Song, by Toad

This is an email to a gentleman introduced to myself as the ‘MD of Columbia’ by the person who suggested I write him an email about the whole 17 Seconds Glasvegas fiasco. Here is what I wrote. Comments, anyone?

Dear XXXX,

I was given your email by XXXX who, having read the following post on my site, thought it would be a good thing if I got in touch with you personally regarding Glasvegas and DMCA notices issued in their name.
http://songbytoad.com/2008/10/23/dont-be-evil/

I don’t know how much you know about this, but DMCA notices are being wielded against bloggers completely indiscriminately at the moment, and as you can tell from that post people are both angry and afraid. Now, to be absolutely clear, I do not intend this to be an antagonistic email, nor am I getting in touch simply in order to shake my fist and point fingers. I genuinely would rather find an amicable solution to this situation, and I genuinely believe that the vast majority of music blog writers feel the same way. At the time I was angry, and wrong on some basic facts, but there are nevertheless a lot of things which I think need addressing and I appreciate you taking the time to read this email.

Basically, many people are having pages of their music blogs indiscriminately removed by people wielding false DMCA notices in the direction of Google and Wordpress, who host most of the blogs. In the case described in my post, a fellow Edinburgh blogger had his interview with Glasvegas from January this year erased because of old and expired links to recordings given to him freely by the band at the time. Writing a huge long interview with an unsigned band and posting their demo recordings with permission is absolutely not the behaviour of a copyright pirate, and the fact that Columbia has chosen to pursue Ed is frankly disgraceful, in my opinion. Read the rest of this entry »

This is going to be another one of those confrontational reviews, isn’t it. I know that most of my regular readers – those who speak up anyway – really don’t like Glasvegas, but bollocks to you.  So there.

I’m not about to turn around and announce this as earth-shattering, nor am I about to declare their unbridled genius, but a hefty chunk of this album is truly excellent stuff.  The reverb-drenched racket is great to hear for starters, because I need something that makes an angry noise to break up the unending ocean of alt-folk stuff that I listen to most of the time.  Someone needs to make a good old racket and write songs with growling guitars, and this album does a neat job of just that.

James Allan is a fucking good lyricist too.  Not a sophisticated one but, despite the slightly mangled meter of some of his writing, it is impactful and I never feel like he is putting it on.  The narrative of this record is direct, unaffected and normal.  It is, to use that awful phrase, ‘real’.  Obsessive jealousy, songs about getting your head kicked in and being pissed off at your dad – life isn’t all clever imagery and existential pondering, it’s like this for an awful fucking lot of people.

They’ve got ‘a look’, they’re quite trendy and the excitment around them is a bit off-putting, but I don’t get the impression that any of these guys are putting it on.  I’m a cynical fucker too – I’d see it if it was there, I’m pretty sure.  Again, it’s not sophisticated, and a couple of the songs on this album aren’t very good – Polmont on My Mind is a great song title, but I am not too enamoured with the song – but it doesn’t have to be Great to be great.

Basically, if I wasn’t aware of the fact that a lot of my readers don’t like this, I’d be writing about an album that’s slightly flawed, but is honest, affecting, boisterous and really enjoyable.  I’d be saying things like ‘hey, they may not be the second coming, but these lads are a bloody good band’.  I’d be saying ‘fucking hell, Flowers & Fitba Tops gives you a lump in the throat’.  Instead I’ve foolishly written a whole review as if I have to defend these lads.  I don’t.  They’re good.  End of.

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

Well, no gin, no misbehaviour (except the mandatory foul language), Christ you’d be forgiven for thinking I’d sold out on you and actually grown up at last.  No fear of that actually, just a bit of liver protection.  We’re trying to guzzle just that little bit less midweek, and save the beer tokens for when we really need them, so it’s tea and slippers this time around.  In fact I thought I was being exceptionally tame until such time as I realised that I hadn’t reigned in the swearing one little bit.  Fuck, I thought to myself.

Thematically, erm, you’re on your own I’m afraid.  I’ve no real idea if you can think of anything that holds all these songs together as a coherent whole, but damned if I can.  There’s quite a bit of new stuff and quite a few stray songs that I didn’t know how to cover because I didn’t want to review the whole album, but there was a song or two that I liked.  You know what I mean.  And thirteen songs in just under an hour – fucking hell that’s efficient.

Toadcast #36 – The Domesticast

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01. Christian Williams – 30 Minutes (00.17)
02. Calexico – The News About William (05.03)
03. Crystal Stilts – Crippled Croon (07.42)
04. Glasvegas – Flowers & Fitba Tops (14.39)
05. Fishboy – Half Time at the Proper Name Spelling Bee (20.12)
06. From – One Spring Away (23.21)
07. Eef Barzelay – Make Another Tree (28.19)
08. Michael Zapruder – Ads For Feelings (34.23)
09. Okkervil River – Singer Songwriter (37.37)
10. Marc Farre – La Plaie et le Couteau (42.42)
11. Adam Balbo – Big Kid Now (48.14)
12. Christian Williams – Judas (50.24)
13. Micah P. Hinson – Throw the Stone (57.00)

Well the Meursault Session is up and my interviews are all sorted but one, so maybe I can take the foot off the gas just slightly for the time being. This week I have two tasks: write up the Builders & the Butchers interview and record a podcast for the weekend. Oh, and maybe deal with the Broken Records movies from a little while back.

