Yes, this weekend I am a superstar DJ, or at least I get to kid myself that I am one.  Apart from full-on dancey, mixey, beat-matching stuff (and even then I have my doubts) I have never thought of DJing as much of a skill, I have to confess.  As I said in the comments section of a thread discussing this ages ago, however, if it’s possible to do it badly, which it clearly is, then it must be a skill.  Still, irrespective of not really knowing what I am doing, and the dubious merits of my presence to everyone else, someone like me is always going to enjoy forcing their music taste on other people and that is exactly what I am going to do: relax, get pickled on gin, and play a lot of tunes.

First a Cabaret Voltaire tonight as part of the excellent Oxjam Take Over Edinburgh night (which will sadly prevent me getting to see lots of bands I would like to see, but there you go).  I might play more raucous stuff at this one – the situation seems to call for it, what with Friday night drinking and so on.  The the following day I am popping down to the Bowery to play some tunes at MarchéMarché, a craft fair which will have some live music and things going on as well, and generally sounds like a lovely day.

Other than that, my friend Andrew is visiting from London this weekend, which is excellent.  I remember from living in London that it’s all too easy to expect people in the provinces to come to you, albeit for no better reason that laziness.  Mind you, if you had to make an hour’s journey just to have a pint with a mate then you’d bloody well expect other people to make an effort, I suppose, wouldn’t you.  In any case, Andrew and Natalie aren’t really like that because they’ve come to see us twice since we’ve been here, which is more than anyone else from down there.  London: about twelve million people; Scotland: about six.  Weird, when you think of it.

So here we are once again, at the end of a very talkative week on Song, by Toad.  But it’s not all about the big-mouths remember, Friday is as ever a de-lurking amnesty and a chance for the quiet people who just potter by and marvel at the madness to get involved themselves and see just how much of an embarrassment they can make of themselves.  Let’s face it, the rest of us are pretty good at that already.  And remember, Fives first, then pish, not the other way around.

1. If you were a DJ, what would be the most inappropriate song you would like to play and the most inopportune moment?
2. Song for your funeral.
3. Song you’d like to sneak onto the record player at your worst enemy’s funeral, just to ruin it.
4. Name a fantasy cover version you’d love to hear.
5. Name a fantasy duet you’d love to hear.

And here, after all the moaning I’ve done about cover songs this week, are some covers I really like, for various reasons:

The Gourds – Gin & Juice (This may be the best cover of all time.)

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Hawksley Workman – Bankrobber (Just weird, but good.)

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Heather Nova – I’m on Fire

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The Specials – Guns of Navarone

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The Dead Kennedys – Viva Las Vegas

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We ended up at Pickathon at Mrs. Toad’s behest, would you believe. Yup, the woman who describes almost every band I listen to as ‘moaning minnies’ actually tracked down and booked tickets to this particular festival without so much as a single prompt from my good self. This all happened late last year, after my brother’s wedding. We’d been driving around America afterwards with a limited supply of CDs and the ones she loved the most consistently seemed to come from Portland. At the time it was The Shaky Hands and The Builders & the Butchers. Since then she’s discovered bands like Horsefeathers, the Cave Singers (apparently they’re actually from Seattle) and Alela Diane (again, signed to a Portland label – Holocene – but not actually from the Pacific Northwest). At the time we thought they were all Portland bands, so we booked our tickets and decided to spend a couple of weeks in this part of America, and see if we couldn’t get a bit closer to such an incredible music scene.

Leaving aside Portland itself for a bit – that’s for a later post – the whole festival was truly wonderful. The location was amazing, the bands were superb, the people were incredibly friendly, and we quite simply had an amazing time.

Perched up in the Oregon hills, the setting offered nothing so plain and simple as a campsite. Instead, you had to climb up into the woods and try your luck. We had decided to skip the Friday evening to see The Builders & the Butchers and Eef Barzelay play in Portland (and earn a monumental hangover in the process) so we had to go quite some way to find a suitable spot. The difficulty of finding somewhere to pitch the tent meant that people were spread thinly throughout the woods, with little clusters forming here and there, and none of the sea of identical tents that you see at larger festivals. It was quite magical actually, being perched up in the depths of the woods, and having to clamber down to the trail and walk for about ten minutes to get to the main festival area.

To add to the atmosphere, the Wood Stage was actually perched right up in the depths of the forest as well, creating a tiny amphitheatre surrounded by green, splashed with what dapples of sunlight had managed to actually find their way through the thick canopy. We missed performances by Sam Crain and by Bombadil in this unreal arena and I really regret having done so. But then, we did get to see the Builders & the Butchers. We did, however, catch the superb Langhorne Slim on Saturday afternoon, and we were both smitten – it was a great performance.

Generally we eschewed the main stage and its smaller neighbour, the Fir Meadows Stage, because they lacked a little for the friendly intimacy that seemed to be the beating heart of this festival. The gentle slope that banked towards the main stage, backed by towering cedars, made a gorgeous place to lie in the grass and relax though, and the view across the wooded valley was beautiful. The food was to be found there as well, and as well as finally presenting somewhere in America where the coffee isn’t thin, grey, flavourless dishwater, the edibles were excellent. There was Thai (I even ate a veggie and tofu (tofu!!) rice roll with a bit of sweet chili sauce and liked it so much I had more the next day), some fine calzones and, the pick of the bunch, a phenomenal Mexican stall. Mexican food in Britain has become something like curry – it is little more than generic brown sludge that doesn’t in the slightest resemble the cuisine from which it is descended. The quesadillas at this place were fucking brilliant, and we had loads of them!

