This would have been a really helpful post if I had written it yesterday, when I should’ve.  In that tiny window of physical incapacitation I have managed to fail to inform you about such bands as Mount Kimbie and The Brothers Grimm, Alastair Roberts, eagleowl, The Wee Rogue and The Douglas Firs.  By such narrow margins are great blogs built and once-great blogs judged and found wanting.

There are excuses, though.  This is Song by fucking Toad of course, so there are always excuses, but an Interminable List of Feeble Excuses for Underachievement, by Toad just didn’t have the same ring to it.

Anyhow, last week saw a (thankfully brief and relatively benign) family crisis send me scurrying down to London, followed by a return trip via Manchester for two nights of bevvying at In the City, a drink-and-vinyl-fuelled reunion with Mrs. Toad on Friday night, followed by the Honeytrap gig on Saturday, after party in the wee hours of Sunday morning and then the Savings and Loan House Gig on Sunday itself.

By yesterday afternoon I was, I’ll be honest, Just Plain Fucked.  So for those of you who missed out on the dynamic fringes of the Brothers Grimm or the folkings of Alastair Roberts due to my lack of stamina I am indeed sorry… but not really all that sorry.  Fuck you, really, I was completely cabbaged and you can just deal with it this week.

So, what’s left to do this week, for those of a musical bent?  Plenty, actually, although not really until the weekend, when it really does kick off.  There’s only one gig which really stands out to me, which is this one:

Friday 22nd October 2010: The Chap, Milk & The Young Spooks play Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms.

The Limbo laddies (they’re going to hate me for that) are back at the Voodoo Rooms again, which is good news.  I don’t know much about the bands in question, I must confess, but then Milk are sufficiently elusive that they have neither a MySpace page, nor much written about them anywhere on the internets, so I am not entirely blaming myself.  See, I told you there were always excuses.

But there are two weekend-long festivals, both of which look like very good bets indeed.

22nd-24th October 2010: The Hidden Door Festival at the Roxy Art House.

The link above takes you to the musical plans for this particular event, but the Hidden Door Festival is a lot more than just a gig.  It’s actually a multi-arts festival, aiming to encourage collaboration across disciplines and a general breaking down of the somewhat artificial walls which tend to carelessly emerge between different disciplines when left alone for too long.  They explain it better and in more depth themselves on this page of their site, but it certainly looks like a really interesting event.

22nd-24th October 2010: Edinburgh Popfest.

This one barely needs any further information than that which can be inferred from its name, with three days of live music spread across three venues, from the Wee Red Bar (Friday), to the GRV (Saturday all-dayer), to The Lot (Sunday – early though, so watch out for your timing).

The full lineup is available on their site, but local notables include eagleowl, Withered Hand, the Secondhand Marching Band and the Just Joans, with the more exotic visitors including Darren Hayman and Suburban Kids With Biblical Names.

Suburban Kids With Biblical Names – Funeral Face

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I am writing this week’s post from a dining room in Ealing, where I have come to visit my parents, and also to pretend to be a proper record label for a couple of days – courting publishers and getting European releases and tours sorted out and that sort of thing.  It’s kind of fun, and sort of weird in a sense.  It’s also strange explaining to my folks that this is actually what I do in my spare time, too.

Anyway, due to the incomparable glories of the internet age that should be no impediment to me shamelessly insisting that you do what I tell you this week, when it comes to entertainment.

Oh, and my friend Billy has written an article for The Line of Best Fit about the Scottish music scene.  In it he tells us what I tell every band we work with – that it’s all well and good to play comfortable venues back home surrounded by people who you already know like your music, but if you want to make any kind of breakthrough you’ve got to get out.

Of course, I have no objection to working with bands who don’t want to do this, but I always tell them that if that’s the case they’ll have to accept that this will make it very challenging indeed to make any kind of impact on a wider audience, but if they can accept that then so can I.

Wednesday 27th January 2010: Chew Lips, Boycotts & My Tiny Robots at Sneaky Pete’s.

Chew Lips are awfully fashionable and have haircuts and everything, but of course that doesn’t always have to mean that a band aren’t good.  In this case, I’ll confess to being a little ambivalent, but curious.  I was tipped off about the band a little over a year ago, but I didn’t end up writing about them because for all I kind of liked it, I wasn’t all that convinced.

They’ve gone from strength to strength however, and their album looks very upmarket, and frankly I’m curious to see what they’re up to these days and whether or not I might like them any better than I did before.  And it’s very good to see My Tiny Robots back playing again.

Friday 29th January 2010: Andrew Vincent, Sebastian Dangerfield, Andrea Marini at Sneaky Pete’s.

This one actually looks like being really good.  I don’t know much about Andrew Vincent, but his MySpace page sounds rather promising, and after months of prevaricating I finally put Sebastian Dangerfield on a podcast just this week.  So this is one of those ‘curious’ sorts of gigs – the bands sound good, but I know very little about them, and so this lineup sounds rather intriguing.

Saturday 30th/Sunday 31st January 2010: Hidden Door Festival at the Roxy.

Lots of very Toad-friendly bands (Foxxes, Broken Records, etc..) are peforming at this one, but it’s not going to be a gig per se.  Actually, I’ve not much idea what it’s going to be like, but the publicity material describes something like an multi-disciplinary art exhibition, with the stated goal of being “more party than gallery”, where visual artists, musicians and so on all interact and try and do something a bit different.  Sounds brilliant to me, frankly.

Sunday 31st January 2010: Sick Kids Sunday at the GRV.

Charities seem to put on some of the best gigs in this city, and Sick Kids Sunday is no exception.  Held at the GRV (who are thankfully, finally getting their pretty enough but practically useless website updated) this one has all sorts of good stuff in the lineup, from Meursault to James Yorkston and Adrian Crowley performing the songs of Daniel Johnston.