Song, by Toad

Thank god all-fucking-mighty that it’s fucking Friday.  I am exhausted.  I’ve been up until the wee hours (5am on Tuesday, 6am on Wednesday, etc etc…) working on the videos for Sunday’s mammoth Broken Records at the Bedlam Theatre post and have had just about enough.  I don’t get too sleepy during the day though, and I can still get through it all just fine, but I am getting a little pie-eyed.  Not sleepy, per se, but the world is becoming a little surreal.

Mrs. Toad and I are a week away from going on holiday for two weeks.  We are going far, far from an internet connection and will be pretty much completely incommunicado for the whole fortnight.  This is a good thing.  I am not burned out on all this Toad business, but I am getting a little frazzled.  There’s just always so much to do and it gets really hard to keep track of it and to make sure that everything is getting done properly.

This weekend sees the Meadows Festival tomorrow, followed by the Gaza benefit thingy in the evening.  I really don’t know if I am going to make the Black Tape night tonight, but I hope so.  So much still to do in the house.

So, Mrs. Toad has just returned from a week away in the States, so I am going to pop out and have my lunch with her, before coming back and marvelling at the wondrous fountain of meaningless gibberish which the Friday Fives seems to infallibly generate.  I love this post – total chaos!

So, de-lurk; this is the lurkers’ amnesty post, remember.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve never said anything before, no knowledge of in-jokes or obscure indie bands required here, just the time to say hello and make a couple of flippant remarks.  Fives first though please – no pish-talking until I’ve got your fives down.  Then go crazy.

1. Most annoying vehicle on the road.
2. Top Summer song.
3. Best kind of sleep.
4. Favourite grandiose title (like Grand Vizier, Viscount and stuff like that).
5. Name of your stuffed toy.

This is the first track the Cave Singers have released from their forthcoming album.  Sounds bloody brilliant.
The Cave Singers – Beach House

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The Kick Inside – It’s Always the Quiet Ones (B-side to their new single Oh, Vanity!)

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These two are from a Springsteen covers CD Uncut released a few years ago.
Heather Nova – I’m On Fire

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Ed Harcourt – Atlantic City

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Counting Crows – Start Again

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Well, as DC pointed out on Five Friday Fatwas, the 90s revival is not quite upon us yet.  It’s both totally inevitable and somewhat due, so it will be here sooner rather than later, but for the time being it has yet to entirely arrive.

So in anticipation of the inevitable, I thought I might just make a podcast which partly tried to anticipate the revisionism and partly talked just a little about what I myself might remember when the 90s revival hits full swing in a couple of years.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a child of the 90s, but I think that I might be wrong in neglecting to do so.  When they started I was 15, just moved from Singapore back to Vienna and very much a kid.  By the time they ended I had finished my Master’s degree and spent a long time pouring pints waiting for a proper job, which in some ways I suppose might just make you an adult.  It was an interesting era for me personally and when the revival arrives, as it inevitably will, I am downright fascinated to know what the younger generation will make of the music with which I grew up.

Toadcast #61 – The 1990s

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01. Pearl Jam – Go (03.47)
02. R.E.M. – Oddfellows Local 151 (11.05)
03. Cocteau Twins – An Elan (18.16)
04. Gene – Sleep Well Tonight (21.46)
05. Counting Crows – Omaha (30.33)
06. Supergrass – She’s So Loose (38.37)
07. Echobelly – King of the Kerb (41.33)
08. Alice in Chains – Nutshell (47.47)
09. Pavement – Gold Soundz (53.22)
10. Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra – Eggshell Miles (59.01)

Okay, there have been some comments recently about… well, read the title of the post and guess for yourself. So I thought it was time to address this issue, although not in as confrontational a manner as you might expect, given my enthusiasm for invective.

I like – now prepare yourselves here – quite a few songs by the following artists: Dave Fucking Matthews Fucking Band, Phish, Counting Crows, Sheryl Crow, Hootie & the Blowfish and Bruce Hornsby & the Range. I don’t particularly feel the need to make excuses for any of this, but I do wonder slightly that these bands are so hated by my peers, when I think they’re okay, for the most part, despite the borderline self-parodying sludge they degenerated into later in their careers.

Bruce Hornsby doesn’t really fit with the other lot, I guess, and I think that may be a nostalgia thing. I used to hear his first couple of albums quite a bit when I was growing up, so it’s kind of stuck with me. It’s funny that I have a similar sort of nostalgic affection for Cyndi Lauper’s first (I think) album, but because that’s so ironic it doesn’t seem to attract quite the same derision.

I don’t know who has any sort of liking for the softer side of the indie spectrum – Bloc Party, The Killers’ first, early Snow Patrol, stuff like that. It’s sort of like indie, but a softer sort with a lot of the edges rubbed off and something of a fuller, more radio-friendly sound. I’ll admit, I love the early stuff by all three of these groups. I also find myself thinking that my Dave Fucking Matthews and Counting Crows liking is probably the equivalent to this, but for Americana. I like a fair bit more Americana than a lot of the readers of this site, I get the impression, and maybe the softer end of that scale leaves me less hostile to the sort of musical territory we’re talking about here.

The other thing is that this is squarely in the 90s American indie rock camp, which should be just about due for its period of loathing, before the inevitable nostalgia trips begin in a few years. I’m not saying the nostalgia will exonerate any of these bands of course, but it’s funny who it leaves behind. The 80s revival seemed to rather oddly exclude Phil Collins, when you’d think that anyone so universally loathed would make for perfect ironic re-appraisal for the arch and superior. On the other end of the spectrum, Springsteen’s classic Born in the USA doesn’t seem to have been able to avoid being dragged down by the 80s production values with which it is saddled. So it’s a bit of a lottery, I suppose.

