Song, by Toad

This podcast is slightly kinda somewhat about about the myopia of the London media, in particular as to how it pertains to Scotland and Scottish music, and slightly about the Glasgow media.  There are a number of different triggers for this, starting with this article in the Scotsman’s Under the Radar blog last year about the rejection by the editor of a London glossy of an article on four up-and-coming Scottish bands, made even more offensive by the fact that said editor had requested the damn article in the first place.

Of course, anyone who reads the London glossies knows they don’t half cover an awful lot of shite themselves, so they really are in no position to pass judgment, but these things are about personal taste at the end of the day and you really can’t force anyone to like stuff.

Then of course there was a wee bit of chatter about the Glasgow focus of the media in Scotland – like an endless set of Russian dolls, this kind of thing really can go on forever – particularly focussed on the remarkable Glasgow-centrism of The List’s Hot 100 list and then some stupid woman on BBC radio sneering at the Edinburgh music scene despite knowing no more of Glasgow than Mogwai or Franz Ferdinand.

So yes, there’s a bit of that going on as well, but for the most part it’s surprisingly non-confrontational given the level of annoyance I felt with both the BBC lady and the List list at the time.

Toadcast #105 – The Myopiacast

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01. James Yorkston – A Man of My Skills (04.26)
02. Frightened Rabbit – The Greys (10.22)
03. Orange Juice – Blue Boy (16.02)
04. The Pogues – Rake at the Gates of Hell (18.53)
05. Fang Island – Life Coach (27.56)
06. Her Name is Calla – Long Grass (30.51)
07. Fire Engines – Get Up and Use Me (37.59)
08. Last Battle – Ward 119 (47.44)
09. Sebastian Dangerfield – Morris (49.53)
10. Sigur Ros – Gong (58.05)

My Homegame review is pretty brief, but it is here, and there is a wee video thingy as well for you to enjoy.  This is of course the accompanying podcast, with songs either from the bands I saw there, or from EPs and bits and pieces I acquired at the merch table up in Fife.

I should really have included some interviews and shit in this podcast, shouldn’t I, but then I wasn’t actually as well prepared or as organised as I should have been, really.  Inasmuch as I kind of think I would prefer my video to have turned out a bit more like Milo’s, I would also have preferred my podcast to turn out a little more like DC’s Homegame show over at the Waiting Room.  I’m not saying that I dislike the stuff that I’ve done this year, just that to my eyes it lacks a little bit of fizz and personality, unfortunately.  Oh well, it’s all a learning process, and by the time Wickerman comes around I reckon I should be able to produce something a lot better.

Toadcast #69 – The Fifecast

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01. The Phantom Band – Island (03.00)
02. The Hand – Happa Yori (15.02)
03. King Creosote – Nothing Rings True (19.52)
04. James Yorkston & Adrian Crowley – Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Your Grieviance (25.42)
05. Jake Flowers – One For the Ditch (30.07)
06. Love.Stop.Repeat – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (33.25)
07. Viking Moses – Clown School (39.03)
08. Inspector Tapehead – A Fillet of Banjo (46.14)
09. Animal Magic Tricks – Smallish Hooves (51.26)
10. Jonnie Common – Taken Out (57.16)

I love Homegame.  Have I mentioned that before?

For the uninitiated, the Fence Collective’s Homegame Festival is held once a year in the small fishing village of Anstruther in Fife (well, it used to be a fishing village but it seems to be largely touristy now – neighbour Pittenweem seems to be more of a working harbour).  A huge pile of Fence Records acts, bolstered by friends and neighbours, get together and play lots of gigs in the town halls, school halls and beer halls of the town, and about six hundred or so lucky punters get to go along.

There are a few things I love about this festival, so here are a couple, put as briefly as possible:
- Anstruther is small, so the festival itself has to be small, or the town wouldn’t be able to cope.
- Fence Collective music is fucking brilliant.  There will be no sets by the View, not even acoustic ones.
- It’s actually in a town, so if it pisses down you can just stay in the pub and not get wet.
- The bands themselves are all relaxed, friendly and as interested in seeing good music and getting plastered as the rest of us, which makes for a really nice, communal atmosphere.
- It’s in a seaside town so if you ever get all musicked out, you can pick up a paper, sit on the promenade and read for a bit.
- Did I mention the relaxed atmosphere?  It’s the nicest festival in the world to be at.

