As the more cunning of you might have noticed last week, Song, by Toad’s Friday Fives is now a radio show on Fresh Air, as well as just a means for you to waste your time on the internet on a Friday afternoon.

This means that from 3:30pm Brian Pokora and myself will be live on the radio, with some sort of attempt made to avoid the dreary old pish I would usually pick, out of respect for the fact that this is officially pre-pub radio and you probably want cheering up rather than bringing down.

Live on air from 3:30pm – listen here.

Also, there are a couple of live gigs to remind you about this weekend, including some late news which will hopefully be rather interesting for you.

Firstly, we have The Last Battle, Dad Rocks and Shoes & Socks Off at Henry’s tomorrow night.  It is only a fiver in, and those who come along will also be able to get into the second show of the night, which is as follows:

Secondly, Lach is opening for Viv Albertine (of The Slits) at Henry’s after our gig there on Saturday, and anyone who is there for the Ides of Toad night will get in for £4.

Thirdly, on Sunday in Anstruther we’ll be hosting a Song, by Toad all-dayer called Flamin’ Hott Toadzzz! at the Hew Scott Hall.  The lineup will be Avital Raz, Dan Mutch, Yusuf Azak, Jesus H. Foxx, Jonnie Common and Meursault, and tickets will be available on the door.

And on Monday I will sleep.

Today’s pointless questions for the internets.  Remember, fives first, pish-talking later.

1. Most shameful album you’ve seen your parents buy.
2. Coolest album you’ve seen your parents buy.
3. Most embarrassing gig you’ve been to.
4. Favourite type of weather.
5. If you had a parrot, what would teach it to say?

Playlist for Song, by Toad’s Friday Fives will appear below as we play stuff:
1. The Piranhas – Getting Beaten Up
2. Dad Rocks! - Aroused By Hair
3. Youth Lagoon – Posters
4. Tom Waits – Goin’ Out West
5. Easter – Somethin’ American
6. Dolfinz – Hot Pants
7. The Twilight Sad – Kill it in the Morning
8. Dead Kennedys – Holiday in Cambodia
9. John Cooper Clarke – Gimmix
10. Yuck – Holing Out
11. Lil Daggers – Dada Brown
12. Horsecollar – Christopher
13. Other Lives – For 12
14. Blur – To the End (with Francoise Hardy)

Blah blah blah talky talky… as festival season starts to slowly warm to its task for the coming year, so too does that other staple: the industry chat-fest.

In many ways it is classic music industry wastage: money raised and spent on people talking about doing things instead of actually doing them; the classic overhead.  A bunch of people only tangentially involved in the making of music are always more able to raise money than those actually making it, not least because they are business people focussed on business, whereas bands are artists who should be focussed on making music.

I’ve been to quite a lot of these, and even begun participating in them recently, and the above paragraph is the cynical voice in the back of my head which will probably never be entirely silenced. I have seen a lot of people be extremely entertaining at these things, but actually useful?  That’s another question.

Then the other voice kicks in and starts to say things like ‘hang on, are you saying they’re a waste of time, then?’  And actually the answer is no.  So far from these chat-a-thons I have managed to ummm… well, find the lawyer who negotiated our distribution deal for us, meet the publishing guy who, as a favour, helped us get a wee chunk of cash for Meursault for having one of their songs in a documentary movie in the States, get me invited down to Manchester to Unconvention, where I found a load of great bands and met people who helped us book two of the dates on Yusuf Azak’s tour, threaten to punch the manager of a bar who was being a dick while one of our bands played (alright, maybe not that one), meet a couple of 6Music presenters who have subsequently played our music, as well as the guy who runs Hype Machine radio… and there will be many more, but those are the ones which pop to mind off the top of my head.

So I cringe at many elements of these events, and I am terrified of being, when invited to speak, one of those people who talks engagingly and entertainingly for an hour, but who only really succeeds in making themselves look witty and charming (yes, I know, not much danger of that, let me say it for you), without being any actual practical help.  But when I look back at what I’ve actually got from them, albeit over many many events, they are actually starting to look like a pretty bloody good use of my time.

