Falls, which isn’t out until the end of September.  I will be back on the gocco printer hand printing the artwork for that one though, which isn’t something I’ve done for a while, so rather looking forward to it.

Anyhow, in the meantime, have a wee listen to this. It’s an interesting mix this week, from the utterly obscure, to the borderline famous, to the might almost have been nearly famous five years ago, but not really likely to crack it now.  And then Radiohead. Yes, I’ve finally listened to King of Limbs.  At last.

Direct download: Toadcast #182 – The Raincast

01. Barry Adamson – Set the Controls for the Heart of the Pelvis (00.29)
02. DanDanDan – Match of the Day Background Music (08.47)
03. Anna-Anna – Mirrors of America (13.17)
04. Clem Snide – Ice Cube (21.56)
05. Lambchop – Up With People (24.29)
06. Public Dims – Lorimer (31.09)
07. Rollor – Energies are Dead in the Mind Constellation (40.17)
08. Camera Phone – Artifacts (43.44)
09. Radiohead – Lotus Flower (50.55)
10. I Like Trains – Sirens (Remix) (57.19)

 News International (I do not need to tell you) is one of the most repellent organisations in the world, but this whole business might just end up working out to their advantage, in a twist of supremely Machiavellian achievement.

NI decided to close the News of the World a long time ago, as you can see from this Guardian article detailing the plans being set in place to deal with its disappearance, dating from weeks ago. The sunonsunday.com URL was registered before any of this even kicked off.

As much of a right wing, darkie-hating, shit stain of a wank rag that the NotW has always been, this might turn out to be a masterstroke by the Murdoch empire. They have been caught out in some of the most disgraceful acts of both illegality and moral offence in the history of the press, and they have managed to actually turn it to their advantage.

They close the NotW to show how serious they are about this sort of legal transgression, they reduce their market share of the UK press, and as a result they might just manage to persuade people that they are neither a monopoly concern, nor a dangerous blight on political discourse, and in doing so secure the kind of domination over the UK press and hence UK political debate which could turn us into the next United States – forever having to pander to the latest reactionary retard wheeled out on Fox News to agitate the bigots and the racists.

Because let’s face it, NI are not weakened by this event, they are consolidated. The Sun and the NotW basically catered to the same market: ignorant, unpleasant, narrow-minded racists. Closing one just strengthens the other, but if this PR stunt enables the BSkyB takeover to take place we will still be faced with one of the most conservative, racist, morally repellent organisations in the modern world owning a scarily large chunk of UK media.

Day-to-day journalists have all been fired (although given they work for the NotW in the first place I have no fucking sympathy), but the people who actually engineered and implemented all the craven, corrupt and utterly illegal actions we’ve learned about recently will all continue to work within Murdoch’s empire of sleaze.

In other words, what was potentially one of the greatest PR disasters in corporate history might just end up being turned into the kind of publicity stunt which turns the British media into a shameful mirror of the hatred, bigotry, and outright lies which is Fox News, by consolidating the power of a group of people who treat the world like their own fucking puppet show and care for nothing but insulating their own twisted version of reality to the point where a writer of dystopian science fiction simply couldn’t make this shit up.

Anyway, and breathe…

Here are your five questions for this week.

1. Your number one news media hate figure.
2. Compare someone in the news to a movie or cartoon villain.
3. Whose phone would you hack if you could?
4. Cameron and Murdoch is a predictable terrible twosome.  Pick a less predictable one.
5. What will your lunch be today?

This week’s five songs are from a tape called ‘Cheerful Choons, Innit’ which I found in the van recently.  I was living in Cambridge at the time, which was home to a surprising number of mockneys, hence the title.

Clem Snide – Ice Cube

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Lambchop – Up With People

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Eels – Jungle Telegraph

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The Pernice Brothers – Shaken

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Barry Adamson – Set the Controls for the Heart of the Pelvis (with Jarvis Cocker)

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It is a very, very fine Spring day indeed, this morning in Edinburgh, and so needless to say I am going to spend it in my office talking to imaginary people on the internet.

This week we are simply going to have a bit of a trawl through my inbox.  As I mention halfway through the podcast, I now have unlistened albums totalling a mighty one day, eighteen hours and thirty-four minutes worth of music.  So if you are wondering why I haven’t reviewed this that or the other, then that probably has something to do with it.

The trickiest part, of course, is that it’s not enough to simply have listened to something. To actually have anything resembling an intelligent comment to make you need to listen to something really quite often, and know the ins and outs of an album pretty well.  This takes a lot more than just a once-over lasting for one day, eighteen hours and thirty-four minutes.

