Song, by Toad

Erm, really sorry that this is so very, very late, but life rather caught up with me this week.  So I never quite managed to find time to get my shit together until this evening, unfortunately.

It’s surprising how much of my time these weekly podcasts seem to take up – it can be quite hard to find an evening every single week to record these things.  What I find amazing is that I don’t run out of blather.  I don’t recall ever saying anything profound or all that intelligent either, so this little collection must represent hours and hours of inconsequential rambling.

On Friday a nice young lady in the pub asked me “Has anyone ever told you that you talk loads and loads.”  I suppose, looking back at a hundred and some podcasts the miracle is that actually the answer to that question is ‘no, not really, not that I can remember’.

Oh, and yes, that is Tina Turner and Kim Carnes you see there.  Suck it up, hipsters.

Toadcast #107 – The Tardicast

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01. The Walkmen – This Job is Killing Me (03.30)
02. Grandaddy – Hey Cowboy, the Phone’s For You (09.57)
03. Comaneci – Satisfied Girl (15.51)
04. Tina Turner – Private Dancer (17.50)
05. Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou – England (27.33)
06. Ruth Theodore – False Alarm (34.09)
07. The Waterboys – Sweet Thing (40.54)
08. Kim Carnes – Bette Davis Eyes (48.04)
09. R.E.M. – Half a World Away (53.55)
10. Radiohead – Creep (Acoustic) (59.59)

Before you break out into a cold sweat about having to sit through another list of the best albums of the decade, don’t worry, this is not one of those.  Although most of these songs would be there or thereabouts if I were actually compiling a favourite songs of the decade list, that’s not why they’re here.

Basically, rather than try and rank anything against anything else, all this is is a meander through the last ten years and me chattering about how my relationship with music has changed and what sort of stuff I was into at what times of my life.

Basically, this is the soundtrack to a perfectly normal, albeit enthusiastic, music fan’s descent into full-on deranged internet mania.

Toadcast #99 – The Decade

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01. Eels – A Daisy Through Concrete (04.09)
02. Goldfrapp – Pilots (10.04)
03. Grandaddy – The Crystal Lake (14.17)
04. Lift to Experience – To Guard and to Guide You (23.13)
05. Interpol – NYC (30.46)
06. Tom Waits – Kommienezuspadt (34.57)
07. The Decemberists – Red Right Ankle (40.41)
08. The Walkmen – The Rat (44.06)
09. The Mountain Goats – Dilaudid (51.20)
10. Broken Records – Lies (Demo Version) (57.07)
11. The Savings and Loan – Christmastime in the Mountains (64.11)

This week’s disaster theme came from a conversation I had with Blueback Birthday Boy Dylan last night, but for the life of me I can’t remember how we got onto the subject of total cock-ups.  I was DJing later though, so maybe that had something to do with it.

Actually, I know I’ve had an uneasy relationship with DJing in the past, but last night’s effort was brilliant fun.  It’s all rather dependent on the occasion with me – too much of a dancefloor and it doesn’t suit the general miserablism I’m into, whereas if it’s supposed to be background music then my stuff can be a bit weird at times as well.  Last night was spot on though.

The event was a Oxfam night at Born to Be Wide in the Speakeasy at the Voodoo Rooms.  The basic premise was that the DJs (myself, Jane from the Bowery and Jamie from the Oxfam music shop in Stockbridge) would go into Oxfam, pick out a pile of vinyl, and then if people liked what they heard they could buy it on the spot.  We did really well, too, I think – certainly I saw about twenty or thirty records get sold, which is good going if you ask me.

The benefit of that kind of charity shop DJing is straightforward: your choice is really restricted.  So I went through the old jazz stuff and picked out a load of that, from the really early stuff to the likes of Piaf and Billie Holiday through to big band swing.  I did look for some blues actually, after Craig’s sterling efforts on last week’s podcast, but there was absolutely none.  Really, none at all, not even nasty eighties blues, which was sort of odd.  Presumably people don’t find their old blues records as disposable as their old jazz ones.

Anyway, I went from a couple of swing versions of Crazy ‘Bout My Baby (classic!) and I Want to Be Like You into Goldfinger by Shirley Bassey, then some Johnny Cash.  That brought on a bit of a country spell, with Willie Nelson and something of a childhood classic of mine: Me and Bobby McGee by Kris Kristofferson.  My dad would have been so proud.