I’m still nervous of making a tit of myself at them though!

And we are once again at de-lurking time of the week, so please step out of the shadows and say hello, and give your answer to five stupid questions and then… well, it’s Friday afternoon, this is the internet, you know what to do!

1. How sick are you of people mentioning SXSW by now, as a percentage?
2. Name an entertaining and affable but utterly useless person.
3. When are you most likely to completely clam up.
4. Last most incredibly boring thing you had to sit through.
5. You wrote it off, but it was quite good really.

The Just Joans – Please Don’t Talk to Me

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The Dead Kennedys – Your Emotions

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The Walkmen – Stop Talking

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George Pringle – Extremely Verbal After Midnight (Demo)

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The Pierces – Boring

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Mrs. Toad and I do NOT approve of Valentine’s Day, and I have to say the fact that she genuinely seems to hate it (rather than just saying so, but secretly still expecting flowers) is a very liberating thing.  It means I can now finally forget about the whole bloody nonsense once and for all, and never ever have to figure out exactly how much I am expected to spend in order to demonstrate my affection for someone.

There is, after all, very little that can be less romantic than obediently making protestations of love for no other reason than that everyone else is doing so and you are expected to conform.  I actually think it’s just plain fucking insulting, frankly.

‘Hello darling, I thought we might go out for a meal tonight.’
‘Yes dear, what a lovely idea, what made you think of that?’

In what possible world can ‘because the shops told me to, everyone else is doing it, and I feel kind of obliged’ be considered a better answer than, say, ‘because we’ve both been really busy recently and I miss spending time with you’.  And assuming that the latter is obviously the more romantic answer, what the fuck does that have to do with the fourteenth of February?

Direct download: Toadcast #161 – The Slappercast

01. Cracker – Mr. Wrong (00.18)
02. The Dead Kennedys – Your Emotions (08.39)
03. Fear of Pop – In Love (13.25)
04. The Veils – Don’t Let the Same Bee Sting You Twice (22.02)
05. Bill Callahan – Our Anniversary (24.33)
06. The Wedding Present – Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm (36.00)
07. Tom Waits – Frank’s Wild Years (39.40)
08. The Clash – White Riot (46.15)
09. Taxrat – Burn Down Slow (48.32)
10. Josh T. Pearson – Honeymoon is Great, I Wish You Were Her (55.25)

Cotes du Rhone is our default red wine of choice in this house, and after yesterday’s birthday celebrations being cut rather short due to my feeling shitty, we are having a quiet evening in with a couple of bottles of red wine, a bacony, beany stew and we are going to light the fire for the first time this Winter as well.

There is nothing remotely related to that on this podcast of course, but then these titles have become increasingly unrelated to the actual podcasts themselves recently so I doubt that’ll surprise anyone.

In fact, given I’ve been talking about how when the weather gets cold I tend to listen to less new music and less raucous music, the lo-fi, rackety nature of this playlist is probably a total self-contradiction, but then, this is the fucking internet, what do you really expect?

Direct download: Toadcast #149 – The Rhonecast

01. Cerebral Ballzy – Insufficient Fare (00.12)
02. Male Bonding – Crooked Scene (05.53)
03. White Wishes – Hold Your Hand (13.36)
04. Johnny Reb – Nine on the Line (21.11)
05. The Dead Kennedys – Kill the Poor (25.03)
06. The Louche FC – Back Bedroom Casualty (32.14)
07. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Destroy the Evidence (38.49)
08. Carnivores – Dressed for the Rain (42.26)
09. Waylon Thornton & the Heavy Hands – Sixteen Dreams (48.17)
10. Heavy Hawaii – Teen Angel (56.36)

I don’t really need to add anything to this, do I?

So, yes, in about five hours I will be officially unemployed – dosser or entrepreneur, whichever you prefer.  This is the last time I can skive off and write a post when I should actually be doing something else, because in future the writing of posts will actually be legitimate business.