This year Mrs. Toad and I rented a couple of cottages in Pittenweem – we were too slow to get Anstruther – which ended up being absolutely full of bodies at the end of every gin-sodden night of debauchery.  And when I say full I mean full; every inch of floor and ever sofa or cushion covered with some passed out drunkard or other.  Fuck me it was fun. Read the rest of this entry »

This podcast is sort of like the Clustercast should have been.  I haven’t actually listened to it yet, so I don’t know if it’s any good, but it sort of felt better, somehow.  It isn’t anything like that incoherent and garbled anyway, which is a relief.

We spent the day collecting for the lifeboats, along with some excellent help from our pals Dylan from Blueback Hotrod, Neil from Meursault, Ed from 17 Seconds, Dave, Michael and the Stormettes from The Stormy Seas and Morgan from, erm, Glasgow.  I have to point out how important their help was as well.  It’s easy to talk a good game and then to pussy out at the last minute, but despite the fact that both Neil and Ed had other things on today, everyone made the time to come down and help out, which is bloody good of them.  We collected a fair chunk of cash – Mrs. Toad’s pretty blonde colleague collected the most, rather predictably.  Maybe we need fewer beardy alt-folkies and more hot babes next year.

Enjoy the podcast, then; we’ve got a lot of nautically-themed songs this week and could have had even more.  There are loads of songs, and we had far more on the list before trimming.  It’s a bit out of control, this podcast, but actually I think it’s quite good.  Dylan’s roving reporter slots are just… well, they’re just.  They’re just. That’s what they are.  Experience them for yourself.  Good luck.

Toadcast #67 – The Wuzzlecast

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01. The Pogues – The Ship Comes In (05.57)
02. Sad Day For Puppets – Big Waves (09.07)
03. Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (17.44)
04. James Yorkston – Sir Patrick Spens (26.22)
05. The Second Hand Marching Band – Not Yet (38.40)
06. The Stormy Seas – The Sea Wind (42.40)
07. Ute Lemper – Little Water Song (50.31)
08. Frightened Rabbit – Floating in the Forth (57.25)
09. Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians – The Wreck of the Arthur Lee (64.53)
10. American Music Club – The Song of the Rats Leaving the Sinking Ship (75.43)

For reference, here are some YouTube videos which inspired this podcast:

Oh Christ I’m fucking tired.  The videos from the Broken Records gig at the Bedlam Theatre ended up just kind of  hijacking my attention and I couldn’t bring myself to stop tinkering until some time around four o’clock this morning.  Consequently wit and entertainment will be in very short supply indeed on Toad today, and if you want to be entertained then you will have to do so yourselves.  I will try my best to be funny, but the chances of it working would appear to be slim, to say the least.

We got onto the topic of food snobbery a little while back, so this is what I would like to make the subject of this week’s five – except backwards.  None of your shaved truffles marinaded in larks’ tears this time, me hearties.  It’s all about the shite.  Yup, junk food, shit food, dismal food, boring food, all to be celebrated and enjoyed and written down in lists.  Because for all I can certainly come across as a food snob, in many ways quite rightly, I am also as prone as everyone else to hangover munchies where pretty much anything goes, and sitting around the house watching movies eating a bizarre assortment of supermarket oddities simply because they all for various reasons struck my fancy at the time.

Last week’s five was a superlative success, with all sorts of black belt de-lurking going on and lots of new victims people joining in the fun, so lets see more of that please, that was splendid.  And as soon as I get a picture of a mouse foetus brain spoon there will be a new t-shirt available, that I promise!

1. Most bizarre hangover item/combo you’ve ever enjoyed.
2. Favourite pickled thing (‘me’ – ha ha, yes, very funny).
3. Nastiest junk food for which you just fucking love anyway.
4. Oddest junk food you’ve spotted in exotic parts.
5. Really bland, unimaginative meal you find kind of satisfying.

Sparklehorse – Little Fat Baby

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James Yorkston – Midnight Feast

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Ben Folds – All U Can Eat

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Morcheeba – Women Lose Weight

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Rich Amino – Chicken ‘n’ Chips

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Apparently, according to my little book of annoyingly folksy cliches, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.  It’s only half-right, I think.  Surely the way to anyone’s heart is through their stomach – or at least, it should be.

