Having weaselled out of our Fresh Air show yesterday because I was too busy trying to get Loch Lomond sessions edited and generally ready to go away on holiday, so Ruth missed out on her weekly opportunity to take the piss out of me, which must have been a shame for the poor lass.

Anyhow, we decided to remedy this by recording a podcast for publishing while we’re away, so Ruth came round with a CD of twenty songs and we bumbled our way through an evening chattering nonsense (as per usual).

We’re a teeny-tiny bit short of cutting edge new tunes for this week, but I think we can live with that for a week, eh.  As Ruth would insist, her choices are all better than things I would have chosen anyway…

Toadcast #139 – The Comfortcast

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01. Animal Magic Tricks – Pinkening (05.04)
02. Eurythmics – Love is a Stranger (11.21)
03. Iron & Wine – Upward Over the Mountain (19.11)
04. Mountain Man – Mouthwings (25.54)
05. Yo La Tengo – Take Care (28.04)
06. Fred Astaire – Top Hat, White Tie & Tails (35.42)
07. Gomez – 78 Stone Wobble (41.43)
08. The Everley Brothers – Be Bop a-lula (49.21)
09. Edith Piaf – Non, Je ne Regrette Rien (51.37)
10. Pulp – The Boss (Demo) (58.23)

Mrs. Toad and I might be gallivanting about the Italian countryside, but we are still thinking of you, our loyal Toadlings. We may be relaxing by the pool, but we understand that life might not be quite so easy for those of you at home. Actually, fuck it, life is never this easy for us either. This is like some bizarre anomaly for us – time, peace, reading books… it’s all so fucking restful I’ve almost forgotten to swear at the locals.

The place we’re staying is just plain ridiculous. We are living in what amounts to the tiniest of little comedy garden sheds imaginable, but the outside space is some great big gigantic plaza. It’s just ridiculous.

Fortunately, there is something to lower the tone. Nature is basically a great big urinal, as we all know, and I have been doing my best to maintain a time-honoured male principle of ‘no place being too sacred or picturesque for having a sly piss’. So when the bladder beckons, so does the wall, and there I go to water the olive groves of Puglia. It feels like a public service, really it does.

Thanks again to Euan and the lads for keeping things going while we’re away. The connection here is so damn slow I really haven’t been able to read it all, but Mrs. Toad periodically checks up on things on her Blackberry (the woman’s insane) and lets me know how things are going. This news I generally treat with an indifferent grunt, before returning to the pondering of precisely which sort of cheese I most fancy for lunch, but I appreciate her efforts.

Toadcast #74 – The Poolcast

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01. The Shaky Hands – Summer’s Life (03.26)
02. Lemonjelly – Spacewalk (12.45)
03. Grandaddy – Ghost of 1672 (19.44)
04. Billie Holiday – Good Morning Heartache (24.36)
05. Animal Magic Tricks (with Neil from Meursault & Pete from The Leg) (34.42)
06. Edith Piaf – C’etait Une Histoire D’amour (38.11)
07. The Flaming Lips – Can’t Get You Out of My Head (48.12)
08. Wilco – Jolly Banker (52.17)
09. The Laurel Collective – No Pirates Left (63.04)
10. Yoshimi! – Philosophy For Fangirls (69.12)

You all know I’ve been doing a regular slot on DC’s radio show, The Waiting Room, of late, don’t you? Well this week’s slot saw me picking a track by Sky Larkin, as well as three wonderful songs from the splendid Happy Realease Records from darn sarf*. I may have been a little rude about their sound actually, but it was inadvertent. I was trying to head off the criticism from indie snobs – What? Who? None of those round here, surely? – about the fact that they are just plain enjoyable indie-pop for the most part, and ended up implying that I thought they were lightweight. The Genius of Tact strikes again. I should teach courses in this shit.

Anyway, swing by The Waiting Room to download this and past episodes, and Error FM to see what sort of crazy fools agree to put this sort of rubbish on the airwaves. The, er, internet airwaves. Interwav… oh never mind, you know what I mean.

The Waiting Room, Wednesday 12th March 2008

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* Darn sarf, for my non-British readers, is the phonetic spelling for how a cockney might pronounce the words ‘down South’. Which is where they are from. Yes, I know, hilarious wasn’t it.

And here’s a sneaky little bonus podcast from myself:
Toadcast #23½ – The Freshcast

A week or so ago, I recorded a demo show for Fresh Air FM, the local student radio station, with a view to applying for a slot during next term, only the computer ate the bastard thing. Fucking technology. Anyhow, Sunday was Mrs. Toad’s birthday, and for some reason she was keen to get plastered and do a podcast with me, so we re-did it together. It wasn’t played quite as straight as I’d hoped, and by the time I’d had time to reflect on submitting it I was pretty certain Fresh Air would chase me out of the building with sticks. Fortunately for me, however, they didn’t hate it, didn’t seem to think I was a smart-arsed twat and didn’t dispatch me from the building with a boot print in my arse.

