Song, by Toad

Hello people, more podcastenfun once again.  Having done the Deathcast recently, I thought it might be nice to do the polar opposite – the Birthcast.  This week’s podcast is all about the birth of Song, by Toad.  I’ll tell you about how I started writing about music, how I discovered blogs, how I discovered that what I was writing was in fact a blog and how I ultimately ended up on Wordpress writing what you are now reading.  r casually skimming over, depending on your bent.

It has also ended up being something of a 2004 retrospective, because that’s when this all started, however slowly, and that side of it has been nice.  I had met Mrs. Toad by this point, and I was all excited, and despite the fact that my job was bollocks, living in London was great fun.  I was on a narrowboat at Nine Elms Pier at this point, which was an amazingly brilliant place to live, and I used to cook myself kettle noodles because I couldn’t be arsed firing up the stove.  I’d boil some water, throw it over some noodles and some stock and chuck in lots of fresh veg – bloody delicious.

Toadcast #40 – The Birthcast

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01. Modest Mouse – Bury Me With It (01.39)
02. The Fiery Furnaces – Chris Matthews (07.57)
03. The Innocence Mission – I Have Not Seen This Day Before (Live) (17.54)
04. American Music Club – Only Love Can Set You Free (22.57)
05. Brian Wilson – Cabin Essence (28.40)
06. Andrew Bird – Lull (35.30)
07. Jim White – Static on the Radio (42.52)
08. Tom Waits – Trampled Rose (49.09)
09. The Dears – Lost in the Plot (54.36)
10. Giant Sand – Anarchistic Bolshevistic Cowboy Bundle (59.43)

One of the almighty perils of mp3 blogging (it’s a perilous business I tell you – fraught with danger…. now where was I? Ah yes, forgot to even close my brackets didn’t I. What a muppet… here you go:) So erm, anyway, one of the side-effects of mp3 blogging is that you get so utterly swamped with new music, by zealous promoters, eager bands and your own enthusiasm, that it can be hard to actually remember to listen to old stuff. Not so much the old classics, just the really excellent albums from about two or three years ago which you still love, but which are neither new enough to warrant urgent attention nor legendary enough to have indelibly permeated into your consciousness.

So today I am going to have a little look at my first ever internet Best Of list. I started regularly writing about music back in 2004, long before I even knew what blogs were, and 2004 was my first ever Official List. That was the year Wilco released their masterpiece A Ghost is Born, which was narrowly pipped to the top spot by Nick Cave’s equally stupendous double album The Lyre of Orpheus and Abbatoir Blues. Even Tom Waits released one that year. Real Gone may not have captured me at the time, but it’s one that has a surprising number of excellent songs on it when I take the time to look back.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Cannibal’s Hymn
Wilco – The Late Greats
Tom Waits – Trampled Rose

Looking back at the reviews themselves from that year, I am actually surprised by how steadfast my opinions have been. I can’t say I seriously disagree with anything much I said about those 2004 releases. The Walkmen is still a storming album of fuzzy, guitar and chiming piano-driven brilliance. That Killers album is still an indie-pop classic which, despite whatever failings they might have, caught the mood of the nation perfectly that Summer. And The Dears were one of the first in a new wave of superb Canadian music who, in the track I have chosen, married indie with cabaret, somewhat oddly.

Marianne Faithfull released a record in 2004 too. It wasn’t great, largely because most of it was penned by the dismal PJ Harvey, but Nick Cave wrote a couple of decent tracks for her. The best of the lot though was Last Song, which was written by Damon Albarn who himself recorded a version for last year’s The Good, the Bad & the Queen record. I think I might prefer Marianne’s version, actually. So yes, that’s how I started. It all shifted over to Song, by Toad a year and a bit ago, then I migrated to Wordpress in about May and here we are. Let no more albums get lost in the avalanche of newness! I sometimes need to remind myself that I am a fan, not a machine.

The Walkmen – Little House of Savages
The Dears – The Death of All the Romance
Marianne Faithfull – Last Song

Right, disclaimers first. Apparently Sasha Frere-Jones is a respected music critic, so presumably this implies that he is not this bone-headed all the time. Also, given I’ve only read one of his articles I am in no position to judge his general output, but his recent excretion ‘A Paler Shade of White‘ is just bloody thick. He manages to shoehorn needless racist divisiveness, outdated stereotyping and a truly impressive ignorance of indie music into one article which is about… yes, the racial compartmentalisation of popular music.

Generally when people write nonsense like this they defend their idiotic statements by describing it as a ‘thought piece – intended to provoke reflection and debate’. The problem I have with this is that it is possible to justify pretty much any cretinous rubbish on this basis, no matter how infantile, shallow, facile or ignorant. This is not a thought piece, it is lazy and intellectually vacant, and were it not for the fact it happens to be in the New Yorker it would merit no more than a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders, perhaps accompanied by a murmur of ‘fuckwit’ or some such similar response. Read the rest of this entry »