Mrs. Toad and I are both totally disasters, in terms of domesticity, but we both love to cook.  In fact, I remember one of the best things my Mum ever did for me and my little brother as kids, and that was make damn sure we knew how to cook before we left the house.  If you want to pull – either sex – cook for them.  It’ll tell you a lot.  As my Mum (she’s a smutty old bag, really she is) always said: cooking and eating are very important because they involve all the senses, and the only other thing which really does that is sex, so if someone can’t enjoy one then what are the odds that they’re going to be any good at the other?

It’s such a great pulling tool, it really is, if I could recommend any young man or woman learn any one skill (apart from becoming a black belt in oral sex of course) then it would be excellent culinary skills.  Particularly if you can make it seem effortless and do not turn into the gastronomic version of a wine snob.  In fact, best just not use the word gastronomy at all, really, it’s probably a step too far for any right-thinking person.

In a less vulgar sense, of course, it’s a good test of personality.  Anyone who picks their way through things and won’t eat this and won’t eat that is surely not worth bothering with.  I am not talking about shunning people with potentially fatal food allergies (but real ones, not imagined ones, please) but people who are picky eaters are to be avoided.  Why, let’s face it, would you fucking bother.

As for anyone who ruins meals by obsessively watches their weight, well, we don’t even need to discuss that, do we.  Flush them down the toilet with the semi-digested remains of their last meal.  Obsessive gym bunnies (male and female), manorexics (what?) or anyone so obsessed with their appearance that they don’t know how to just fucking relax and indulge a bit… well, fuck ‘em, frankly.  Or, more literally, don’t.

And as for people who have their steaks or their tuna cooked any more than medium rare (and even that’s going a bit far)…

The Divine Comedy – Seafood Song

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James Yorkston – Midnight Feast

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Part 1: 1-10
Part 2: 11-23
Part 3: 24-36
Part 4: 37-50

Here is the official beginning of Christmas List season, here at Song, by Toad. If you want to get involved and write your own list, then please do. Go here for more details. The more of you that contribute to that the better the results we will get, so don’t be shy.

This is the first quarter of my Festive Fifty for 2008. I will also be preparing a list of my twenty favourite albums, but I might just neglect singles and EPs this time around. If you disagree with anything then do get stuck in, but bear in mind that this is far from a definitive ranking. Ask me on another day and Pictish’s brilliant I Don’t Know Where to Begin could easily be in the top five. Ask me in four months’ time and it would probably be all-change again. Read the rest of this entry »

As you can see I have complied with Mrs. Toad’s request to stop featuring cutesy Edinburgh pictures on these little posts and put up some pictures of radgy wee neds instead. This is something I think she feels is more representative of a kind of Edinburgh life that tends to be ignored (for more such pictures, go here, it’s hilarious).

I play football regularly in Craigmillar, often against teams from there or alternatively from lovely places like Craigour, Niddrie and other delightful Edinburgh tourist spots. I’ve actually been threatened with being knifed something like three or four times during various matches when we’ve played out there. It is a little unsettling actually, because for all you always have to respond with bravado – ‘Yeah fuck off – I’m more scared of your Mum you little poof’ or something equally erudite – there’s always the slender chance that one of the weaselly little fuckers is just crazy enough to mean it.

The biggest question I have with neds (pikeys, scallys, radges, whatever you local variation might be) is how they manage to find the stamina to go through life so CONSTANTLY FUCKING ANGRY. Honestly, where does that rage come from, how can they summon that level of anger, all of every day, about nothing at all? I suppose having lost at everything doesn’t help. Maybe the anger is why they live such short lives too – the rage must just burn you up.

Anyway, all that’s by the by really, isn’t it. What’s on this week then? Not much, but one absolute corker: Fence Club.

Wednesday 17th September 2008: James Yorkston & the Athletes, Malcolm Middleton, and Pictish Trail & Rozi Plain at The Caves.
In terms of lineups you’d struggle to beat this. James Yorkston’s new album is gorgeous, and given his tour is necessarily going to be a solo affair I really recommend you take this chance to see him now. The lush beauty of the sound is going to be perfect for The Caves, especially with full Athletic accompaniment. Malcolm Middleton’s literate, witty, downbeat indie takes little introduction, I would hope, and the dynamic duo of Pictish and Plain should be a treat. Tickets are getting close to selling out, too, so I’d buy one now if I were you. The official line is that there should be tickets left to sell on the door, but they aren’t certain. Book here to put your mind at rest.
James Yorkston – Queen of Spain
Malcolm Middleton – A Brighter Beat

Saturday 20th September 2008: Jonquil at Henry’s Cellar Bar.
One of Edinburgh’s own has recently agreed to become their manager, so they must be good. It’s a sort of experimental folk sound, broadly speaking, and is really bloody marvellous live. It’s a late one too, so don’t get so plastered you fail to appreciate the music. I do that all the fucking time, and it irritates the shit out of me.
Jonquil – Apparency

And, you know, I really think that’s it.

