The highlight of today was undoubtedly the Muzzle of Bees Backyard BBQ, which took something of a walk to find, but was nevertheless a very, very pleasant and absolutely wonderfully relaxing way to spend the day.  Then we had a shitload of seafood, got completely smashed and watched a lot of loud music!  WIN!

This is the new Great Lake Swimmers video, called Stealing Tomorrow, from their live session recorded in the Royal Canadian Legion Hall.  I have always liked Great Lake Swimmers in a tepid sort of way.  They can be beautiful, but there are times when I have found them a little boring, I have to confess.

I learned an important lesson about that, though, from Sam Amidon a couple of years ago.  When Campfires & Battlefields (long-time Toad reader and contributor) first introduced me to All Is Well I liked it, but I never fell in love with it anything like I did when he played to a spellbound Bowery crowd in 2008.  There was something about the silence in between the notes, of which he plays very few, listening to them gently die into silence and the emphasis on the rather brutal lyrics, which absolutely knocked me sideways.  I rarely listen to music in such intense isolation.

Ever since then I have to remind myself how little genuine attention I give to music.  I listen at work whilst doing my job, whilst walking through town, whilst deciding whether or not to write about it, and on the bus to work in the morning.  Little of that is ever done with absolute full attention, devoid of any distractions.  In fact, that’s why I like vinyl.  I don’t care too much about the crakles or that kind of stuff, and I am not an audiophile in particular, but I love that it is very hard to do other things whilst listening to records on vinyl.  You almost have to pay attention.

A friend of mine here at work saw the Great Lake Swimmers in Glasgow a while ago and said that they were stunning.  Watching that gorgeous video I find myself reminded a little of the Sam Amidon gig, and what Andy told me about Great Lake Swimmers.  It’s so slow and lovely that I feel I might be missing the point of the band if I don’t go and sit down and listen to them with the shutters closed and nothing around me.  I’ve listened to all of our releases like this – just sitting in the middle of the floor, facing the speakers, and soaking it in.

Neither you nor I will have time to do this very often, to sit and just soak music in like this, but every now and then a band comes along who remind me how satisfying and important a thing this is to do.  I am going to go and see the Great Lake Swimmers live before I say anything else uncharitable about them.  Their new album is on eMusic here, if you’d like to give it a try.

‘iya, as my Kairdiff accented friend would say; only me.

Here it is, then. The last show before the last show before Christmas. Hasn’t the year simply zipped?

To assist the remainder of 2008 pass through you like last week’s Chinese takeout omlette, re-heated using only the breath of a cider-drunk Deutscher Schäferhund, this week’s offal will be spat out in the same manner as you coming across a crust of dead flies stuck to the bottom of a glass of home-made lemonade mid-swallow.

As per, then, I & TWoTH will stain the airwaves with jibber jabber not heard since Brendan Fraser, the actor, was asked to explain ‘irony’ during a press conference for his broken bottle rape of the celluloid artform via the medium of “Monkeybone”.

Once you’ve recovered from that delightful triple image donkey punch you’ll be able to tuck into such aural delights as: The Great Lake Swimmers, Delta Spirit, Ane Brun, The Thermals, Mitchell Museum, Bosque Brown, SoKo, The Strange Boys, The Duchess & The Duke, Meaghan Smith, Lex Land, Lindi Ortega, Mercy Choir, & the Spanish Inquisition that are the many, many more.

Thanks are due, once again, to Mr. Toad for allowing us to park our wide load in his driveway. Plus a big nod, elaborately crossed arms & a suck on the teeth stance to all of youse out there in listeningland what are coming back week on week. Ta very, muchly appreciated, thanks.

We don’t yet have a plan for our Christmas Eve show, but the New Year’s Eve 3hr bonanza will essentially be a run down of our favourite bits of musicary we’ve played throughout 2008. We’re hoping to feature a number of our friends (The Lord Dog Dylan, being one), between each track, talking about whatever comes to mind.

But that’s the almost immediate future. The very immediate future is pretty much right about now. Click on, then, fair fellows, click on.

The Waiting Room: 10th December 2008

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I barely know how to react when I read articles like this one. A large part of me is on the verge of launching into a massive rant about self-obsessed fuckwits who manage to turn something as incredibly simple as diet into the carnival of self-loathing naval gazing that it has become.  And another part of me is just sad.

Funnily enough, I think I went to school with Michael Pollan, who wrote the article. Not as mates, but I think he was a few years ahead of myself and Mrs. Toad at Vienna International School. Maybe it’s a different Michael Pollan.

Anyhow, yes, food. Well his first three sentences read thus: Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly Plants.  A masterpiece of economical, impactful writing. Michael (or Mr. Pollan I suppose, if it’s not the fellow from Vienna) goes on to explain that food does not mean Food Products, it means actual, fresh, raw ingredients. But honestly, is any of this news to anyone? I read the article, and beyond the interesting explanations of the politics of the food industry and their lobbyists, and a little about the biology that means sugars are no longer slowly digested by our systems when we ingest them and instead flood into us unchecked, there’s not much there that isn’t amazingly fucking obvious.

Does anyone, anyone out there really think that when they eat things from containers labelled Really Incredibly Healthy and Organic and Pure and, erm, Cuts Carbon Too! that they are eating anything more than the same old processed shit that they are in the other boxes? People fiddle with certain quantities of trivial levels of particularly buzz-worthy ingredients (No Transfats! Bursting with Omega 3*!) and peddle it to us like the idiots that we are.

Eat fresh food all the time and cut down on the meat. Not too much booze either. It’s fucking obvious. I know when I am straying from this advice, and I know I have to accept the consequences. What’s the fucking problem? Are we that desperate to excuse our lack of self-control? Our greed? Or are we just really, really stupid as a species? Eat less, get some exercise, don’t eat shit. How many millions have been spent pimping hugely over-elaborate versions of that really simple and really obvious statement?

I really should start Mr. Toad’s Stop Fucking Moaning Life Coaching, shouldn’t I. I might have a slightly higher than usual suicide rate, but a few weeks of being told to shut the fuck up, stop whining and just get the fuck over yourself would do most patients a lot of good. And dishing out a good beating to those exploitative charlatans like Patrick fucking Holford and that witch-faced coprophiliac Gillian McKeith wouldn’t do anyone any harm either.

The sad part is that it is in absolutely no-one’s interests to point out that this just isn’t that complicated an issue.  Two hugely parasitical industries – the big pharma companies and the alternative medicine quacks – make millions from fuelling the prevaricating and the self-indulgent hand-wringing.  The shrinks profit from all the neuroses and the marketing whores and the manufacturers benefit from peddling us all this tosh.

Even the NHS, who actually would benefit from people following the simplest and most effective advice, can’t be that blunt because it quite simply is neither self-obsessed enough for most people, nor does it place the blame anywhere other than our own doorsteps.  We all know we should eat fresh food, presumably, so if we are not doing it then who else can possibly be to blame but ourselves?  Unfortunately that is not a very 21st Century answer.

The Fall – Eat Y’rself Fitter
Great Lake Swimmers – Put There by the Land
Belle & Sebastian – Meat & Potatoes
Eels – Hospital Food (Live at the BBC)
Willy Mason – Where the Humans Eat

* Omega 3? Fucking pointless.
**Incidentally, these antioxidant supplement pills have been comprehensively shown to do you no fucking good whatsoever. Eat your greens instead.