Regular readers of my distracted piffle will know by now that I drive a red van with a tape player in it. This has led to a few changes in listening habits, not least because I hardly have any tapes left at all.  A bit like what happened to my vinyl back in about 1995, my collection has been shoved in a box at the back of a cupboard, and I honestly didn’t think I would ever play them again.

Unlike my vinyl, though, my parents didn’t eventually get bored of having it lying around the house and then throw it in the fucking bin.  Yes, they did that.  To my vinyl.  Not that I blame them really, I’d copied it all to tape (oh wait…) and was a student at the time, so there seemed little imminent prospect of me ever having a record player again.  How times change.

Now not only do we have a tape player in the van, we have actually bought one for the house, too.  I bought it off eBay for about fifteen quid a couple of years ago when I first got my hands on the Japanese War Effort’s brilliant Snowbird album, which exists only on cassette.  So for a long while, that tape player was simply a Snowbird Playing Machine, and in a sense the album itself, far from the eminently reasonable two pounds I paid for it at retail, had ended up costing me nearer twenty.

However, the box of tapes in our house is actually still stuffed away under the stairs somewhere, so at the moment the van’s tape player is subsisting on a pretty meagre diet.  In fact, due to the fact that even the van tapes have ended up buried under a pile of old crap somewhere under one of the back seats, I have actually only been listening to one single tape for the last month or so, over and over again.

I made this tape towards the tail end of the nineties and I called it, with tongue somewhat in cheek, Let’s Bop With the Brits.  It is basically just a collection of British music which, for one reason or another, was starting to sound quite old-fashioned by 1996 or so.  There was some Morrissey, some Inspiral Carpets, some Wonderstuff, some Gene, one solitary Stone Roses song, a couple of tracks from Parklife, hopefully you get the gist of it.

Anyhow, yes, for some reason I have had that one tape on repeat constantly for the last four weeks and I now know the words to most of the songs pretty much off by heart, never mind the playlist itself.  With modern music libraries comprising thousands and thousands of files, I am not sure when the last time is that happened to me.

Morrissey – Certain People I Know

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Gene – Be My Light, Be My Guide

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Blur – End of a Century

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I’m not sure why the end of the noughties should necessarily lead to any kind of retrospective of the nineties, but it has.  I guess it has a lot to do with the fact that I just feel it’s way too early for me to figure out what I make of the noughties.

So, given that it must be about time for the nineties revival (actually, probably best give it another year or so) and given that the nineties are now quite a long way away and given that, erm… well I dunno. Given I was poking around at that stuff recently and listening to some Pulp and Gene and Blur and stuff I figured I might as well pop the whole bloody lot into a podcast.

Toadcast #97 – The Nineties

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01. Pearl Jam – Even Flow (Unplugged) (4.16)
02. The Stone Roses – (Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister (12.23)
03. Belly – Untitled & Unsung (18.37)
04. Echobelly – Insomniac (22.13)
05. Blur – Yuko & Hiro (29.00)
06. Gene – Wasteland (36.14)
07. Ben Folds Five – Underground (38.49)
08. Blur – Country Sad Ballad Man (44.56)
09. REM – Parakeet (52.03)
10. Radiohead – Everything in its Right Place (59.30)

It’s that time of the week once again.  At 6.30pm, British Summer Time, myself and Dylan from Blueback Hotrod will be live on Fresh Air, Edinburgh’s student radio station.  There will be no theme, no coherence and no real attempt to do anything more dynamic than just chatter about music, so please do tune in and listen to us blether.

Rather than emailing or (grrr) tweeting, I thought I might just leave this as an open thread for those who want to contribute, and I’ll add the playlist live as we go along.

Click the big ‘Listen Live’ button on this page to tune in, between 6.30pm and 8pm tonight.

01. The Bluetones – Glad to See You Back Again
02. James – Sound
03. Emily Scott – Pageant Queen
04. Frightened Rabbit – Old Old Fashioned (Live)
05. Kid Canaveral – Teenage Fanclub Song
06. Popup – Lucy, What are You Trying to Say?
07. Blur w. Francoise Hardy – To the End
08. Gene – Dolce & Gabanna or Nowt
09. Meursault – Hard On (Charles Latham Cover)
10. Charles Latham – Nite Man
11. Withered Hand – Religious Songs
12. Boo Radleys – Almost Nearly There
13. White Antelope – Silver Dagger
14. Cancel the Astronauts – I am the President of Your Fanclub and Last Night I Followed You Home

Cheers, see you next week at the same time.

Well, as DC pointed out on Five Friday Fatwas, the 90s revival is not quite upon us yet.  It’s both totally inevitable and somewhat due, so it will be here sooner rather than later, but for the time being it has yet to entirely arrive.