Before anything gets reappraised it seems to go through this period where it is detested with a more frantic passion than ever before. We’re getting on for ten years away from the 90s now, and 90s indie is probably about as unfashionable a sound as exists at the moment.  Also, the rabid enthusiasm for the 80s seems to be waning somewhat. Even clothes are starting to resemble early 90s away kits from the Premier League, albeit only on the hippest of kids.

So, I think the reason this stuff is so hated is not unrelated to the fact that the mid 90s are currently approaching the nadir of their appreciation, before the inevitable sea change. Whether or not this revival will take any of this stuff with it I have no idea, but nor do I care in particular. The Dave Fucking Matthews Fucking Band have two, if not three, really good albums. Fairweather Johnson by Hootie & the Blowfish is good. Farmhouse by Phish is good. Even Sheryl Crow produced half a good album, with her self-titled ‘98 release. So you can snigger all you want, but I stand by this, and there’s absolutely no way there isn’t an equivalent MOR secret in your music collection somewhere.

Counting Crows – Have You Seen Me Lately?
Hootie & the Blowfish – Sad Caper
Phish – Bug
Bruce Hornsby & the Range – The Old Playground
Dave Fucking Matthews Fucking Band – Jimi Thing

Bill Oddie, for those of you who don’t know, is a legendary British television birdwatcher – twitcher as they’re known.  He is also the subject of one of the most famous of all mondegreens: Madonna’s “Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie, put your hands all over my body”.

Anyhow, as a legendary feather flutterer it seemed only appropriate that his name should adorn a podcast entirely made up of bands with ornithological names.  We have everything here, from the albatross to the gull to the guillemot to the owl to the sparrow to the pigeon.  Honestly, this podcast could have been twice the length that it is, there were just so many appropriate bands – no Flock of Seagulls, for example, no Sparrow & the Workshop, no Sheryl Crow.

So I hope you enjoy it.  While you’re listening to this, Mrs. Toad and I will be enjoying the End of the Road Festival, and hopefully getting a few interesting interviews in for you all.  It’ll be my first ever attendance as a legitimate press person, so I am feeling very full of myself at the moment, but with a bit of luck I’ll justify the inflated sense of self-importance and bring back some fine bits and pieces for you to enjoy in the next week or two.

Toadcast #37 – The Oddcast

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01. Hate Beak – Feral Parrot (02.27)
02. The Eagles – Outlaw Man (04.52)
03. Eagleowl – Motherfucker (10.55)
04. Woodpigeon – Knock Knock (15.22)
05. The Lovely Sparrows – Department of Foreseeable Outcomes (19.45)
06. The Bowerbirds – In Our Talons (23.47)
07. Doves – A House (35.30)
08. Counting Crows – Start Again (38.12)
09. Andrew Bird – Why (Live) (46.32)
10. Guillemots – Take Me Out (Live Lounge) (50.43)
11. A Hawk & a Hacksaw – Portlandtown (56.07)
12. Gossamer Albatross – Held Hands (59.57)
13. The Housemartins – Me & the Farmer (63.26)

I have pretty much had to burrow backwards in time to discover where this song came from, but find it I think I finally have.

The last time I ever bought a Counting Crows records was Hard Candy, and I was sufficiently underwhelmed not to bother with them again.  I was already rather losing interest by that point anyway, but two brilliant singles changed my mind.  Not the singles themselves, mind you, but their quite splendid b-sides.  Blues Run the Game was one of those and it never occurred to me that it was anything other than a somewhat unfortunately abandoned moment of Crows genius.

As I have a habit of doing with music I love, I put it on a CD for my folks and of course they loved it too.  However, some months later my Dad came back to me and said ‘Did you know that was originally a Simon & Garfunkel song?  I just heard their version of it – it’s brilliant as well.’  Again, I never really questioned this either, given Simon & Garfunkel were pretty great songwriters whether or not you like their soft-focus hippy delivery, which I do most of the time.  And it would make sense that Adam Duritz & Co. would be exploring the back catalogue of legendary American songwriters on their b-sides.

Anyhow, yesterday it turned out that this still wasn’t the whole story.  Before striking folk gold as half of Simon & Garfunkel Paul Simon spent some time in the burgeoning English early 60s folk scene where he happened to produce the only complete album by another American refugee, the extremely troubled Jackson C. Frank.  I was reading this post at Motel de Moka and I discovered that, following a fire in his school classroom which killed several classmates, Frank was able to use the insurance money to travel to England, which resulted in his collaboration with Simon.  Apparently he is still well known in folkie circles, although I’d never heard of him, but the likes of Bert Jansch and Nick Drake rated him very, very highly apparently.  To read the whole story go to Motel de Moka – I’d really recommend it.  It’s a rather sad tale of a troubled artist whose problems ultimately overwhelmed his artistic output, and apart from a few abortive session tracks in 1975 he only ever released a single, self-titled album.

So this post is the result of one long, obtuse train of musical thought that started for the music back in 1964 and for myself back in about 2001.  Given the fact that for so many people the work of Jackson C. Frank has largely vanished into the obscurity of time I somehow feel that I am performing some sacred act of reverence here in passing it on to a new audience to hear.  Enjoy the songs.

Counting Crows – Blues Run the Game
Simon & Garfunkel – Blues Run the Game
Jackson C. Frank – Blues Run the Game
Jackson C. Frank – Marlene