Well in all the chatter about the Beeb this week I was strongly considering ignoring it completely in this podcast and giving everyone a welcome break from the wailing and gnashing of teeth… but naah, that was never going to happen, was it.

So there’s a lot of railing against the Beeb and the threat to 6Music and yaddah yaddah you know the script don’t you.  Sadly, and somewhat ironically, we spend so much time talking about the state of the Beeb and the loss their support of small bands will represent, that we actually forgot to talk much about the small bands we ourselves put on the bloody podcast.

Toadcast #111 – The Beebcast

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01. Ballboy – All the Records on the Radio are Shite (03.21)
02. Love is All – Bigger Bolder (13.02)
03. Fredrik – Vinterbarn (15.53)
04. Exrays – Everything Goes (27.16)
05. Phil Ochs – Automation Song (34.33)
06. Ghostkeeper – By Morning (37.26)
07. The Light Footwork – Carlsbad Irrigation Project (47.54)
08. Mondrian – Rise and Fall of a Golden Boy Seen by a Porn Star Using No Sextoy (50.21)
09. The Leaf Library – Losing Places (ISAN Remix) (63.00)

[Mrs. Toad has very kindly contributed this Friday's Fives, as I am busy being mounted like a five-dollar hooker at Proper Job.  Enjoy.]

I am in the middle of a secondment at Proper Job which basically means that instead of rushing around trying to get new clients or speak to existing ones about what is going on in the world of stocks and shares, I am undertaking company analysis and have time on my hands to contemplate the mysteries of the future.

So at the moment, I am mulling what cars will be like in 2030 and how many of them will be on the roads. This is usually predicted using an S-Curve function which predicts growth of consumption goods accelerating from matching income growth at low levels at twice the rate of income growth for a certain range of income finally slowing again to match income growth at higher levels giving an S shaped graph. According to this, there will be 2 billion cars on the road in 2030 (there are about 800 million now). Scary stuff. However, population density is also rising (only 46% of New Yorkers own a car whereas 92% of Americans do) and car sharing (ZipCar/City Car club) is also on the rise. So how the hell am I supposed to come up with an even half sensible estimate? Even Volkswagen don’t seem to think we will all own our own cars.

Of course, the point is that you can’t get it right, you just have to make a reasonable estimate and assign a probability to it based on current evidence. Despite the shelves and shelves of strategy books in airports worldwide, there is a great deal of serendipity involved in most business successes. The guys at Google for instance, didn’t start out to be in the advertising business but ending up there is why their company is worth $135bn. There is also the occasional trying to be too clever moment. If I said to you that buying a share of 100 dodgy mortgages packaged together and sliced up is as safe as lending to a blue chip company like IBM, you’d laugh in my face but that’s what all the physics graduates and math whizzes at places like Lehman Bros really believed. Business is hard especially, when mistakes mean that you could go down the pan or get taken out. Its easy to err too far on the side of caution and become defensive and oppressive rather than innovative (yeah, that’s you Microsoft).

Which makes it all the more galling that a non profit entity such as the BBC has apparently confused “value for money” with “bums on seats” in its recent strategic review, leading to the closure of 6 Music, the watering down of local content, and the downsizing of their successful website. The questions in the review also point to them considering reducing some of the innovative projects that they have undertaken such as pushing DAB and developing iPlayer. iPlayer is in large part why people like Murdoch(s) have it in for them, Sky and Virgin Media cannot make money if they cannot control content provision. By pushing people online to a familiar and trusted brand, the BBC has hastened their demise.

This has already been linked to but I would urge you all to take some time to respond to the BBC’s strategic review in full because its clear that fear of Tory/Murdoch harpies is pushing them in an all together more stolid direction than we have seen in the last ten years and that would be a great shame.

1. What do you think cars will be like in 20 years time?
2. Best piece of bullshit bingo you have heard?
3. Company/brand or product you most admire?
4. Company/brand or product you detest?
5. Your soothsayer like prediction for the world in 2030?

Ballboy – All the Records on the Radio are Shite

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Depeche Mode – Everything Counts

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Phil Ochs – Automation Song

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The Clash – Complete Control

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The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Company Town

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Today I am angry at Capitalism.  Partly, funnily enough, I am angry at Capitalism because in many ways I myself am a Capitalist.  The problem I have with Capitalism is not really the theory, but the practise.  So many people and companies who chant the free market mantra simply are not free marketeers.  They want isolationism and protectionism as much as the most paranoid Marxist when it will protect their interests, but they won’t for a second entertain the economic theory behind that sort of behaviour – gosh no!

So there is plenty of paranoid ranting in this week’s podcast, railing against people who talk all Capitalist whilst not actually being Capitalist, people who are moral and honorable in their personal lives but who turn into voracious whores as soon as they put on a suit and, erm, well generally there’s lots of pish to be talked, sorry.

Still, at least it’s marginally better than last week.

Toadcast #66 – The Greedcast

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01. Pet Shop Boys – Opportunities (03.27)
02. Billy Bragg – NPWA (16.27)
03. Eric Bachmann – Liars & Thieves (21.30)
04. The Zincs – Moguls’ Wives (28.04)
05. Tom Lehrer – Selling Out (34.24)
06. Depeche Mode – Everything Counts (39.16)
07. The Clash – Bankrobber (45.07)
08. Tom Waits – God’s Away on Business (54.07)
09. Billy Bragg – To Have and to Have Not (65.56)

Right, given Dadrock seems to be the enduring theme of the moment, let’s poke a little further shall we? Actually, Dadrock in our house was pretty fucking cool. My Dad introduced me to the Waterboys, the Pogues, the Men They Couldn’t Hang, as well as the stuff he grew up with: Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, The Band and various other classics. Mum wasn’t bad either: Depeche Mode, Bowie, the Stones and The Pet Shop Boys, as well as some splendidly camp pop such as ABC, Erasure, Kate Bush, Elton John (just the early stuff, calm down) and things like that.

