The Gnomecast could have been called many, many things. It could have been called The Widecast after Wide Days, the Edinburgh-based music convention I attended in the middle of last week, and from the showcases at which two of the songs on this podcast were chosen. Equally, it could have been called the Witchcast, due to the fact that the vicious old Fucker of Working Britain is now a thing of the past.
In fact, now that I think about it, a whole podcast dedicated to anti-Thatcher songs would probably have been a distinct possibility, but my feelings on her death are not quite so clean cut. Yes, I am glad she is dead, but it’s more of a sense of relief, just a sort of feeling of peace now such a vindictive, spiteful cause of so much harm is finally gone, rather than the sort of air-punching, high-fiving glee which was in evidence after Osama Bin Laden was finally rubbed out.
But make no mistake, Thatcher was far more evil than Osama Bin Laden. Never mind domestic politics, her support for despots around the world was directly involved in the deaths of many, many more people than amateurs like Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden. Â The fact that these people were mostly brown, or at least brownish, leads us to underestimate the horror for which she was responsible, but responsible she most certainly was. To be fair, of course, I don’t doubt that Hussein and Bin Laden would have been capable of far, far worse deeds had they had the power to actually carry them out, but I am not sure that should really be an excuse for the likes of Thatcher, Reagan, Bush and Blair.
Sorry, that really had nothing at all to do with gnomes, did it. Ah well, move along.
01. Judy Garland – Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead (00.19)
02. M.J. Hibbett and the Validators (01.07)
03. eagleowl – Not Over (12.24)
04. The Pictish Trail – Wait Until (17.46)
05. Numbers are Futile – Justice is Light (and Blood) (27.37)
06. Law Holt – Hustle (34.30)
07. Garden of Elks – Floaty (42.07)
08. Siobhan Wilson – Reading You (45.10)
09. Kid Canaveral – Who Would Want to be Loved? (51.31)
10. Virgin of the Birds – Evening of Light (58.09)
So, the Wicked Witch is dead, eh? Super. About time. Fuck her, she was a cunt, and it is basically impossible that she suffered enough. You don’t get to cause that much harm to that many people, especially when you do it with such glee and hatred, and then lecture me about etiquette or compassion when your frail, dusty old cadaver finally quits twitching for good, its remaining years fuelled not so much by anything resembling life-force as by the simmering neutron star of weapons grade bile at the core of your viperous soul spitefully refusing to be extinguished once and for all.
Well she’s gone now. Good. Fuck her. Bring me the head of David fucking Cameron next.
The song in the video at the top of the page comes from this absolutely excellent album by M.J. Hibbett and the Validators, and I am not sure a political song has resonated quite so strongly with me, well… pretty much ever, really. It’s an oldie, of course, and I heard it many years before Thatcher’s death, but I knew immediately at the time that he had absolutely nailed something with this tune.
We’ve already seen this with the revisionist accounts of Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the U.S., and of course one of the main reasons the political right in this country are jumping up and down in outrage at those celebrating Thatcher’s death is of course because they don’t want any challenge to their view of her legacy. They want to control the narrative, to paint her as a strong, principled leader. And of course she was, but then so was Emperor fucking Palpatine.
If we want the world to remember the way she destroyed industry after industry in this country, whilst simultaneously dismantling all the safety nets she was ensuring people suddenly needed, and then setting the police on them when they complained as if they were her own private army, then we have to make sure that story is told often and well. The same goes for her support for murderous dictators around the world, and encouragement of Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. And for her privatisation and deregulation fetish, which pretty much handed the keys to the generation of wealth in this country to the very richest amongst us, in order that they could lock everyone else out.
Yes, seriously, the Ginstitute. You can go there, learn how to make your own gin, and then do batches, order more later and stuff like that. I don’t mean to sound either shallow or like too much of an alcoholic (I am both, I just don’t want to sound like it) but this shit has my name written all over it!
