I am not really much of a one for proper punk, although there is plenty that I find myself really liking. Actually at the moment, after all the brilliantly quirky folk pop of the last few years, I am genuinely itching for someone to break the mould and really make some venomous noise.

Now, the last time I wrote something like this some tool left a comment suggesting I try the new Oasis album, so let me get this straight: I do not want fucking kiddie-punk. I don’t want stuff that rawks, I do not want anything with the word ‘core’ in the genre.

I want the same ramshackle aesthetic and venom I like in good, fearsome indie music. Something with some edge, and none of your wanky macho posturing.  The problem with a lot of savagely angry music is that it almost inevitably tends to attract dickheaded blokes who seem to have drawn the completely spurious conclusion that listening to music that is a little bit loud in some way makes them hard.  Actually, it probably does, but not in ‘that’ way.

Anyhow, I’ve sort of missed the recent lack of genuine noise-merchants.  Live shows by iLiKETRAiNS and British Sea Power have been the few exceptions, but it’s been a while since I’ve heard an album I want to put on when I’m in one of those moods and just crank the fuck up to neighbour-bothering volume.  Old punk seems to be just about the best avenue to explore, but I am far from an expert on such things.  The Dead Kennedys are still my gold standard, and their general fury tends to mask a canny knack for a melody that punk is forever being accused of lacking.

Bum Kon are a band I happened across recently, primarily because of their excellent album cover.  They released a couple of things back in the mid-80s and that was that, but any band with a song called Nancy Reagan Fashion Show is alright by me.  The album above can be purchased from Smooch here.

Bum Kon – Nancy Reagan Fashion Show
Bum Kon – Giving In
Bum Kon – The Draft
The Dead Kennedys – When Ya Get Drafted

Given that, as far as I am concerned, I already live in something of a music Mecca – not Edinburgh per se, but Scotland in general – it only makes sense that when holiday time rolls around I should head for the other great global centre of sulky indie-folk: Portland, Oregon.

Home to so, so many great bands, home to the Pickathon Music Festival, home to more rain even than Scotland, this just seems like a wonderful way to spend the next couple of weeks.  I am working early on, in fact I have four or five interviews lined up over the course of the festival, and there will be videos made as well, but after that I am subscribing to the Mrs. Toad philosophy: “I do fuck all.”  She’s right, it’s a holiday, blogs and jobs can wait.

So I’ll be posting, but not that much.  After a couple of brilliant Campfires & Battlefields babysittings, I am handing the controls over to Dylan, Song, by Toad photographer and beer-guzzler extraordinaire.  So be nice and kind, make lots of comments to make him feel welcome, and I will be back and on the go on Thursday the 14th August.  Until then, erm, good luck!

Dead Kennedys – Holiday in Cambodia
Franz Ferdinand – Jacqueline

A friend of mine is suffering from an appalling time trying to find a job, and it’s hard to offer sympathy in that kind of situation, but I have been through this before, so I do have some idea. It took me almost a year to get my first job in what I trained to do and in that time I went through all sorts of stages of despair, vitriol, depression, rage, apathy, grim determination and all sorts of others.

At first I couldn’t even find where to even apply for jobs I could do so I ended up applying for dozens that I was neither all that equipped to do nor all that interested in, and I think it showed badly in the interviews.

Even when I eventually did find places I was qualified to work they would invite me to interviews, tell me how brilliant I was, and then say ‘Oh well, really we need someone with at least one or two years’ experience’ to which I just once replied ‘Well that’s interesting, because it says on my CV that I am a graduate with no experience, and just imagine – if you’d read it then you could have saved yourself all this time’.

Then, when I did get my first job it lasted only eighteen months, during which the 11th September attacks took place and the dotcom bubble burst. The result: redundancy. It took a further six months to get a job after this one, during which I was offered interview after interview and showered with compliments and never given a job. Worse, it was always ‘yes, really loved your stuff, we’ll be in touch some time next week’, then they never were and I ended up having to spend two weeks chasing them for the inevitable ‘thanks but no thanks’ that I by then knew was coming. Often it would be accompanied by ‘well we really need someone who can use Pro/Engineer software’. Again, even cursory glance at my fucking CV would have told them that I couldn’t use fucking Pro/E so why the fuck were they interviewing me in the first place? ‘Recreational interviewing’, I came to call it.