Anyway, then it was Michelle Shocked, Cat Stevens, Bennie & the Jets by Elton John and then into the likes of Squeeze, The Jam and Ian Dury.  I finished it off with Modern Love by Bowie and a spin of A Few Kind Words by Meursault, at which point some hammered fellow came staggering over saying ‘Oh this is brilliant, I’m having this, I love this one, it’s..  it’s…   ah, it’s by I don’t know.. it’s…  but it’s fucking brilliant.’  Weird.  But fun.

I like that kind of DJing because you’re so restricted that the eclecticism becomes a real positive, you can play whatever the hell you like, and it just makes it better; you can play swing, Willie Nelson, Elton and Half Man Half Biscuit as part of the same set without anyone batting an eyelid.  And Jane, it has to be said, was just as bad: the theme to Flash Gordon, Laurie Anderson, Jerry Lee Lewis, moog versions of pop hits, Donna Summer.  All in all a splendid night – good work Olaf!

1. Worst DIY disaster.
2. Stupidest thing you’ve said on a first date.
3. Total cooking failure.
4. Stupidest thing you’ve said to your boss.
5. Comedy falling down moment.

Jacques Brel – L’age Idiot

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Grandaddy – Broken Household Appliance National Forest

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Frank Sinatra – Somethin’ Stupid (With Nancy Sinatra)

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Andrew Bird – Natural Disaster

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Tom Waits – Falling Down

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Mrs. Toad and I might be gallivanting about the Italian countryside, but we are still thinking of you, our loyal Toadlings. We may be relaxing by the pool, but we understand that life might not be quite so easy for those of you at home. Actually, fuck it, life is never this easy for us either. This is like some bizarre anomaly for us – time, peace, reading books… it’s all so fucking restful I’ve almost forgotten to swear at the locals.

The place we’re staying is just plain ridiculous. We are living in what amounts to the tiniest of little comedy garden sheds imaginable, but the outside space is some great big gigantic plaza. It’s just ridiculous.

Fortunately, there is something to lower the tone. Nature is basically a great big urinal, as we all know, and I have been doing my best to maintain a time-honoured male principle of ‘no place being too sacred or picturesque for having a sly piss’. So when the bladder beckons, so does the wall, and there I go to water the olive groves of Puglia. It feels like a public service, really it does.

Thanks again to Euan and the lads for keeping things going while we’re away. The connection here is so damn slow I really haven’t been able to read it all, but Mrs. Toad periodically checks up on things on her Blackberry (the woman’s insane) and lets me know how things are going. This news I generally treat with an indifferent grunt, before returning to the pondering of precisely which sort of cheese I most fancy for lunch, but I appreciate her efforts.

Toadcast #74 – The Poolcast

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01. The Shaky Hands – Summer’s Life (03.26)
02. Lemonjelly – Spacewalk (12.45)
03. Grandaddy – Ghost of 1672 (19.44)
04. Billie Holiday – Good Morning Heartache (24.36)
05. Animal Magic Tricks (with Neil from Meursault & Pete from The Leg) (34.42)
06. Edith Piaf – C’etait Une Histoire D’amour (38.11)
07. The Flaming Lips – Can’t Get You Out of My Head (48.12)
08. Wilco – Jolly Banker (52.17)
09. The Laurel Collective – No Pirates Left (63.04)
10. Yoshimi! – Philosophy For Fangirls (69.12)

I am currently off work sick, which sucks donkey balls.  Even worse than being sick of course is actually having to phone in sick.  I get into a conundrum – I actually do feel like shit, but I don’t sound like I do at all, so how the hell do I convey the fact that I am actually telling the truth over the phone.  In one sense I feel that seeing as I really am ill I shouldn’t have to try, and then risk sounding deliberately perky, which seems like the wrong approach, but then trying to actually sound ill probably sounds forced and even less convincing.  So I think I generally just end up sounding indecisive, which is crap.  Maybe from now on I should aim to only contract illnesses which leave an obvious audible signature in my voice, like bronchitis or something like that.

It would be easier if you could just tell the person who answers the phone and bugger off back to bed of course, but we aren’t allowed to do that, we actually have to speak to the director in charge of whatever project we’re working on and explain to them, which has the rather unnerving effect of making you feel like a naughty schoolboy.  I’m thirty-three years old for fuck’s sake, why do I feel like I’ve been caught pissing in the plant pots?  Gah!

Anyway, there is going to have to be much delurking today as I am going to be asleep or in bed being a moaning baby for most of the day I am afraid.  As you can tell from recent threads, we’re a really nice, friendly bunch here and the chat, whilst obscure, is always the very epitome of good-natured.