So in anticipation of the inevitable, I thought I might just make a podcast which partly tried to anticipate the revisionism and partly talked just a little about what I myself might remember when the 90s revival hits full swing in a couple of years.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a child of the 90s, but I think that I might be wrong in neglecting to do so.  When they started I was 15, just moved from Singapore back to Vienna and very much a kid.  By the time they ended I had finished my Master’s degree and spent a long time pouring pints waiting for a proper job, which in some ways I suppose might just make you an adult.  It was an interesting era for me personally and when the revival arrives, as it inevitably will, I am downright fascinated to know what the younger generation will make of the music with which I grew up.

Toadcast #61 – The 1990s

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01. Pearl Jam – Go (03.47)
02. R.E.M. – Oddfellows Local 151 (11.05)
03. Cocteau Twins – An Elan (18.16)
04. Gene – Sleep Well Tonight (21.46)
05. Counting Crows – Omaha (30.33)
06. Supergrass – She’s So Loose (38.37)
07. Echobelly – King of the Kerb (41.33)
08. Alice in Chains – Nutshell (47.47)
09. Pavement – Gold Soundz (53.22)
10. Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra – Eggshell Miles (59.01)

Ah, mates.  Can’t live with ‘em, can’t kill ‘em.  Mrs. Toad’s best friend from her reckless yoof is visiting us here in Edinburgh with her gentleman friend, and consequently I got to thinking about my own old friends, and all the people who, over the years, have introduced me to so much brilliant music.  So I started to patch together a playlist of all the important friends who have added a lot of music to my life.  The problem is that it became way too long for my one hour restriction, so for this week I cast that aside, and allowed myself an extra ten minutes.

Honestly though, old friends are so important, this could have gone on for two hours, easily.  Every one of the people I mention here has a whole story of their own, and it was quite difficult to resist telling all of them in proper detail.  It seems such a shame, actually, to reduce all of these people to a two-minute link.  I could almost do a whole podcast for any one of these scenarios really, and maybe I’ll do that in future.  For now, though, you’ll have to make do with this.  It may be shabby, but it really could have been so much worse.  Meanwhile, Mrs. Toad is fucking plastered.  Oh good.  Enjoy!

Toadcast #50 – The Friendcast

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01. Pink Floyd – On the Turning Away (02.27)
02. Pearl Jam – Black (11.23)
03. The Tragically Hip – Wheat Kings (18.30)
04. Gene – Her Fifteen Years (25.23)
05. Radiohead – Black Star (28.04)
06. Verve – Lucky Man (34.41)
07. Weeping Willows – Eternal Flames (39.19)
08. Billy Bragg – Days Like These (DC Remix) (45.41)
09. Bob Dylan – Po’ Boy (49.42)
10. Elbow – Newborn (55.46)
11. Blanche – Do You Trust Me? (63.19)
12. Maximo Park – Apply Some Pressure (69.07)

I’ve been on Blogfresh Radio a few times in the past, and always enjoyed the experience. I used to chat to Bill Pearis, which was always fun, but he’s moved on now. These days when I talk to them it’s with a chap called Dev Sherlock who has proved to be just as much fun to chat to as Bill. A little too much fun actually – it seems to be traditional that when I talk to Blogfresh I prattle on endlessly for fucking ages, and then they face the unenviable task of trying to cut it down to a concise minute or so. Poor bastards – still, someone’s got to make them work for their money.

Anyhow, in addition to the more usual approach where a blogger chats a little bit to introduce a song they’re really enjoying at the moment, Blogfresh have very kindly done a profile on Song, by Toad on their latest show. There’s inevitably vanity at play here, of course there is, but I am nonetheless really chuffed that they decided to feature this blog on their recent show. It’s nice because I like what they’re doing, and they’re nice people. So go an listen and make a point of listening regularly. Their shows are short and sweet, unlike my rambling dispatches, and give you a really good taster of what’s going on on the blogs that week. It’s weird to hear a blogger’s actual voice, because sometimes I’d imagined something entirely different, but rather cool nonetheless.

In other news, I am back on Fresh Air Radio (click on the Listen Live thingy) this weekend. I have two shows, Saturday 12-2pm and Sunday 2-4pm both this weekend and next.  So if you want to hear me successfully managing to not swear – no seriously, it happens – tune in.  It’s Freshers Week at the uni as well so I might concentrate on a bit of an introduction to the Edinburgh music scene, and also play some songs from my own time as a first year student. That’ll give the game away something chronic about just how bloody old I am but fuck it, why not, it sounds fun. And there’s nothing to help people settle down and get over their nerves about being new to a place that finding some silly old fart to snigger at.