There were some moments of genuine shame in there too, to be fair. Who knows, we may look back on the Decemberists with derision for their pretension and intricacy, so you can never entirely tell which music will and won’t age with dignity.

I still make my parents a lot of compilation CDs, even though I don’t make them for myself anymore. In fact, ever since I left home in 1993 I’ve been regularly returning with a little pile of pre-filtered new music for them. I try and steer clear of the Libertines and the Von Bondies, but maybe that’s silly because you know who introduced me to the Dead Kennedys? Yup, my folks.

Having heaped them with praise, it must be confessed that after many years of cool, my Mum did rather embarrassingly lapse into a penchant for the Lighthouse Family. Or, in the recent traditions of this site, the Fucking Lighthouse Fucking Family. Or that Italian clown Eros Ramazotti. Dad has remained pretty steady, to credit the old bastard, but he is still the man who introduced me to Billy Joel, so some responsibility does need to be taken there, irrespective of the quality of Captain Jack and Piano Man.

So if you’re lurking, lurk no more. Now is the time to come out of the woodwork and alternately shame and praise your family. Come on, they can’t be all bad.

1. Your Mum’s most shameful crime against music.
2. The coolest thing your Mum listens to.
3. Your Dad’s worst moment of musical shame.
4. Dad’s moment of musical triumph.
5. The most shameful musical thing that you and your folks have in common.

David Bowie – Let’s Dance
The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Scarlet Ribbons
Depeche Mode – People Are People
Bob Dylan – Drifter’s Escape
Pet Shop Boys – What Have I Done to Deserve This

My dearest Toadlings it is with enormous pleasure and brimming pride that I present the light of my silly life, the bright and shining star at the centre of my universe and the bad tempered little Scottish strumpet to whom my every waking hour is devoted.  That sounds sarcastic, but it isn’t.

She treats the music I play with a sort of contemptuous indifference and has some truly shocking stuff in her rather limited collection.  But she has a punk side, she loves Bob Dylan and has taken to some unexpected groups recently, like The Sequins, The Builders & the Butchers and Grandaddy.  It slowly started to dawn on me that actually, Dolly Parton aside for the moment, she could probably put together a better playlist than I could, and I was absolutely mortified to be proved absolutely right.

So I thought I’d get her along to co-present too, which seemed like it might be fun.  It was a bit odd at first, but we warm up a bit by the end and it turns slowly into what I think it a pretty decent podcast, all told.  I’m not sure I’ll be able to talk her into doing this too often, but if it proves a success I promise to do my best.

Toadcast #13 – The Mrs. Toadcast

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01. Lambchop – Dallas Theme Song (00.00)
02. Sham 69 – Borstal Breakout (03.10)
03. The Clash – I Fought the Law (06.49)
04. Stiff Little Fingers – Alternative Ulster (10.53)
05. Depeche Mode – Just Can’t Enough (16.18)
06. The Cure – Just Like Heaven (19.50)
07. Ennio Morricone – The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (26.14)
08. Nirvana – Sliver (33.02)
09. Guns ‘n’ Roses – Get in the Ring (38.32)
10. Bob Dylan – Tangled Up in Blue (48.21)
11. Eels – Fresh Feeling (53.58)
12. The Von Bondies – No Regrets (61.31)
13. The 63 Crayons – Spoils For Survivors (66.16)
14. Honeytrap – Andy the Freefaller (71.15)
15. The Builders & the Butchers – Black Dresses (76.11)
16. Night Jar – Poor Man’s Son (81.46)
17. The Indelicates – Waiting For Pete Doherty to Die (89.54)

Song, by Toad has been nominated as Best Music Blog in the People’s Choice Awards. I didn’t actually have to nominate myself, but you can, so it’s hardly an Earth-shattering achievement, however I think it’s important we muster a bit of a turnout at the voting booth for reasons I’ll allow Tim from The Daily Growl to explain:

more importantly, I want to see proper British music blogs occupying that top 10. Not like last year where the top 5 was taken up by ‘blogs’ by top-selling artists which I cynically see as just another promotional racket (yes, I’m looking at you Mike Skinner and Dave Gilmour) and others that weren’t really music blogs at all.

…let’s see a proper music blogger – i.e. a non-professional, just writing for sheer love of music – on the podium come 2 October.

He’s right – bollocks to the well-funded, slick-arse, sphincter-polishing, devil’s shilling-grubbing professionals. That’s not what a fucking blog is, dammit. However, fortunately it turns out you can vote for numerous different blogs using the same email address and it also turns out you can vote with as many different email addresses as you have, so get out there and vote for me as often as possible. Then make your friends do it too. Then go to The Daily Growl and Fucking Dance and vote for them as well – let’s make a dent for the amateurs this year, eh! Any of my other blog pals who are in the running, let me know and I’ll link to you buggers too.

And, of course, the reason for all this bollocks in the first place – the tuuunez! And it’s nearly beer time. Woo hoo!

Depeche Mode – Everything Counts
The Siddeleys – You Get What You Deserve
Elastica – Connection
Gene – I Can’t Help Myself
Cold War Kids – Passing the Hat
Decoration – It’s OK to be Fickle
Thomas Truax – Inside the Internet