Then, whilst I was trying to move from London to Edinburgh so Mrs. Toad and I could be together, similar stuff started to happen – for almost a year. There are so few jobs in what I do up here that I ended up applying for a few too many that, although I could have done them, I didn’t really want. Again, the compliments flooded in, but no fucking job offers. And I developed a new hatred: recruitment fucking consultants. Honestly, what the fuck fucking use are these parasitical cunts? They’re like fucking estate agents in slightly more dingy suits. They have no understanding whatsoever of any of the jobs they are trying to fill, they have not the slightest shred of basic manners, they are fucking vacant as an empty barrel, and they seem to have the memories of fucking goldfish because they never, ever do anything they say they are going to. Burn the fucking lot of the cunts.

HR departments are no better. Name me a single place that couldn’t just take its HR department, fill it with angry bees, seal up the doors, and in doing so signally improve the efficiency of their business. They are worthless fucking leeches who achieve nothing, have no skills, not a fragment of understanding of the business in which their company is engaged and do absolutely nothing but hold regular meetings to explain to everyone what a crucial job they are doing. Burn them; all of them.

Frequently when job-hunting you have at least two layers of these vacuous fuckwits in between you and the person actually doing the hiring – the one who actually has the faintest idea whether or not you can do the job in question. I actually applied for a job once where the department doing the hiring went to their HR department, who went to an outsourcing consultancy, who hired a recruitment consultant who put an ad on a website, whose ads were aggregated by another website, via which I applied. Do the people who purchase products from this company know what an incredible number of worthless, talentless, pointless paper-shufflers the price of their medicine is supporting? I doubt it. Thank goodness for the efficiency of the free market.

If you think I am being harsh on HR people, try this quote from Luke Johnson, writing in the Financial Times earlier this year:

“HR is like many parts of modern businesses: a simple expense, and a burden on the backs of the productive workers”

Random internet ranter? No, he is on the Times Power 100 List and apparently masterminded the acquisition of Pizza Express before the age of 30 and is now in charge at Channel 4.

So Lizzie, I have every sympathy, really I do. I do have a pretty good idea what you’re going through, and believe my I would flay, fillet and barbecue these self-important, parasitic whores in a heartbeat given the chance. Nae brains, nae skills, nothing to offer; just fucking pointless the lot of ‘em.

The Dead Kennedys – Take This Job & Shove It

This is one of the reasons I am adamant that as long as I possibly can I will read, listen and respond to anyone who emails me with a copy of their music. People seem, when they are in a position to give or deny someone something they want, to turn into patronising, arrogant cock-smokers. They come out with shit like ‘Well, what you have to understand is..’ or ‘Well, I’m just so busy…’ or they just seem to take masturbatory pleasure in ignoring you, condescending to you and generally treating you with such completely meretricious attitudes of superiority that it makes me want to urinate in their ears while they’re sleeping.

I am not doing anyone a favour by listening to their music, and if I ever start acting like it, please someone punch me. A polite email saying thanks is not beyond anyone. Delete the emails from PR companies by all means, but if someone takes the time to contact you themselves with their stuff listen, decide and get back in touch. Show some fucking graciousness, and some manners. Being in a position of power over anyone says nothing about you as a person, and it does not make you better than anyone. And just because you’re finally in that position does not under any fucking circumstances mean that it is in any way ‘your turn’. You do not have to teach anyone ‘the way it works’ and being a cunt to someone is never a favour because ‘that’s just what they’ll have to get used to in this cut-throat industry’. I am not suggesting you should necessarily lie to someone, and I am sure that there will come a point where I can’t answer everyone personally, but if you are unnecessarily unkind or impolite or hurtful to someone who is asking something of you, then you are cunt, pure and simple.

Did I miss anything?

Frightened Rabbit – Be Less Rude

[Sorry, but I've had to disable the audio links in this post.]

[This is a long, long article which my brother wrote for the site. It's a fascinating and really slightly scary piece of writing and I seriously recommend you make the time to read the whole thing. He explains very neatly how the quality of recorded music is taking a massive nosedive, and how really high-definition may be lost to us forever quite soon.

This is something I am genuinely proud to have on this site. After all the fanny jokes and random bollocks, it's nice to publish something with genuine depth of knowledge and thought, despite the depressing inevitability that it took someone else to write it. Little bastard. He's handsomer than me too, the little fucker.

The other thing is that he illustrates his points with mp3s and I am not sure if the quality of the songs I provide will make his argument properly, but click on the pictures and you'll get the point. I know it doesn't fit the narrow column width format too well, but there's not a lot I can do about that, I don't think.]

Read the rest of this entry »

Christ al-fucking-mighty I need to stay away from the fucking news.

“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.” Men in Black was supposed to be a comedy with hilarious little aliens not biting social satire.

