Yep, it’s time to lie back on the shrink’s couch and ‘tell me about your childhood’.  Well.  Sort of.  Actually, my mum just happens to be in town, so I reckon that on Fresh Air Radio this week I might just play all sorts of mum songs, just for shits and giggles.

This came about because of the following comment by my brother on the thread about music formats this week:

“I need to at some point clarify Mum’s music taste for your readers because the poor woman just constantly gets dismissed as a ‘pop fan’.  

The poor woman has a massive collection of jazz, blues; a truly encyclopaedic Opera and symphonic collection and yet, one Lighthouse Family album and the poor woman’s whole musical taste just goes whooosh out the window while Dad is sanctified while you merrily ignore his David Grey albums.  Albums with an emphasis on the plural!”

Now, as you might well know by now, I am a philistine, so mum’s classical music and whatnot means absolutely bollocks-all to me.  However, I think it needs to be pointed out that I most certainly do not ‘dismiss’ my mum as a pop fan.  I fucking love the pop stuff she used to play around the house when we were growing up, and if anything it was my mum’s stuff which first properly got me into music in the first place.

On air from 3:30pm UK time – listen live here.

So for all I do indeed call her a pop fan, which she most certainly is, I do not at all mean that to be a dismissal.  As you will find out on Fresh Air today, when I will be playing all sorts of shite from my mum’s record collection.  And of course, seeing as I left home in 1993, it will be enormously 80s-tastic!

And now, while we’re at it, for the Friday Fives. Honestly, I doubt I can do much better with these questions than I’ll do with the music I’m going to play this afternoon, but Mrs. Toad and I were talking about doing a Saxcast this weekend, so I thought I might ask for some help.

1. Which instrument would you like to see get the saxophone Total Taboo treatment?
2. Best super cheesy 80s sax tune.
3. Acceptable use of sax.
4. Awesome Great Big Eighties Pop Song!
5. Most eighties of all eighties movies.

Song, by Toad’s Friday Fives radio tracklisting for today:
1. David Bowie – China Girl
2. Meat Loaf – Dead Ringer for Love
3. Bow Wow Wow – Aphrodisiac
4. Sparrow & the Workshop – Devil Song (Live)
5. Erasure – Sometimes
6. Bruce Springsteen – Dancing in the Dark
7. Withered Hand – Cornflake (Fresh Air Session)
8. Mike MacFarlane – Waltz (Fresh Air Session)
9. Simple Minds – Don’t You Forget About Me
10. Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill
11. The Magnets – Ever Fallen in Love (Buzzcocks cover)
12. ABC – Poison Arrow
13. Meursault – Lament for a Teenage Millionaire (Fresh Air Session)

This is called the Tapecast because last night, for the first time in about ten years, I made a mixtape.  Because of the van having a tape player there is actually a point to making these bloody things now, so we got hammered and listened to records all night (again), only this time I recorded them all onto a C-90!

There is something so stupidly fascinating about making tapes in the first place, but there is certainly something surreal in resurrecting what genuinely was dead technology.  It is far from easy to actually buy blank tapes these days.  I ended up recording over a shite old one I had to hand, and there is only a limited supply of ones hanging around which I would be happy to tape over.

It was bloody fun though, so I think it might well happen again!

Oh, and as I am now hosting these podcasts on Mixcloud as well, I have a new streaming widget thingy.  Mixcloud are PRS registered, which means the artists get money when you listen using their doo-dah, which is something we should all think about.  I am not convinced about doubling up the post images so I may have to give a bit more consideration to how to integrate it into the page, but there it is anyway for the time being.

Toadcast #133 – The Tapecast by Song By Toad on Mixcloud

Direct download: Toadcast #133 – The Tapecast

01. The Humms – Blood Sucking Vampire (02.30)
02. We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves – Put Your Blue Dress On (11.19)
03. Ezequiel Ezequiel – Dear Permafrost (15.03)
04. Small Town Boredom – Apologies for Apathy (22.32)
05. Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights (30.59)
06. The Dodos – Walking (35.59)
07. Trips and Falls – I Learned Sunday Morning, on a Wednesday (41.57)
08. Br’er – Whitewash (48.41)
09. Efren – Stay High (53.22)
10. Donny Hue & the Colors – Wild Again (59.22)

We’d already recorded the FOUND Toad Session earlier this same day, and Honeytrap had just recorded their session with Off the Beaten Tracks.  So basically, the sun was baking and we were all absolutely shit-faced.  Consequently, to describe the interview as any sort of conversation as opposed to some kind of deranged, cataclysmic cluster-fuck would be to massively flatter it.  In all honesty, this is a complete and completely splendid mess – enjoy!

Again, all the videos can be seen on the Song, by Toad Vimeo or YouTube pages, and the photo galleries can be perused on our Flickr page.  Dylan from Blueback Hotrod took all the photos, and the set he has posted has a few more pics than the one on the Toad Flickr page, so go and have a look to view the full set.  The whole interview is below, in the podcast file, and after that there are all the session mp3s which you are welcome to pass around as you see fit.  Good luck with the interview; it’s fucking mental.

Toadcast #90 – Honeytrap Toad Session

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Honeytrap – Roslin is a Cylon (Toad Session)

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Honeytrap – Death Before the Silver Screen (Toad Session)

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Honeytrap – Hours With the Masters (Toad Session)

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Honeytrap – Broken Violin (Toad Session)

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Now we have the increasingly chaotic session video first, and then three session videos for Roslin is a Cylon, Death Before the Silver Screen and Hours With the Masters.

01. Honeytrap – Roslin is a Cylon (Toad Session) (8.15)
02. Kate Bush – Army Dreamers (14.08)
03. Jack Charman – Wibbly Wobbly Walk (16.54)
04. Honeytrap – Death Before the Silver Screen (Toad Session) (25.03)
05. The Sequins – Let’s Go Drinking in the Morning (28.43)
06. Dirty Projectors & David Byrne – Knotty Pine (31.39)
07. Honeytrap – Hours With the Masters (Toad Session) (41.29)
08. Beach Boys – Honkin’ Down the Highway (50.22)
09. Prince – Raspberry Beret (52.57)
10. Honeytrap – Broken Violin (Toad Session) (66.39)

I do like Kate Bush.  She’s as mad as a sack of badgers, her music is a pompous, deranged, hippy festival of insanity, but somehow I nearly always enjoy her songs.  This despite the fact that I always find myself laughing at them and wanting to wave my arms in the air in faux-expressive dance.  But somehow, ridiculous as they are, they are always great fun.

A very good friend of mine, who I worked with down South before my Edinburgh days, brought this most splendidly silly song to the office music collection and whenever work got a little too tedious (every other day) on would come Babooshka.  Most of the office would burst into wails of protest and Matt & I would cackle with laughter and start bouncing up and down in our chairs and elaborately shrieking along to the words – or some vague approximation of what we guessed them to be.

How juvenile.

Kate Bush – Babooshka

[Disclaimer: I am actually on holiday at the moment, probably fucking up my brother's wedding by swearing too much in the best man's speech, so it's all a bit minimal at the moment. Normal service will be resumed after we return on about the 25th July]