As you know, I was at Wide Days yesterday (see Newsnight feature here), schmoozing with industry types (or just catching up with some pals, depending on what way you want to look at it). This one is bloody amazing. The Unconvention guys in Manchester are trying to build a British equivalent of Fora Do Eixo in Brazil. That network allows artists to play sold out shows across the whole country, even in cities they have never visited before. It is free to use and now involves 3,000 artists from across 200 cities, generating $44million for the independent music sector, but it basically started with bands from three different towns wanting to set up gig swaps to allow them to tour outside the main Sao Paolo-Rio axis in Brazil. Instead of conventional gig swaps, however, where you end up tied to certain bands, here when you put on a gig or host a band you earn credits in a virtual currency (now so widespread in Brazil it is underwritten by the government) which you can then spend in the system however you please. It’s hard to explain properly, but if you’re a band looking to tour the UK and reckon you can bring an audience of at least 70 people to a hometown gig, then it’s worth having a look at.
In the evening at Wide Days there were three showcases, and these are my three favourite bands from the ones we saw. Firstly, Siobhan Wilson’s set was fucking lovely. Oddly, at times it feels like you might be in a musical, and then at others the songs had just a bit too much of a nasty undercurrent, such as this little peach from her latest EP.
Saint Max and the Fanatics were awesome too, if a little odd. I can’t really think of anyone else making music like theirs at the moment, not that I don’t think is shit anyway. I’m not entirely sure what it is they’ve got, but it’s definitely something. And finally, Garden of Elks made a massive, gleeful racket of shouty guitar music. Awesome.
5. Olaf Furniss is a Pretty Cool Guy
I don’t take to these pages to directly praise my pals very often, but this one deserves a little mention. As we walked between showcases yesterday evening, Olaf directed us off into one of the little lanes off the Cowgate. I thought he was taking people to somewhere the delegates could get some food, and I impatiently suggested heading off to Sneaky Pete’s with the others, because I had already eaten and wanted a pint instead.
Without really going into details he said that I should just come along, which I figured I might as well do, and bloody good that I did, too. In one of the alleys Olaf had stashed a van full of tasty food from Henderson’s, and as we were mid scoff, he opened the back of the van and out popped Stanley Odd to do an impromptu, two-song acoustic set. I am not exactly Mr. Hip-hop, but their first tune – about the independence for Scotland debate – was great, and in fact the whole thing was just brilliant – a sort of vegetarian deli, hip-hop ambush. Even the locals who complained (like a couple of whinging pricks) were pretty funny. So well played, Olaf, very well played indeed.
Yep, the post-Gnomegame hangover has just about subsided, I have caught up with most of the screamingly urgent emails in my inbox, and I am now sitting here wondering when Mrs. Toad will return so I can accept the glorious privilege of making her her dinner. Super.
Anyhow, my slow recovery means that unless you’re very, very quick on your feet you are likely to miss Beth Orton and Dan Michaelson playing at the Liquid Rooms tonight, but playing they are and I am a fan of the new Dan Michaelson stuff, so it’s worth going if you’re kicking your heels.
We also have another BAD FUN gig this week, with North American War, Furrow and Deathcats at Henry’s Cellar Bar on Sunday. This will be a pretty guitary one, with Deathcats being more garagey, Furrow more shoegazey and North American War more choppy and punchy. There’s a descriptive wee sentence for you, how can you not want to come along after that little gem.
Apart from these two, the one event looming largest over the Edinburgh gig calendar this week would be Wide Days – the two-day industry conference thingy with seminars and keynote speeches and so on, culminating in a special presentation by the Spotify founders, which could be, erm, interesting. There are also showcase gigs in the evenings – full lineups here – and of everyone playing the two lineups I would most recommend would be the pretty much diametrically opposed Siobhan Wilson and Garden of Elks.
I am not actually in Edinburgh at the moment, but I have seen lots of people complaining about snow on Facebook, so I used a snowy Edinburgh picture just in case.
Is it actually snowing in Edinburgh? Partly I hope it is, because I love the snow, but partly I really hope it isn’t, because our roof leaks when it snows and we’re getting dangerously close to our bloody living room ceiling collapsing because of the leak. Fingers fucking crossed, as Mahatma Gandhi might say.