I can’t get over the complete fucking idiots raving on about the Knighthood for Salman Rushdie. The Pakistani Minster for Religious Affairs (could there be a job title that made huge helpings of bum-clownery more inevitable?) had this to say (from the Beeb):

“The West always wonders about the root cause of terrorism. Such actions [giving Sir Salman a knighthood] are the root cause of it. If someone commits suicide bombing to protect the honour of the Prophet Mohammad, his act is justified. If Britain doesn’t withdraw the award, all Muslim countries should break off diplomatic relations.”

He back-tracked on this later, but the British High Commisioner was actually summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to explain himself. And in any case, that nice little statement pretty well encapsulates the reaction of a sizeable number of hysterical nutters. Not ‘the Islamic World’ and not ‘Muslims’ but the fucking crazy ones who could well do with being told, to paraphrase Bill Hicks, that ‘If this bothers you I suggest taking a good look at the world in which we live and…
…shutting your fucking mouth.’

The Iranian government may be legendary nutjobs, but check this out, from this BBC report:

“This insulting, suspicious and improper act by the British government is an obvious example of fighting against Islam,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry Director for Europe, Ebrahim Rahimpour, was quoted as saying

There was also, with not a shred of detectable irony, this little gem from Britain’s first Muslim member of the House of Lords, Lord Ahmed (reported: here & here):

“Actually I was appalled to hear that Salman Rushdie had been given a knighthood, particularly when this man has been very divisive,” he said. “This man – as you can see – not only provoked violence around the world because of his writings, but there were many people that were killed around the world and honouring the man who has blood on his hands, sort of because of what he did, honouring him I think is going a bit too far.”

Salman Rushdie, that callous and brutal writer of books has blood on his hands? Well unless he gave himself a papercut whilst doing his research, that is one of the most idiotic statements I have ever heard. His statement basically says that if someone expresses an idea that makes someone so cross he goes out and kills someone to avenge his hurt feelings that the person who expressed the idea is to blame, rather than the person committing the killing. If he truly believes this, he is a irredeemable fuckwit.

Now I can hear cries of cultural relativism echoing through the internets as I speak – respect the difference between cultures, insulting someone’s religion is a serious thing, etc, etc. Bullshit, I’m afraid.

The fundamental difference between Western and radicalised (not all, obviously) Islamic society at the moment is very neatly embodied by this one issue. No matter how theocratic and bonkers Bush and Blair and his followers ever get accused of being, there are more books hugely offensive to Christian sensibilities published, without much more than a mild whinge, in these ostensibly Christian countries than there are books offensive to Islam. By orders of magnitude, I should imagine.

If you wanted a definition of fundamentalism, this can’t be far from it. Drawing the line between causing offence and actual harm is fucking obvious. There are reasons of expediency behind this – just how do you effectively legislate against ideas? – but primarily it is a point of principle at the very heart of the modern concept of freedom: that all people are free to hold and express their opinions no matter what they are.

Trying to make certain kinds of ideas in some way illegal to avoid discrimination against people to whom they are unfavourable automatically discriminates against the person whose idea you are repressing. The only way to actually have freedom of religion is to have complete freedom to criticise and even insult religion because if you attack that right you simultaneously attack your own freedom.

Salman Rushdie may or may not deserve his Knighthood on an artistic basis, this is entirely open for debate, and it is of politically questionable benefit to award it. But would you rather deny someone an acknowledgement of their artistic achievements because you don’t want to inflame psychopathic religious fundamentalists?

So if his Knighthood offends you you of course have the right to be offended, enraged, to complain and to protest. What you do not have the right to do is to cause harm because no actual harm has been done to you. I’ve also had about enough of apologising to these retards. There is only one response to people who are getting their knickers in a twist over this and demanding punitive actions, diplomatic actions and the rest of it: shut up whining and get the fuck over it. You’ll live.

What songs can possibly go with that little rant then? I confess, I am at a little bit of a loss.

The 63 Crayons – Forget the War, Let’s Go Shopping!
Grandaddy – Underneath the Weeping Willow
Elvis Costello & the Attractions – (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding?
Alabama 3 – Woke Up This Morning

I post this one a lot, but it is one of the best songs in existence. You want to talk sensitivity to other cultures, being tolerant of barbaric beliefs such as death by stoning for adultery and suicide bombing as a resonable to response to religious criticism? Fuck it, you go and live with the nutters who advocate this shit then, and then tell me if we don’t have to fight against it.

The Dead Kennedys – Holiday in Cambodia