I’ve requested interviews with Micah P. Hinson, the Wave Pictures, David Thomas Broughton and the Pictish Trail for End of the Road, and so far have a yes from PT, no reply from DTB, and am having my traffic credentials examined by the MPH gatekeepers. Is my penis big enough? Do I drive a shiny enough car? Is Mrs. Toad pretty enough? Are you lot the right sort? Christ this is fun – the music industry is so fucking hierarchical it’s just ridiculous. To be fair though, the lady I’m talking to about Micah P. Hinson and the Wave Pictures seems really nice, so hopefully we might get somewhere with that.

In the meantime, there are plenty of opportunities to wreck your liver and empty your pockets in Scotland’s capital this week:

Friday 5th September: Wounded Knee, Black Diamond Express & others at the Drill Hall in Leith.
There’s a handful of really good bands playing this particular night, apparently hosted by Benbecula Records, who are one of the best little labels around these parts.
Black Diamond Express – Nemo Saltat Sobrius

Saturday 6th September: Euchrid Eucrow, Emily Scott & the Wee Rogue play the Gentle Invasion night at Henry’s Cellar Bar.
Bart’s Gentle Invasion gigs are always a treat, but he sent me some marketing blurb for this one that might have backfired: apparently Euchrid Eucrow, apart from the man himself, comprise musicians from not only the (brilliant, in my view) British Sea Power, so far so good, but also the (dismal, in my view) Bat For Lashes. Ah well, Bartski, can’t win ‘em all. Still, it sounds intriguing, Emily Scott is lovely, and I haven’t seen The Wee Rogue since his first tentative step onto the Edinburgh stage some three years ago at an Out of the Bedroom night.
Euchrid Eucrow – A Horse is Not Just For Christmas

Also, Glasvegas play the Liquid Room on Sunday, but the ungrateful bastards have sold out. Bugger.
Glasvegas – Geraldine (Demo)

That’s about all I could find to personally get excited about this week.  A bit thin, eh.  I may need help on this one.

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)

Don’t y’all hate it when yo bee-yatch is disobedient?  Well actually no, I love it.  If the old mare wasn’t stubborn as a mule there’s no chance I’d adore her with the devotion that I do.

But there are drawbacks to having a couple of fuckwits in the house, and one is here: drink and eBay.  The other night we had one of our hugely romantic evenings where we get plastered, play records really loud and dance around the living room together, except this time Mrs. Toad got her hands on my eBay ID and bid £35 for a Glasvegas single.

Half the time this is no problem, you bid high and it goes for less than a tenner.
This time however, they were just the wrong kind of popular: popular enough that the bidding was driven up to just a fraction shy of our maximum, but not quite popular enough that some kindly obsessive might have saved us from our drunken folly.  In the end we won it and, with postage, ended up paying nearly £37.

We checked on eBay the other day and that self same single is now available for £18 on Buy It Now. So we may be fannies, we may have been fleeced and there may be an eBay seller sniggering at our silliness somewhere in the UK, but fuck it who cares.  Tonight we are listening to Glasvegas playing Be My Baby of all things and grinning at each other in that sort of a way that two idiots do when they know they’ve found a kindred spirit.

An equally stupid kindred spirit, but a kindred spirit nonetheless.

Glasvegas – Be My Baby

Erm, christ!

Back at long last, would you believe. After the abortive attempt at a Christmas podcast and then the IT disaster in Toad Hall – when my retarded computer ground to a halt and had to have its entire operating system reinstalled – I have finally managed to record the 19th Toadcast. Sorting out the IT department was not at all as easy as it should have been, so it’s taken ages to get to the point where I could record one again.

So, excuses over and done with, what am I going to inflict on you this time? The bloody Scots, that’s who. The Scottish music scene is an amazingly fertile one, so I thought I’d review 2007 and have a bit of a look forward to 2008. So I’ve pulled together some of the big guys like Malcolm Middleton, Emma Pollock and King Creosote and interspersed a few of the lesser known acts from around here to give you a nicely rounded look at what’s going on musically in the land of Buckfast and deep-fried Mars bars.

Toadcast #19 – The Scotchcast[audio http://media.libsyn.com/media/songbytoad/ToadcastNo19.mp3]

01. Sons & Daughters – Gilt Complex (1.01)
02. Glasvegas – Daddy’s Gone (5.55)
03. The Low Miffs – Also Sprach Shareholder (13.58)
04. Malcolm Middleton – We’re All Going to Die (17.24)
05. Aidan John Moffat – The Boy That You Love (23.37)
06. Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta – The Empress (28.00)
07. The Pendulums – Greenhat (34.38)
08. Broken Records – Kathy (40.49)
09. Rob St. John – Wooden Rose (45.44)
10. Found – Some Fracas of a Sissy (53.28)
11. Kid Canaveral – Smash Hits (58.49)
12. Popup – Lucy, What are You Trying to Say? (61.38)
13. Emma Pollock – A Temporary Fix (68.28)
14. King Creosote – Church as Witness (76.04)
15. Mother & the Addicts – Roll Me on Over (79.37)
16. Frightened Rabbit – Be Less Rude (88.09)
17. The Twilight Sad – Walking For Two Hours (94.37)