Song, by Toad

Foiks really should be a proper word, shouldn’t it.  I think that might be as close as I get to the infitnite number of Booker Prize-winning monkeys.  That would be quite disappointing actually, wouldn’t it – Booker Prize-winning monkeys.  You wait almost an infinite amount of time (say, ‘ages’, for example) for your infinite number of monkeys to rattle off some Shakespeare and all they fucking lazy simian bastards come up with is the latest Joanne Harris Novel for Menopausal Women Who Think Their Artistic Side is Being Neglected.  Fuck you, monkeys!  The Girl With the fucking what?  Jesus, as if I didn’t feel like I was having my period already.  Mind you, it could be worse.  They could write Jeremy fucking Clarkson’s autobiography.

That picture at the top there is how we are hoping to get the Toadmobile  painted.  We spent Thursday night getting drunk together and fannying about with Photoshop to come up with a few different ideas, and that was a narrow favourite, just ahead of one in bright metallic green with black and white racing stripes down the middle.  It also was very cool indeed.  Christ knows what our mechanic is going to say when we show him that picture, but, erm, well we’ll just leave that for another day shall we.

Grmpf.  That’s it, really, so please de-lurk and chip in with your Friday Five, as pinched from the talkboards on the Guardian.  And if you want to chip in next Friday’s five then just email me at the usual address.

1. Favourite not-a-word-but-should-be.
2. Place name which sounds completely made up.
3. A word doesn’t exist for this, but it should.
4. Cool-sounding foreign word.
5. Word you could never spell.

Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs

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Wilco – I’m Always in Love

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Gomez – Make No Sound

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Lambchop – Grumpus

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My Teenage Stride – Actors’ Colony

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As you read this I will be in a meeting.  I will be in a meeting all fucking day.  I will tired and cranky in that meeting and trying desperately hard to both stay awake and feign even the tiniest little bit of interest.  I’ve been up until three in the morning every night this week working on the Sparrow & the Workshop Toad Session, which will definitely be posted tomorrow, and I am fucking shattered.  You know how you get so tired that the day becomes slightly surreal?  Well like that.

Nevertheless I am feeling pleased.  Despite an almighty disaster in which the fucking bastarding shitty piss arse video camera chewed half the tapes and left me with almost zero footage of two of the songs and the tail end of the interviews, I think it’s turning out very well.  The tracks themselves sound fucking amazing, honestly, and given how nervous I was about recording live drums for the first time I am both brimming with pride and enormously relieved.

This weekend, therefore, is one for peace and quiet and not doing anything strenuous.  Above all it is one for sleeeeping.  I shall sleep the sleep of the recently deceased, I should think.

So, without further ado, here’s some stuff to faff around with and generally to waste Friday by buggering about on the internet.  De-lurk, if you haven’t commented before, and participate in this glorious Friday ritual shamelessly pinched from the boards of Guardian Talk.  And if you want to suggest the next Friday Five then bung me an email at the usual place.

1. Usual number of hours sleep.
2. Ideal number of hours sleep.
3. At what point on Friday do you usually stop even pretending to work?
4. Meeting etiquette bugbear.
5. Name a record for a sunny Sunday, best played in the early afternoon.

Some oldies this week:
Lambchop – Up With People
Barenaked Ladies – If I Had $1000000
Gomez – Here Comes the Breeze
The Trashcan Sinatras – To Sir, With Love
Supergrass – Shotover Hill

[The third in our Introduce Your Local Record Shop series is the first celebrity post, in which local pop superstar and all round glamorous lothario, the Russell Brand of Edinburgh, Rob St. John describes his deprived upbringing in a tiny little village in Hobbiton somewhere.  He's going to kill me for this, isn't he.]