Blimey James Yorkston has hit his stride. Not to imply that he was struggling to do so before of course, but in terms of having the confidence to experiment a little, whilst not being so frantic to reinvent himself that he throws the baby out with the bathwater, he has created an album with real presence.

It’s familiar, but something quite fundamental in the rhythm, particularly the rhythm of the vocal delivery, seems to have changed. It spills more, flows like an insistent stream, not strident, but purposeful. It is in fact very much like beat poetry (and not the kind you’re thinking of) at times. What I mean by that is that Yorkston seems to be increasingly disinclined to write choruses. I mean, he still does, but I find myself identifying songs more by the rise and roll of the rhythm, rather than by the lines in the chorus.

It seems somehow symphonic, too. I somehow think of symphonic as different from orchestral – more lilting, less bombastic – but I know I am not using the words in any way literally in so doing. It’s a little grander a sound than the rather too minimal Year of the Leopard, and less traditionally assembled than the glorious Just Beyond the River and Moving Up Country. Between that and the subtly adventurous arrangements, the aforementioned impression that he is really hitting his stride starts to emerge.

As writers of hush-folk go (although Yorkston, like Rob St. John, prefers to be referred to as a writer of pop songs) I am not sure there is anyone better around today. There’s a wonderful gentleness to his music, even when the song itself is about heartbreak, which envelops and comforts you like warm evening darkness. I love this record, and even if you splash out and buy the box set, this is money well worth spending.

James Yorkston – When the Haar Rolls In
James Yorkston – Midnight Feast

Website | More mp3s | Buy from Domino

This little bit of video genius/madness was made by on of our occasional commenters, the splendid Milo, so I thought it just had to be included.  And I thought I was excited!

Unboxing of James Yorkston ‘When The Haar Rolls In’ Boxset from Milo McLaughlin on Vimeo.

Well chaps I am absolutely buggering knackered, but never fear, for the eminently lovely Mrs. Toad and myself are off on holiday tomorrow for two weeks. Thank fucking bollocks for that – the last time we had a proper break was this time last year for our wedding and even that involved a bit too much organising and signing things and so on to be entirely restful.

Will this year’s holiday be restful? Well who knows. My little brother is getting married and I have to give a speech, so by this time next week you could be talking to the man who ruined his little brother’s big day. I say this only because he lives out in Boston and is marrying n American girl. She is brilliant, so no worries there, but about a hundred and fifty of her friends and family members will be at this bloody thing, none of whom I have met before, and the chances of my giving an even vaguely coherent speech without mortally offending half of them seem slim.

Ultimately, I get the impression Americans take weddings terribly seriously, and as you know I don’t really take much of much seriously at all. Also, as my regular readers will know, I swear, rage, rail and slander. This is pretty much my entire sense of humour, apart from baiting people who take anything at all too seriously. What are my chances of giving a speech to ahundred and fifty American Christians without causing mortal offence? I would say Nil.

So fingers crossed, chaps. Wish me luck. If all goes well, Ben will still be speaking to me at this time next week, but I wouldn’t exactly put more than a fiver on it.

In terms of the blog, I have uploaded a song for each day I’m away and have written a few mini-posts in advance, timed to be posted once a day for the two weeks I’m off. I’ll pop in from time to time to say hi and play nicely with people in the comments section, and I have pre-recorded a new podcast to go up next weekend. So you won’t be entirely neglected, but I won’t be matching JC’s awe-inspiring dedication over at the Vinyl Villain and blogging away all through my holiday. Partly because I want to stay married and partly because, obsessive though I am, I am sorry to have to confess that I just don’t love you all that much. It’s my fucking holidays, cut me some slack.

Giant Sand – Wayfaring Stranger/Fly Me to the Moon
James Yorkston – Someplace Simple
Yo La Tengo – I Feel Like Going Home
The Postal Service – We Will Become Silhouettes
James – Runaground