I take the piss out of Proper Job, but contrary to what you might expect from someone changing careers entirely, I have always really enjoyed what I do.  I have always needed variety in my life, and as a kid I was never able to entirely abandon either my technical or my artistic interests, so product design engineering was a pretty perfect mix.  I’ve been doing this for ten years now, and it’s always been varied, engaging and enjoyable.  Those who know me a little better will know that I quite simply could not have forced myself to do anything for this long if I didn’t enjoy it.

The actual company I’m at now has been amazing, too.  I may not actually be Scottish, but there is a no-bullshit attitude here that I’ve found really refreshing.  No internal politics, no fannying about, no nonsense.  And for some inexplicable reason, considering how much work I’ve had to put into Toad things over the last few years, I’ve made it this far without actually being fired. So thanks guys, it genuinely has been fun.

So, yes, here we are and, quite legitimately, the question of ‘what next’ rears its head.  Well as I have had to point out to Mrs. Toad, who occasionally talks like she’s expecting to gain a housewife, I already have a full-time job to do, it’s just that now I get to do it during office hours instead of at four in the morning all the fucking time. So actually you might not notice much change from the outside.

The label, for example, is already at capacity.  The bands we are already working with are releasing enough material that we can’t really take anything else on.  Never mind my personal workload, we don’t have the budget for it, and I am a little worried that our press friends might start to tune out if we send them too much more stuff than we are at the moment.  There are a couple of things I want to do better, and I am going to have to learn to book tours, so that a couple of our new bands can start to play a little bit more far and wide, but in general not much is going to change.

Song, by Toad, on the other hand, needs work.  The podcasts and video have been doing incredibly well recently, but if I am being honest I would have to admit that the actual blog itself has been treading water for the last year, and that is a bad thing.  I never thought the label or the blog were anything like as interesting in isolation as they are together, but recently the label has very much dominated, and I would like to redress that balance if I can.

I want more interviews, more sessions, more video and more proper posts.  And by proper, I just mean things that take a little time and thought.  These things may not be the glamorous, hit-garnering work, but I think they are crucial if I want to be more than just a guy sitting in his pants firing any old nonsense out into the internets.  And let’s face it, I do.  I am not aiming to be big or famous, because this is always going to be niche, but I think there are opportunities out there at the moment and it would be nice to give things a bit of a push while they seem to be on the up.

The other thing which gets forgotten in all of this of course, is Mrs. Toad.  She has put up with this increasingly demanding project for several years now, and has not complained when I use all my holiday going to festivals, when I spend all my money on gettings CDs made, when I sit up every night until the small hours sending off promos, or when I invite people into her house constantly, either to plot or just to get plastered.  So we are hopefully going to get our evenings back, which I am really looking forward to.  As she said to me recently: ‘What was it like when you had free time – what did we actually do?’ And the truth is, I don’t remember.

So it’s not just that she is shouldering the financial risk for this, for reasons best known only to herself, but also that she has for the last few years tolerated a level of deranged commitment and intrusion that no-one else I can imagine would ever have put up with.  Simply, without her, there would be no Song, by Toad.

So in terms of what you guys see, though, things won’t change fast.  It’s going to take me at least a month just to get on top of the admin, frankly, and even then I am not looking to make any radical changes.  I just want to do more things better, more rigorously, and at a normal time of day.  But for now I am off to Glastonbury to get absolutely fucking wasted!

The Members – Goodbye to the Job

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Dead Kennedys – Take This Job and Shove It

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We have been collecting for the lifeboats today and as usual we have had a massive, lovely meal prepared by my darling Mrs. Toad.  It was fucking awesome, I have to tell you, and anyone who wasn’t here truly did miss out.

We, and the RNLI, owe a massive debt of thanks to Sharon from the Wirral, Euan from The Kays Lavelle (and many other things), Peter from next door, Matthew from Glasgow (as of last week), Ella from the Last Battle, Lucy and Catherine from Mrs. Toad’s Finance Corp., Jamie from Broken Records, and Dylan and Ed who turned up and were nice but didn’t really do much, and of course the internationally renowned musical expert, the esteemed Dr. Millar.