The music at Pickathon is quite specific: American roots, be it blues, bluegrass or (new to me) jug. The more traditional of this stuff I can really do without, but the acts booked overlapped with more vaguely defined Americana such that there was almost always something on that I wanted to see. And when there wasn’t, well I may not put pure bluegrass on the stereo myself, but the sawing fiddles and exceptional guitar playing that delivered everything from joyous stomp-alongs to heartbreaking balladry gave the whole place a wonderful atmosphere. If you are just lying in the sun, reading a superficial but largely entertaining book, not really paying attention to anything, what would you rather hear in the background, a mediocre indie four-piece trotting out the same old shit, or some old-time goodness, full of genuine happiness, genuine heartbreak, and not a sniff of cloying celebrity aspiration in sight.

Generally we found ourselves gravitating towards the Galaxy Barn as the day drew to a close. The American’s frankly chidish attitude to alcohol (I am not blaming the organisers here, the state enforcers were sniffing around like randy mongrels so they had to be incredibly careful) was tedious, with only a couple of designated beering pens allocated, but it did mean one thing: you didn’t end the day absolutely wasted. This was a refreshing change for a couple of reasons: firstly, I was able to properly enjoy all the music I went to see, and secondly, finding our way back up to our tent in the middle of the woods was Blair Witch Projecty enough, without adding a bladder-full to the mix to make life even harder. It bloody hard to find a single tent in the middle of the woods in the pitch black with no more than the camera light on the back of your mobile phone to guide you. And then on the Sunday night some bastards moved their tent clear across the path, which made life even more confusing. My phone’s battery was fast disappearing when I was finally able to successfully locate Toad HQ and calm an increasingly fretful Mrs. Toad, who was increasingly certain that we would end up having to sleep rough in the middle of the forest.

The last night, before almost losing the tent, was spent sitting around the bonfire outside the Galaxy Barn, talking to random strangers about their work promoting blues music in Portland, their time spent living in Israel and Jordan, and random band members about how much they loved the festival. I’ve never been anywhere where so many of the musicians hung out (check out the new vocabulary – awesome!) until the end, mixing with punters and chatting and enjoying each other’s performances. We ended up chatting to members of Bombadil and Loch Lomond, given we knew them from the eariler interviews we’d conducted, and they. And at one point Shawn (or Sean) from Langhorne Slim came over to congratulate me on my excellent choice of attire (a Langhorne Slim t-shirt) and chat about things in general. If I have ever met a nicer bloke, I don’t remember it. He was so genuine and sincere and just, well, incredibly nice, that it really served to highlight what a special festival this really was.

All in all, thoughout our stay in the Pacific Northwest, the people we have met have been some of the most incredibly open, friendly and helpful people in my life. American friendliness can be irritatingly claustrophobic when it’s forced or learned by rote, as it often is. But here people just seemed so sincere, with their ‘have a great day’s and their interest in what you were doing and their eagerness to be helpful and to include you in what was going on, that it was impossible to be cynical. Even for me. The two most over-used phrases, by miles, in this part of the world are ‘hang out’ and ‘awesome’, but they are just so true. Instead of being superior and English about it, you end up wanting to just hang out with everyone and wishing you could say ‘awesome’ with such incredibly heartfelt sincerity.

Toad’s Pickathon pictures | Toad Vimeo page | Other Pickathon Features

The Cave Singers – New Monuments
Oz St. Fossils – Tryin’ to Get Home
Jolie Holland – Stubborn Beast
The Gourds – Dying of the Pines

Despite the fact that Akismet has unilaterally decided to filter all DC’s comments to the spam dump, we are nevertheless looking forward to the next Waiting Room here at Toad Hall.

Mrs. Toad and I featured a truly hilarious Gourds cover of Snoop Dogg’s Gin & Juice when we participated in the recent Drunk Covers show. It’s one of our favourites but I’ve never explored The Gourds any further, perhaps because the amusement of that cover version gave me the impression they were something of a novelty act. Well they’re not, apparently, and tonight DC is dedicating a whole show to them on Error FM because he is more than just a little bit of a fan it seems.

The Gourds – Gin & Juice

Most interestingly, The Gourds have recorded all sorts of little bits of silliness and some new ditties for the show itself, to go alongside DC’s usual over-excited rambling. If, like me, you know nothing about this band I can’t think of a better way to discover them.

Tonight, 9pm-Midnight (BST) on Error FM.

And here are a couple of Gourds tracks to get you in the mood.

The Gourds – All the Labor
The Gourds – I Come Up

I have a few miserable pals on the blogosphere at the moment.  Mind you, given the diaristic (yes, I know that’s not a word – like a diary…  mmm, diuretic? – no, that’s worse…

Seesh, didn’t even close the brackets.

Where was I?  Ah, yes, given the diuretic nature of the blogosphere I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is always a shame when people you like aren’t altogether happy.  I have no useful advice to offer really, except to suggest doing your best to forget it and enjoy a nice cold beer or a good record or a snuggle on the couch or some truly exceptionally filthy internet pornography and do your best to take your happiness in small doses.

I am generally a happy individual myself, and it’s the weekend, and the sun is threatening to shine, so let’s have some happy music.  Not crazy, mental over the top stuff because things don’t have to be the best thing ever in the universe to just be good and cheerful and a little bit uplifting.  Cheerful days – the time is Beer minus 1.5 and counting…

Breasts
Echobelly – Great Things I haven’t heard this one in ages – splendid!
Lambchop – Your Fucking Sunny Day
The Shaky Hands – Whales Sing If this bass-line doesn’t cheer you up you are clinically deceased.
The Gourds – Gin & Juice Sheer, unadulterated genius.
(The Real) Tuesday Weld – Stand by Your Man