It’s nice outisde too, and I don’t even have the gumption to go and sit in the garden with a nice cup of tea.  Moan moan moan.

1. Most unbelievable but genuine excuse you’ve ever had to make for missing work.
2. Worst thing about being off work sick.
3. Best thing about being off work sick.
4. Off sick munchie menu.
5. Bed or couch, for sleeping it off?

Alabama 3 – Too Sick to Pray

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The Sick Bed of Cuchuliann

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The Smiths – Still Ill

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Grandaddy – Pull the Curtains

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Eels – Hospital Food

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Fucking lurgy.

I am really enjoying this album, but I have to confess that my interview with Jason Lytle somewhat pissed in my chips, unfortunately.  The reason?  Well he said that his initial instinct was to make this album a big old mess, littered with half-finished thoughts, experimentation and imperfections.  Over the course of a number of conversations with his management they slowly came to the conclusion that “you only get one chance to make a debut solo album”. Pooh.  I really, really want to hear that messy album because the early Granddaddy stuff, where they were prone to all sorts of weirdness and strange changes of direction, was their best work, dammit.

His reasoning was that despite the fact that he actually likes to listen to really confrontational music like Metallica and Mastodon, he doesn’t really want to put his fans through that himself.  Life is, he says, shitty enough.  Personally I disagree with this line of reasoning altogether, although I suppose that if I were to show you an artist who recklessly and unapologetically pushed the boundaries at all times, then you could almost certainly show me one who made very, very little money from their work.  There are a few exceptions of course, but rarely in the field of popular music.

So what we have is much closer to the Grandaddy of Sumday (I am not counting the somewhat stillborn Fambly Cat) rather than the Grandaddy of Under the Western Freeway.  In fact the start of the album could be lifted right from the Sumday Sessions, from a stylistic perspective.  It’s almost like a conscious olive branch to the fans who have waited so long for the album, and to those who are slightly sceptical about what will actually come of his music in the absence of the band itself.

Perhaps oddly for someone who has gone to a lot of effort to leave behind a lot of the aspects of modern life which he found so overwhelming, these themes do nevertheless still crop up quite frequently in this record.  There are certainly tales of nature-based redemption which sound borderline autobiographical, but little of this record calls to mind a man who has redefined himself and left any kind of old life behind.  Mind you, he pretty much said as much in the interview.

So eventually I find this album drifting to a quiet close with a distinct sense of ‘plus ca change…’  I really do like it, and Jason Lytle is still a terrific songwriter.  But it certainly doesn’t feel like an album where he’s really pushed either himself or us, and as such I am never going to really love it, I don’t think.

Jason Lytle – Your Truly, the Commuter

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Jason Lytle – Flying Through Canyons

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[I wrote this article for the good folks at The Skinny, who were kind enough to give me the opportunity in the first place.  Song, by Toad does not, yet, have enough pull to swing interviews with the likes of Jason Lytle, so I am very grateful for the chance, and a big thanks to Milo from Products of a Gaseous Brain, who suggested me in the first place.]

When Grandaddy dissolved in 2005, their lead singer disappeared to the mountains in Montana, essentially turning his back on the industry to reinvigorate his relationship with music. Jason Lytle sits down with Matthew Young to explain how he found the road back.

King Creosote didn’t just vanish for ten years in between the fall of the Khartoum Heroes and the release of his first album on Domino Records. Micah P. Hinson wasn’t saved from self-destruction by the redemptive power of music. And Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle didn’t just run away to the wilderness to live in a cave for three years after the demise of one of the most successful indie bands of recent memory.

This is the vague story that percolated through to my mind when, after more than ten years of what any independent band would consider wild success, Grandaddy finally imploded. Lytle moved out to Montana and made a clean break ostensibly, it seemed, to retire. But like Hinson and Anderson before him, Lytle seems to bristle slightly when faced with the simplistic version of his own life story. Read the rest of this entry »

Apparently Brazil’s President or PM or whoever the fuck is in charge has recently gone on record as stating that the global financial crisis was caused by people with ‘white skin and blue eyes’.  Whilst a little bitter racism does tend to amuse me in the morning, I think he is only half right.  White men, perhaps, but actually I think you’ll find it was green eyes that were the problem.

Sometime this week I published my official thousandth post, which was cause for not all that much rejoicing at all really.  It looked cool on the stats page but, actually, it wasn’t my thousandth post at all.  I started this blog in November 2006, but an IT disaster a couple of years ago led to me losing the first five months of posts, so now it looks like the site only started in April 2007, which is a bit of a shame.  So my actual one thousandth post was probably written some time in December, I would imagine, but erm, Yay! Me anyway I suppose.