In terms of actually making a difference, it’s worth pointing out that the collection in Stockbridge has hovered around the £200 mark for about the last thirty years, but since us young ‘uns have been involved that number has almost tripled, which is sort of nice.  It actually does make a big difference when you all turn up and show some enthusiasm and commit even just a few hours to helping out.  Charity people can be a bit pushy at times, so it gets a bit of a bad rap, but it really does make an important difference.  So thank you.  And hopefully we’ll see you all again next year.

Toadcast #120 – The Swing-O-Cast

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1. The Bonzo Dog Band – No Matter Who You Vote For, the Government Always Gets In (5.35)
2. Billy Bragg – The Marching Song of the Covert Battalions (13.27)
3. Wham! – Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do) (22.23)
4. Pet Shop Boys – Opportunites (28.59)
5. The Dead Kennedys – Kill the Poor (41.00)
6. Bruce Springsteen – Atlantic City (44.04)
7. REM – Ignoreland (52.33)
8. Pearl Jam – Bu$hleaguer (60.39)
9. Gao Yuqian, Liu Changyu, Qian Haoliang – The Party Has Taught Your Son to be a Man of Iron (80.01)
10. Erase Errata – Another Genius Idea from our Government (81.44)

Yes, this weekend I am a superstar DJ, or at least I get to kid myself that I am one.  Apart from full-on dancey, mixey, beat-matching stuff (and even then I have my doubts) I have never thought of DJing as much of a skill, I have to confess.  As I said in the comments section of a thread discussing this ages ago, however, if it’s possible to do it badly, which it clearly is, then it must be a skill.  Still, irrespective of not really knowing what I am doing, and the dubious merits of my presence to everyone else, someone like me is always going to enjoy forcing their music taste on other people and that is exactly what I am going to do: relax, get pickled on gin, and play a lot of tunes.

First a Cabaret Voltaire tonight as part of the excellent Oxjam Take Over Edinburgh night (which will sadly prevent me getting to see lots of bands I would like to see, but there you go).  I might play more raucous stuff at this one – the situation seems to call for it, what with Friday night drinking and so on.  The the following day I am popping down to the Bowery to play some tunes at MarchéMarché, a craft fair which will have some live music and things going on as well, and generally sounds like a lovely day.

Other than that, my friend Andrew is visiting from London this weekend, which is excellent.  I remember from living in London that it’s all too easy to expect people in the provinces to come to you, albeit for no better reason that laziness.  Mind you, if you had to make an hour’s journey just to have a pint with a mate then you’d bloody well expect other people to make an effort, I suppose, wouldn’t you.  In any case, Andrew and Natalie aren’t really like that because they’ve come to see us twice since we’ve been here, which is more than anyone else from down there.  London: about twelve million people; Scotland: about six.  Weird, when you think of it.

So here we are once again, at the end of a very talkative week on Song, by Toad.  But it’s not all about the big-mouths remember, Friday is as ever a de-lurking amnesty and a chance for the quiet people who just potter by and marvel at the madness to get involved themselves and see just how much of an embarrassment they can make of themselves.  Let’s face it, the rest of us are pretty good at that already.  And remember, Fives first, then pish, not the other way around.

1. If you were a DJ, what would be the most inappropriate song you would like to play and the most inopportune moment?
2. Song for your funeral.
3. Song you’d like to sneak onto the record player at your worst enemy’s funeral, just to ruin it.
4. Name a fantasy cover version you’d love to hear.
5. Name a fantasy duet you’d love to hear.

And here, after all the moaning I’ve done about cover songs this week, are some covers I really like, for various reasons:

The Gourds – Gin & Juice (This may be the best cover of all time.)

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Hawksley Workman – Bankrobber (Just weird, but good.)

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Heather Nova – I’m on Fire

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The Specials – Guns of Navarone

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The Dead Kennedys – Viva Las Vegas

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1. Knives and Forks.