Anyhow, BAD FUN returns this week, back at Henry’s Cellar Bar, bringing you two brand new, freshly hatched Scottish bands, as well as one of my favourite Edinburgh bands, Plastic Animals. Joining them will be The Yawns and Garden of Elks, both from Glasgow and both very new indeed and yet to play in the capital at all. It’s all going to be very alternative rocky, I guess you’d say, with Plastic Animals more shoegazey, The Yawns more laid back and the Elks more rambunctious.
Other than this, there doesn’t seem to be all that much on, as Edinburgh struggles to wake itself from its Christmas slumber, but annoyingly there are two other rather interesting-looking things on at the same time as our gig on Saturday.
And finally, Future Shorts are hosting another evening of short film at the InSpace Gallery, also on Saturday, should you be after something a little more visually stimulating and with (presumably) fewer guitars.
So yes, we are slowly creaking back into life, here at Song, by Toad and our first gig of 2013 is already approaching fast. Next weekend – i.e. Saturday 19th January – we will be back at Henry’s for a fine lineup, including one of our favourite Edinburgh bands Plastic Animals, and two very, very new bands indeed, barely yet to play a gig never mind one through in Edinburgh.
Both Garden of Elks and The Yawns emerged very late last year, the former with a single on Soundcloud and the latter with an album on Electropapknit Records. It’s a fine lineup of excellent guitar music, and apparently Henry’s has new owners and has enjoyed a lick of paint since I was there last, so I am rather looking forward to returning.
Tickets here.
Winter has been slow to arrive this year, but it certainly feels like it’s here now. The last few days have been pretty cold, but more importantly when you live this far North, it’s getting fucking dark. It’s not something I dislike, actually. We may not get much real cold in Edinburgh, nor indeed very much which anyone else would describe as Summer, but Edinburgh is at a surprisingly high latitude and during the Winter months it really is dark around these parts.
So there I was sitting at my desk at four in the afternoon and it was already really rather fucking dingy outside, and in the absence of an obvious theme it seemed about as relevant as anything else I could have come up with. And let’s face it, without that this is just a mish mash of new stuff which has been piling into my inbox over the last little while, and where’s the fun in that, eh? Well? Where?
‘Hey, wait a moment, isn’t that that hairy cunt from Bronto?’
Thus went my thought process when I saw this video for the first time. And yes, they hirsute gentleman in the video – the tall one doing a lot of singing – is indeed the fellow the popular press refers to as ‘that hairy cunt from Bronto Skylift‘. Niall, I think his mother calls him. But you never know.
I’ve criticised the Scottish music scene for failing to throw up all that many good, rough, raucous guitar bands in the last few years, particularly given how many great ones were appearing in Manchester and on the South Coast. And it’s taken a while, but there are definitely a few really good ones around these days. Dolfinz and Paws you know about already, and Min Diesel and North American War have also been favourably discussed on these pages before.
Now this lot, calling themselves Garden of Elks (and including that hairy cunt from Bronto), have released a song out into the wilds of the internet and I have to say, it sounds very promising. I’ve heard one more tune than the one they have released and that too was awesome: twitching and raucous. Who knows if they’ll be any good in the long run, but they have the pedigree (did I mention that the hairy cunt is that one from Bronto?) and the two tunes they’ve recorded so far are cracking. So I recommend you do as I do: keep an eye on their Soundcloud page and see what develops.
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 The Gnomecast could have been called many, many things. It could have been called The Widecast after Wide Days, the Edinburgh-based music convention I attended in the middle of last week, and from the showcases at which two of the songs on this podcast were chosen. Equally, it could have been called the Witchcast, due to the fact that the vicious old Fucker of Working Britain is now a thing of the past.
I am not actually in Edinburgh at the moment, but I have seen lots of people complaining about snow on Facebook, so I used a snowy Edinburgh picture just in case.