I am going down to London on Monday to interview Jason Lytle, of ex-Grandaddy fame.  He has a new album coming out on ANTI pretty soon, and Grandaddy were one of my favourite bands, so I am pretty excited about this.  Because the interview is for most reputable local organ The Skinny it’s all being funded by the label too, which is rather nice.  They’ve allowed me to publish it here as well, which is rather nice of them, so you’ll get to read it within the month.

So, er, as I head off to the King’s Wark for my weekly two-pint lunch with fucking fantastic fresh fish, please finish your British Rail sandwiches at your desk, and take the time to delurk and fill in this week’s Five Friday Favourites, as stolen shamelessly from the pages of GUT.  It’s always nice to see some fresh faces on the fives.  Frankly my regular commenters bore me to tears, and I secretly long for someone new and interesting to talk to (tee hee).  And nothing too vulgar, or I’ll tell my Mum on you.

And congratulations to Shonagh of the King’s Wark (and most importantly of the Song, by Toad comments section) for her weekend breakfast concoctions being named the best in Scotland by the Guardian.  Fucking brilliant.  I’ve never had breakfast there, but if her eggs are as good as her company then you can’t possibly go wrong.  Awww, wasn’t that sweet.  Quite uncomfortably so, in fact.  I’d better swear about something, just to get the right mood back.

Oh, and thanks to Dylan for accidentally supplying this week’s five.  You may have to be a little creative in your interpretations, but I figured that they were funny enough that they had to go up anyway.

1. When were you last in a house of bondage, and who had to come and drag you out?
2. Carved images. Love or loathe?
3. What have you done today that’s really going to piss off your great-great grandchildren?
4. Is it okay to go ten-pin bowling on a Sunday?
5. Which do you like best, your neighbour’s ox, donkey or female servant?

Grandaddy – Laughing Stock

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Lo-Fidelity Allstars – On the Pier

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Dakota Suite – The Cost of Living

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St Etienne – Just a Little Overcome

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Stereolab – Old Lungs

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Sorry this has been so late coming, but we have spent the day recording the sixth Toad Session with the Pictish Trail.  And now I am off to London to see some friends and speak to people about getting Meursault onto some bills down South.  We’re also going to be talking to Pure Groove and Rough Trade about stocking the record, which should hopefully go alright.

So yes, I’m going to be sitting on a train down to London as you read this, leafing through magazines and trying to find people who might be interested in reviewing future Toad releases.  There’s no rest for the wicked and I don’t even have time to write any more on this post either.  DC will be posting his show tomorrow in place of the Toadcast, and I will be back properly functioning on Monday or Tuesday with a bit of luck.  This week’s five and five songs have been chosen by Johnny Pictish, Fee, Gavin, myself and Dylan at the end of the Toad Session.  I am now going to get pissed and fuck off down South.  Have a good weekend Toadlings.

1. Who put the Ram in a a-ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong?
2. Ideal next Toad Session.
3. Whis is Irn-Bru orange?
4. Favourite daytime TV show for when you have a day off during the week.
5. Chicken or fish?

Grandaddy – Jeez Louise

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The Pictish Trail – I Don’t Know Where to Begin

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The Walkmen – The Rat

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Ryan Adams – To Be Young

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Mercury Rev – Opus 40

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…and there was much rejoicing.  And by much I mean fucking loads of fucking rejoicing, with bells and whistles and beer and skittles.  And gin.  This is brilliant news.  I first got a sniff of this news when from Jonathan from A Classic Education contacted me about this episode of Maps, a daily show on a Bologna radio station.

Basically Grandaddy, one of my favourite bands, announced that they were packing it in in about 2006.  They released one final, slightly disappointing album called Just Like the Fambly Cat and then that was that.  Lead singer and main songwriter Jason Lytle apparently vanished to a farm in Montana just to get away from everything, although this may be a case of Chinese Whispers over-interpreting a casual remark, I don’t know.

The band were known for steering clear of major labels and eschewing major promoters in order to stay essentially a global indie band, and this inevitably caused problems.  After a handful of brilliant records it got to the stage where an inability to earn a consistent living led to internal tensions, and basically the determination required to follow this particular path simply pressurised the cohesion of the band.  Tiny differences of opinion seemed to grow into major fissures and eventually it all broke apart.  I don’t have that much information, so don’t take the above as gospel, but that’s kind of how it looked to me at the time. Read the rest of this entry »