Direct download: Toadcast #168 – The Springcast

01. The Lovely Eggs – Don’t Look at Me (I Don’t Like It) (00.40)
02. Lady Lazarus – Fighting Words & Fists (06.46)
03. Bill Callahan – Drover (12.09)
04. Evil Hand – Returned in Time (20.32)
05. Weird Era – Garage Honeymoon (24.41)
06. Teens – Golden Years (28.36)
07. The Spook School – Hallam (32.57)
08. The Sandwitches – Lightfoot (38.37)
09. Honeydrum – Human Stuff (45.09)
10. Timber Timbre – Woman (46.42)
11. Clem Snide – Pale Blue Eyes (54.29)

I am Ruthless for this week’s show on Fresh Air Radio, so it will just be me prattling on by myself instead.  I have a John Darnielle tribute to the assault on organised labour in Wisconsion, I have the original version of that song, and I have some Withered Hand, in honour of his SXSW visa troubles.

Other than that, I am pretty worn out from a night of epic drinking in Stockton (which is not even Middlesbrough) last night after the excellent seminar thingy hosted by The Generator at which I (inevitably) drank and talked far too much.  There is a certain inevitability to these things, isn’t there.

Live from 8pm UK time – click here to listen.

As per usual the playlist will appear below as I play things, and feel free to swing by the comments and have your say.

1. Lil Daggers – Give Me the Pill
2. King Post Kitsch – Don’t You Touch My Fucking Honeytone
3. Meursault – And Butter Would Not Melt (from Jonnie Common’s Deskjob)
4. Withered Hand – No Cigarettes
5. Tom Waits – Anywhere I Lay My Head
6. John Darnielle – There is Power in a Union
7. The Louche FC – Only in a Dream
8. Irk the River – Mind That Child
9. The Son(s) – Radar
10. REM – It Happened Today
11. Billy Bragg – There is Power in a Union
12. Elbow – Jesus is a Rochdale Girl
13. David Thomas Broughton – Ain’t Got no Sole
14. Clem Snide – Pale Blue Eyes
15. Warm Ghost – Open the Wormhole in Your Heart
16. Dam Mantle – Grey
17. Dolfish – Your Love is Bummin’ Me Out
18. The Honey Pies – Hair of the Dog

Before the mentalism kicks in, some nice things. Firstly Los Podcartos have been extremely Toad-friendly this week, with two very generous pieces on what we’re getting up to at this end of the M8. On Thursday they published an interview with my good self in which, as ever, I talk rather too much. Fortunately, liberated from my own waterfall-tongued contributions, they were able to be just a little more disciplined in their podcast this weekend, during which they are incredibly nice about Toad things and plug the Wednesday Toad Night at Mono for all they’re worth.

Personally, I hugely appreciate that, because I am not very Glasgowy these days and am not entirely sure how full Mono is going to be on Wednesday, so if you are a Glasgow-based Toad person reading this then please feel free to spread the word and get as many of your mates there as you can – tickets here if you want ‘em.

On the subject of Glasgow, we have a special treat to start this Friday Fives, namely Adam Stafford and Emily Scott covering the Twilight Sad’s Walking for Two Hours. Apparently Adam has finished an album of covers and was just a little too excited by this one to keep it under wraps.

Adam Stafford & the Deathbridge Convention – Walking for Two Hours

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Right, the mentalism. Well, Loch Lomond get here on Sunday and they have what can only be termed a hectic schedule ahead of them: Fresh Air Session on Monday, The Slaughtered Lamb in London on Tuesday, Mono in Glasgow on Wednesday, The Tunnels in Aberdeen on Thursday, The Barrels in Berwick on Friday, The Queen Charlotte Rooms in Leith on Saturday, The Black Heart in Camden on Sunday and then a Toad Session and an Off the Beaten Tracks Session on Monday. Well, it’s their own bloody fault – they kept wanting more gigs and now they’ve got ‘em!

I’m on holiday and will be driving the bastards though, so I’ll be fucking destroyed by the time we get through all that lot. The Monday Toad Session will be hilarious “So erm… oh, whatever, just play some songs”.

Next week will start with a bit of famousyness too, with LCD Soundsytem and Band of Horses reviews pencilled in for early in the week. I haven’t really been paying much attention to major label releases recently, but as I said to the nice lady from Island Records recently: “They’ve no idea what they’re doing, the music they release is fucking shit, and they want total control of absolutely everything, so fuck them.” I didn’t realise she was from Island at the time, of course.

So, at last we come to the de-lurking part of the week, where you the people get to take back the conversation on this site from the same old muppets who spend their week bickering on here like a bunch of teenage girls.  Except me.  It’s all good sense when I’m doing it of course – I just meant everyone else.

1. The last time you spectacularly put your foot in it.
2. Favourite dessert.
3. Favourite desert.
4. Person you have actually met with a name to kill your parents for.
5. Your shoe size, as measured by any units you please.

Only four songs now, because you’ve already had one:

The Twilight Sad – Walking for Two Hours

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Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Born in the USA

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Clem Snide – Beautiful

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Rats With Wings – Hungry Like the Wolf

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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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