Song, by Toad

It’s that time of the week once more, when I pop over to Fresh Air Towers and pollute the airwaves of Edinburgh’s innocent student population with my ranting and rambling for a couple of hours.  Yes, I am on Edinburgh’s student radio station between the hours of 6.30pm and 8pm this evening (British Summer Time, I think)

To listen, go to the Fresh Air homepage and click on the big Listen Live button in the top left.

I’ll update this post with the playlist as I go along, and you should all feel free to chip in with comments here and there, should you have anything to add, or just generally feel abusive.  Oh, and apparently I was voted Best Specialist Show at the awards on Saturday, while I was rather ungratefully off getting pished at Trampoline so, er, sorry guys and thanks very much.

1. Monty Python Theme Song (Oh yes, yes I did!)
2. Cherry Ghost – Mathematics
3. Elk City – Los Cruzados
4. Tom Waits – Just the Right Bullets
5. Barton Carroll – Those Days Are Gone and My Heart is Breaking
6. Helicopter Girl – Cry Mississippi
7. Lucky Jim – Our Troubles End Tonight
8. Sad Day For Puppets – Little Light
9. Haunted House – Rattled Out in Makeup
10. Donny Hue & the Colors – Oh Lord
11. Tom Waits – What Keeps Mankind Alive
12. Eels – Devil’s Dog
13. Samantha Crain & the Midnight Shivers – Bananfish Revolution
14. American Music Club – Mantovani the Mind Reader
15. Tom Waits – Bad Liver and a Broken Heart

That’s all for this week, folks.  Tune in again next week, same time, for the last show this semester.

I am on Fresh Air student radio again this evening.  Seeing as my brother’s around I thought that instead of asking him to entertain himself himself for an hour while I prattled, I would invite him along to chatter about music with me for a bit.

I’m not sure what I’m going to play, but probably quite a few oldies I would imagine.  I might talk about musical big brothers.  As the big brother myself, I never had one but three different people ended up sort of playing that role in my life: my Dad, my Mum’s cousin Steve and my friend from uni, Strath.

So, as ever, to tune in go to freshair.org.uk between 7pm and 8pm UK time and click on the big Listen Live thingy in the top left to listen to Song, by Toad.

Elk City – Little Brother

Christ that whinge of depression about our electoral system was a bit of a damp squib thrown onto our weekend plans wasn’t it.  Fuck that for a game of soldiers, this is a bloody great weekend and I am bloody looking forward to it and there is going to be plenty of fun to be had, so enough sulking and time to be cheerful.

Tonight there’s cutting and pasting and putting together the samplers for the launch party tomrrow.  I also get the first samples of the Nightjar album, getting us within a week or so of our first official release. Tomorrow is seeing a couple of old mates for the first time in ages, and trawling charity shops for some first class silliness for the launch night itself.  Then Sunday is calming down, sleeping off a monumental hangover and generally relaxing.

The sun is out, things are fun, and in general the only worry is that I fight off the temptation to go out and drink too much beer and never get my samplers put together for tomorrow.  Sunshine, booze, music.  It’s a simple recipe but nevertheless and completely infallible one and today it promises a fine weekend of inebriation, joy and Toadery.

Neko Case – Star Witness
Elk City – Los Cruzados
Ravens & Chimes – General Lafayette!  You are Not Alone!
R.E.M. – Fall on Me

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)

Elk City are another landscape band. One whose album I will happily chuck into my music library and, although I’ll probably rarely deliberately seek them out, I’ll be most happy when the randomiser throws out one of their songs.

New Believers is a sunny album of enjoyable, harmony-laden twee guitar pop. The Roaring Machine may actually have been the reason the word twee was invented, so Liz may have to correct my terminology, but all those ooh-la-la choruses and that strong 60s girl-pop influence sounds pretty twee to me.

Apart from having one of the prettiest covers in a long time, there’s something equally pretty about the music that just about distinguishes it from a run of the mill Sunday afternoon pop record. The presence of former Luna guitarist Sean Eden may have something to do with that, as there are definitely some nice touches in the guitar department. By and large, however, New Believers is unremarkable; but it is tunesome and somehow very satisfying at its best.

At times some of the slower songs drag a little, but by and large this is a pretty enjoyable album that I am slightly surprised to find myself liking. Maybe it’s the bedroom eyes and enigmatic, somehow rather French look of the lass on the cover. I always was depressingly shallow…

Elk City – Los Cruzados
Elk City – Cherries in the Snow

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