As this show is just a pre-record and will be going out randomly over the night when they stop broadcasting, I thought I’d pop it up here for you to have a listen. I won’t be doing this with any more Fresh Air things because, well, you need to go over there and listen for yourselves really, don’t you. But for this once I thought you might like it seeing as you shower of treacherous fuckers all seem to love Mrs. Toad so very bloody much. Be warned though, because it was made for a different audience, so there may be a bit of duplication from previous podcasts, and it’s rather long, as apparently there is a lot of time to fill overnight when there are no presenters in the building.

The Fresh Air plugs themselves were enough to see us kicked out.

Toadcast #23½ – The Freshcast

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01. Shout Out Louds – Tonight I Have to Leave It (03.09)
02. The Shaky Hands – Whales Sing (06.41)
03. The Cave Singers – Thinking of Heaven (13.05)
04. Preston School of Industry – Straits of Magellan (17.23)
05. Adam Balbo – Talkin’ Bush (27.11)
06. Donnan Linkz feat. Baje One of Junk Science – The N Word (29.18)
07. Riff-Raff – Romford Girls (36.44)
08. The Pogues – Dirty Old Town (38.58)
09. Nicole Atkins – Neptune City (46.44)
10. Edith Piaf – Elle Frequentait la Rue Pigalle (50.11)
11. Dusty Springfield – You Don’t Own Me (53.34)
12. AA Bondy – Vice Rag (59.12)
13. Relatively Clean Rivers – Hello Sunshine (68.09)
14. The Eighteenth Day of May – Lady Margaret (71.05)
15. Celebrity Chimp – Pornstar (81.27)
16. Nightjar – Poor Man’s Son (84.01)
17. Ravens & Chimes – General Lafayette, You Are Not Alone! (93.03)
18. Eels – Love of the Loveless (95.59)
19. Glasvegas – It’s My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry (106.49)
20. Flashguns – St. George (111.01)
21. Elle S’Appelle – Little Flame (123.09)
22. Elk City – Cherries in the Snow (125.58)
23. The Low Miffs – Also Sprach Shareholder (130.41)

Ah, the embarrassment. What a fool I was, but such was the inevitability I can’t really feel all that ashamed. Basically, I bought my first record player since I was 17 about four hours before our housewarming party on Saturday, and you can imagine the rest. I’ve been so excited about this ever since I made the decision a couple of months ago, that I have accumulated a pretty decent stack of vinyl in the meantime, giving Scotland’s second hand shops a pretty good scouring, with plenty more to come.

So, having left my whole music collection on random through most of the party, due to not having enough time to throw together even the most rudimentary of playlists, I inevitably failed to resist the urge of old Stones singles, some Jam, some old Motown, something by The Beat, Elvis Costello and so on and so on. Of course, being a music nazi to begin with, and being all the more excited to play with my new toy, I was in no mood whatsoever to let anyone else play at all.

Unfortunately, most of my music is not party music, especially not my vinyl purchases, so inevitably as I got drunker and less concerned with everyone else, the music got more and more maudlin. Billy Bragg, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, James Yorkston, even Leonard Cohen may have made an appearance. It got to the point where I insisted on trying again and again to play a Bruce Springsteen record that clearly had something wrong with it.

The only saving grace was that I was so exhausted after working from 8am to 1am virtually all week to get the house ready and so drunk from quaffing at the sort of reckless pace that giddy relief brings that I passed out some time at, apparently, three or four in the morning (it may have been earlier – I was pretty wasted). This left the remaining heroes of booze a good two or three hours of uninterrupted access to my month and a half’s worth of music, and freedom was theirs at last!

What a fool. But I slept the sleep of the contented that night, I tell you!

Something I played really early on: Edith Piaf РMon L̩gionnaire
Something I was asked to play but I think I forgot. Band of Horses – Is There a Ghost
Something I probably played far too often: The Beat – Tears of a Clown

Yes, we’re back and this time we’ve relaxed a little.  There’s a bit less cussing and ranting in this podcast than usual – in fact virtually no ranting at all, which is probably as much of a surprise to me as it is to you.

I’m looking at late evening music this week because Mrs. Toad and I were recently talking about the Chillout craze which kicked off about six or seven years ago. It descended into electronic muzak unfortunately, but there were some good things in there at the beginning, so I thought I’d have a look at it.  I’ve thrown in some stuff I find nice and eveningy and relaxing as well just to stop it becoming too tedious.

Toadcast #7 – The Chillout Tent

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01. Groove Armada – At The River (01.31)
02. The Avalanches – Frontier Psychiatrist (04.32)
03. Calexico – Human (10.31)
04. Cinerama – Diamonds Are Forever (15.14)
05. Jazzy Jeff – For Love of Da Game (19.02)
06. Fear of Pop – In Love (23.12)
07. The 18th Day of May – Cold Early Morning (31.11)
08. Lucinda Williams – Ventura (35.40)
09. Lemonjelly – In the Bath (41.51)
10. Sandy Bull – Carmina Burana Fantasy (48.28)
11. The Hold Steady – The Chillout Tent (54.04)
12. RJD2 – Ghostwriter (57.36)
13. Edith Piaf – La Vie en Rose (63.22)
14. Marilyn Monroe – Through With Love (67.02)
15. The Divine Comedy – Theme From Casanova (69.50)