Independent record shops have a pivotal role in the expansion and evolution of many people’s listening habits and I’m no exception. I grew up in village in rural Lancashire, and Townsend Records was the only record shop (ok, I’m definitely excluding Woolworths) in the nearest market town, Clitheroe. Now, in communities this size, to be viewed as ‘indie’ or ‘alternative’ is as easy as watching MTV2 or dabbing on a bit of black mascara. There’s very little of the one-upmanship (“what do you mean you don’t own Tigermilk on vinyl, you philistine!?”) I later encountered and wholeheartedly avoid in the inevitable move to the big-ish city. Even the “The band” explosion of the Libertines/Strokes/White Stripes in my late teens caused barely a ripple outside a devoted few. Mentioning Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy brought a response of “yeah, he’s that Scottish guy – dead, isn’t he?”

Yet in this musical backwater, with no bands (except, ahem, Zydeco Blues, lets say little more on that..) and aside from one multimillion white elephant of a venue run by religious zealots who wouldn’t allow gigs, no venues, Townsend did, and still does, pretty well. We had sporadic and slow internet, and very little preconception of what was “in” and what wasn’t. Hearing new music was pretty much the Peel Show or mate’s compilations. This was two or three years before file-sharing became accessible to us. As a result, the varied, even unashamedly random stocking policy in store led to adventures in buying CDs for their name/cover art/vague recommendation etc, resulting in some huge successes (Television, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mercury Rev, Pavement, The Beta Band) and some shockers which I still look at ruefully in my CD collection (Athlete remain the main culprits here).

There was a 3 for £20 deal on all but the newest CDs, but the stock at the shop was so low that there were barely ever three CDs you cared to buy. So we learnt to covertly accumulate viable purchases in out-of-the-way and dusty parts of the shop like classical and “golden oldies” and hope that in the next week new stock would arrive to make up the deficit. Sometimes, of course they would disappear in the interim, though I do like the idea that a classical music fan happened upon and subsequently bought the GY!BE or Soundgarden CD I was stashing. Compared to these (slightly wealthier, but not much) days, I bought so much more music then. We were the poorest patrons around, and that the shop still survives in such a musically stagnant town heartens me, particularly when bigger and more varied independent shops in cities are closing their doors. As ever, if you are in the area (and I would recommend it for a day or a week, though not 18 years), pop in, have a look, keep tiny indie shops like this alive, some of my 3 for £20 stashes will probably still be in the free jazz section, slowly eroding.

Here’s three discoveries from albums that still remain favourites:

Gomez – Get Miles (from Bring It On)
Mercury Rev – Holes (from Deserter’s Songs)
Television – Friction (from Marquee Moon)

I’m in America at the moment at my brother’s wedding, but I very kindly recorded this before I went away. I’ve thrown in some stuff about weddings and some summery happy tunes too.

Also, he’s getting married on Cape Cod, and I worked there as a waiter for two Summers when I was a student – with my everso English accent the tips were quite splendid – so I’ve thrown on a few songs that remind me of my Summers on Cape Cod, although not all are obviously related. All in all it’s a cheerful, happy mix with a nice atmosphere to it, so you should like this one.

By the time you hear it though I could very easily have sworn myself into exile and ruined my relationship with my new in-laws forever. Wish me luck, Toadlings, wish me luck.

Toadcast #4 – Summery Songs and Wedding Bells

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1. Billy Bragg – The Marriage (0.46)
2. Tom Waits – Better Off Without a Wife (5.10)
3. Clem Snide – Happy Birthday (9.38)
4. Gomez – Make No Sound (13.36)
5. Dave Matthews Band – Two Step (19.56)
6. Vampire Weekend – Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa (26.49)
7. Judy Garland – Get Happy (30.20)
8. Tom Waits – Never Let Go (34.59)
9. Bell X1 – Bound For Boston Hill (38.12)
10. Suburban Kids With Biblical Names – Funeral Face (43.37)
11. Luna – Sweet Child O’ Mine (48.41)
12. Len – Steal My Sunshine (54.07)
13. Billy Bragg & Wilco – Hesitating Beauty (59.28)