Apparently sales of knives are half those of forks in the UK at the moment.  This has been attributed to the rise in ready meals, which come chopped into nice easy little bits, presumably because they think you’ve got flippers for fucking hands and can’t cut up your own food.  Either that or they have no confidence in your ability to use utensils properly and fear lawsuits from people who accidentally stab themselves in the back of their hand with a fucking fork whilst trying to eat their dinner.

But it’s not the prevalence of shitty, poisonous ready meals which is getting on my tits, it’s basic table manners.  You see it in movies all the time: people who are actually eating normal food doing so with only a fucking fork.  They cut using the edge, and then turn it upside down, with the curve facing towards the plate like it was a fucking spoon, and then stab everything up into one great big kebab and shovel the resulting abomination down their fucking cakeholes.

Someone sitting leaning on their left elbow shovelling food in in this manner simply has no table manners.  You cover your mouth when you yawn, you hold the door open for people and you USE A FUCKING KNIFE WHEN YOU EAT.  Who were you fucking raised by, goats?

Beirut – Forks & Knives

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2. The Rain.

It’s fucking July for fuck’s sake.

The Builders and the Butchers – When it Rains (Daytrotter Session)

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3. Copyright on Stupid Things

I am trying to sort out the artwork for our vinyl releases and the company I’m dealing with have templates for the artwork which I can download and print, but can’t open in a graphics package because they are fucking copyright protected.  So I can print them off and waste my fucking time copying out the bastarding things, but I can’t actually just open them and drop in my artwork, which would be a million times easier.  And from their perspective, it helps their customers and virtually guarantees they get artwork to the correct fucking specifications.  Whose damn life does it make any easier to have this fucking shit locked, for Christ’s fucking sake, and how can anyone lose any money by making them freely accessible?  It’s just a series of dimensions and a list of basic instructions for fuck’s sake, locking it off is just a massive and pointless fucking waste of everyone’s time.

Dead Kennedys – Stealing People’s Mail

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4. Trees.

Actually trees are not pissing me off today.  I had a long walk to the bank at lunchtime when it was pissing it down, but I was able to walk under the trees and stay dry, so today I like trees very much.

Eef Barzelay – Make Another Tree

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5. Toilet Brushes.

Seriously, my colleagues seem not to know what they are for.  I would be only too happy to fucking demonstrate – with some vigour.

The Coathangers – Don’t Touch My Shit

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Generally, though, I think you would agree that I am not an angry man.

Okay, not so much a podcast this week, more my effort to recreate a mix tape sent to me by my Mum’s cousin when I was far too young to appreciate its brilliance.  On the plus side though, despite my failure to really understand how lucky I was, they leaked more indelibly into my consciousness because I was so young that it all went beyond ‘music I remember’ and became something more fundamental than that.

I played this tape quite literally to death.  I think it finally gave up the ghost some time when I was about thirteen or fourteen – about 1988 or 1989.  I forgot about it for some time after that, and it was only some ten years later, about the time of Napster, that it occurred to me to finally try and reassemble all these brilliant songs together again.

Well, I tried but I failed.  The biggest problem was remembering what was on the thing.  I mean, a tape I last listened to ten years ago, what are the chances?  Still, aided by perseverance and some good fortune I prety much managed to as best I could.  Some I remembered immediately, others took a while, and still others took the discovery of songs on the tape itself to trigger the memory.  Easily the best playlist of any Toadcast to date, I’m only ashamed that it’s me talking about this music instead of someone more knowledgeable.

Toadcast #45 – The Stevecast

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01. The Piranhas – Tom Hark (02.06)
02. The Clash – Bankrobber (03.57)
03. John Cooper Clarke – Gimmix (Live) (10.42)
04. The Specials – Why? (18.00)
05. The Piranhas – Boyfriend (21.54)
06. Madness – Baggy Trousers (25.35)
07. The Piranhas – Getting Beaten Up (29.00)
08. The Specials – Ghost Town (32.16)
09. The Dead Kennedys – Holiday in Cambodia (37.57)
10. The Beat – Stand Down Margaret/Whine & Grine (46.37)
11. Adam & the Ants – Antmusic (52.39)