Here’s a couple that I might well consider:
Lemonheads – Being Around (Acoustic)
James – Say Something

Or my first year in Glasgow:
Gene – Sick, Sober & Sorry
Pulp – Common People

The third in this series of posts addresses hype, and the excesses thereof to which we seem to be constantly subjected at the moment. It’s certainly a common enough complaint at the moment, but I seem to remember there being plenty of hype overload well before the internet.

Once again, here are the various articles that prompted this little festival of self-indulgence, so you have some idea what to expect:
A Penny For Your Thoughts by The Vinyl Villain (read the comments as well, because some of them are very thought-provoking.
Does the World Need Another Indie Band? by Tim Walker, writing in The Independent.
Why Has Modern Music Lost So Much Impact? by the Kings of A&R.
This comment, from a reader called Alex in the comment thread of my recent podcast – The Tribecast.

And here are the other posts in the series:
1. Fragmentation
2. Over Saturation
3. Hype Overload
4. Decreasing Quality

#3 Hype Overload

Hype overload is something I’m a little divided on. In one sense, an excess of shrill hysterics about how wonderful the brand new somethingorother is had become annoyingly prevalent in modern society. You can see it in just about every form of advertising known to man, and advertising itself has pretty much infested every foetid little nook and cranny of our worthless souls, so maybe it is arguable that excessive hype really is everywhere.

In all honestly though, I just don’t think that’s really the case. Yes, media-wise whatever there is, there’s more of it, but that’s a factor of there being more media in general rather than anything that I would say is particular to the world of music. Is the hype shriller, more bombastic, more needlessly over-stated than before? Well, I don’t actually know, but I genuinely have my doubts. The only real touchstones I have with which to compare this would be the pre-Napster, largely analogue world. I am only 32 and during this period. the early to mid-90s, I was only just evolving into the sort of unbalanced music obsessive I am now.

The first really hysterically anticipated stuff I remember was probably the when The Bluetones and Gene were releasing their first albums. Leaking was far less prevalent back then – or at least it penetrated less far into the popular consciousness – and after the release of two or three blinding singles all we could do was sit and wait. Stoked by the anticipation of the press, the NME in particular, I remember charging off to the record shop at lunch time on the day of both of these releases in order to get my hands on a copy. I also remember the claustrophobic disappointment as it slowly dawned on me that the genius I was anticipating just hadn’t materialised.

Basically, it’s pretty easy to write a couple of great songs, or so it appears judging by the number of groups who seem to be able to do it. Often, inevitably, these are amongst the first couple of songs a group writes, so it can be very difficult to judge whether or not they have any more in them. B-sides help, as do live shows, but basically when you hear a new group you are making wild extrapolations based on very little information. If this couple of songs happens to be brilliant, there is no way you aren’t going to be excited and, nowadays, talk about it.

Maybe the jump from bedroom recording to chart assault is being made a lot faster these days, and this may not give groups enough time to develop, settle and figure out who they are as a band, so perhaps the hype can seem out of proportion with the professionalism or presence of the groups itself. Groups like this can seem like they appear from nowhere, with the weight of expectation around them that you would expect from a band with a couple of records behind them, but then people used to overreact to a promising 7″ single as well. Maybe because music criticism and music dialogue is much more participative now, people feel more caught up in the hype.

Maybe we feel more pressure to conform to media expectations because, with music in particular, often our friends are the media, instead of just friends who make you a few too many mixtapes. I know I find it harder to turn around to a blogger I’ve exchanged emails and comments with and say ‘No, I think your new favourite band are shite, actually’ because it just feels mean, but we’d never have hesitated to sneer at the NME’s latest favourites, even ten years ago when they had a shred of credibility still intact.

In the grand scheme of things though, I remember people getting just as over-excited about new releases in the days of vinyl and fanzines, so I just don’t buy this ‘too much hype’ stuff. Yes people are prone to over-reaction, and yes the big labels are a bit desperate for love at the moment and prone to a bit of leg-humping, but really, I just think humans have always been excitable, particularly where music is concerned.

Gene – Be My Light, Be My Guide
Gene – Sleep Well Tonight
The Bluetones – Bluetonic
The Bluetones – Cut Some Rug

I was reading Marcy’s excellent Lost in Your Inbox today and happened across a post of hers that gave me pause for thought, and just a little wistful remembering.

The last few years of my life have been relatively stable. I have been in Edinburgh for about three years, and was in London for three and a half before that, but I haven’t always been so sedentary. In the years preceding London, in reverse order, I managed the following: Cambridge – 18 months, Manchester – 6 months, Montreal – three months, Cape Cod – a year, Glasgow – ten months, Cape Cod – four months, Grongingen – ten months, Glasgow – three years, Manchester – one year, Vienna – three years, Singapore – three years. In other words, over the course of about fifteen years I upped sticks and vanished about fifteen times.

It wasn’t quite as crazy as that, but it was quite hectic, and most of the time it involved abandoning pretty much my entire life and all my friends and disappearing off with no more than a couple of suitcases to my name. Because of growing up in international schools where people changed countries, and hence schools, on a regular basis, I have seen so many disrupted friendships dwindle as well-intentioned letter-writing slowly tailed off. Consequently since high school, whenever I move country I tend to just cut the cord and go.

It’s very, very rare that I stay in touch with anyone from my past actually. Once gone, I tend to just look forward and try and make a life wherever it is that I have ended up and reading Marcy’s words I was reminded of just how many people I have ended up just abandoning to the swirling mists of my past – how many good friendships have been aborted, how many shared things have been forgotten, how much human kindness has gone unremembered.

It’s sad, I suppose, but it’s not a bad thing, I don’t think. There’s little point in stringing these things out beyond their natural lifespan. Most friendships are surprisingly context-dependent and there have been quite a few times when I have known them to have an uneccessary cloud cast over them by ill-advised and utlimately fruitless attempts to keep them going once the environment in which they first grew has ceased to exist. Nowadays I tend to just wrap them up in my history as good, complete entities and let them rest there. Some day a song or a coincidence or a conversation will remind me of them and there will be one of those warm, nostalgic moments where you relive that time for a little while, before setting it carefully back in place and returning to the present.

So it is sad I suppose. Or melancholy. But there’s a warm, happy core to the sadness too, so I still think it’s a good thing in most ways. Ironic, too, that I ended up marrying a girl I knew from high school and hadn’t seen for the best part of ten years by the time we met up again.

Tom Waits – Anywhere I Lay My Head
Michelle Shocked – Anchorage
Gene – I Can’t Decide If She Really Loves Me
Supergrass – Moving
Tom Waits – Shiver Me Timbers

I read an interesting but slightly frustrating article in The Scotsman the other day, all about kids’ top ten favourite and least favourite things to read. There was a fair bit of hand-wringing about the emergence of blogs and lyrics websites in the favourites, and the inevitable presence of Shakespeare in the least favourite – not among the writers, funnily enough, but among the parents of the kids in question.

This is an age-old conservative reactionary mistake (we all have a conservative reactionary inside us somewhere, this is not a political dig) of confusing the medium with the content. There is nothing inherently good about a book, nor superficial about a website. There are some pretty shitty books out there, there really are, just as there are a massive number of pointless, vacuous websites. I have learned a lot recently from excellent blogs and sites written by the exact same professionals that write the books.

It is one of the things that people who lay into the online world as full of lies and fluff (which it certainly can be, I am not denying that) tend to forget: a lot of the time the actual, genuine experts cross media quite happily, often so they bring to bear the full weight of their knowledge and expertise unshackled by editors and sponsors with agendas and word counts. And then of course there are some very talented amateurs to be found as well.

Aside from that, the idea that books are inherently good because they are books is also silly. Have any of you seen some of the empty headed, badly written, poorly conceived, scantly characterised and just plain fucking inaccurate stuff that gets published? I have read some genuinely awful, awful books in my time.

Websites are interesting because they drive home what is going to become one of the central skills of the internet era: the ability to interpret the quality of information. Anyone who thought history class was pointless is suddenly going to have to think again, because the concept of primary and secondary sources and the ability to evaluate the agenda of the writer is becoming crucial. This always existed with books, but people tended to be less aware of it. Political and historical books in particular have always needed careful scrutiny for the bias of the author, and often the publisher as well.

This is even more the case with websites, not because they’re so unreliable, but because a lot of them are very good indeed. If it was all bollocks this would be obvious fairly quickly, but it’s actually the good ones that make the crap ones harder to spot.

There is some evidence that kids are getting pretty good at evaluating what they are reading (note lack of source: bad information) and I would honestly have more faith in the abilities of people who have grown up in the internet world than people who have not. Adults are proving particularly bad at critically evaluating what they are being fed online as well. Forming little echo-chambers of people who will never challenge your opinions is pretty easy on the internet, and even when people do use evidence to add weight to their views by linking to papers and studies, they are often able to lie blatantly about the contents, safe in the knowledge that no-one will ever follow up.

So rather than teaching our kids that the internet is bad and books are good, or that people in chatrooms are paedophiles (honestly, it’s just not that easy to pick up teenagers in chatrooms, and believe me, I’ve tried) we should instead be focussing on a lesson absolutely all of us need to learn: how to tell the good shit from the bad shit and, when someone tells you something, to make sure that it is true. When the differences can be very subtle indeed and there is always someone with a lot to gain from fooling you, it is becoming both harder and way more important.

Eels – Old Shit/New Shit
Belle & Sebastian – Put the Book Back on the Shelf
The Decemberists – Billy Liar
Gene – Truth, Rest Your Head (Live)
Fela Kuti – Truth Don Die