No, seriously, a cartoon combine harvester, I kid you not.  What sort of ridiculous synaptic misfire is responsible for that image, you ask?  Or at least, I pretend you ask. Well here’s a needless insight into how these Friday Fives come about for you, seeing as I pretended you asked.

These things are all about finding one of those weird tangents your brain shoots off on at times, and embracing it.  So I was having a piss this morning… no, too much information.  There I was this morning, contemplating how efficient I had been with my inbox this week.  I generally have an ‘On Trial’ folder for unreviewed or undecided mp3s or albums and it can get a bit too full.  By the start of last week it was so bad it contained a second folder call ‘New’, containing all the previous week’s zip downloads and so on.

Now, you will have noticed, as did I, that that is a slippery slope, and a potentially infinite set of Russian Dolls full of new music.  So this week I systematically went through all the top level albums and either reviewed or deleted them, so yesterday I was able to unzip all the folders in ‘New’, move them to ‘On Trial’, and nip this little problem in the bud.  I still have an overflowing inbox, but I feel that it is at least back under control again, which is a relief, because I like to give everyone a fair listen rather than miss them because I have too much to listen to.

So I was standing there having a p… no, there I was contemplating this week’s efficiency and I smugly compared it to being like a combine harvester.  Ho ho, I thought to myself, more like a combine harvester wielding a giant axe.  Yeah, a combine harvester with an axe, that’s what I was like.  And the only place I could imagine seeing a combine harvester with an axe was one of those Disney films like Cars or some such, where there would probably be a big bad combine harvester (probably a thug, so not very bright) wielding and axe and using it to threaten our plucky hero, who is probably something wholesome and American like a Dodge or a Chevrolet*.

So, yes, a cartoon combine harvester dreamt up while I was hav… , that is how this week’s five was born.  And you thought it was magic, eh?  Sheesh!  So if that’s how clever the five tend to be, there’s no excuse not to delurk and chip in five frivolous answers to these questions, and then while away the afternoon bickering about them in the comments.

1. Favourite computer animated film (these can probably all be ads or music videos and stuff, why restrict ourselves).
2. Favourite hand-drawn animated film.
3. Favourite live-action version of a cartoon character.
4. Favourite hero from one of those Disney/Pixar new animations.
5. As a kid what was your favourite picture book?

This week’s five songs are from a compilation called 12″ 80s.  No I don’t really get it either, don’t worry, I’ve not suddenly tried to become cooler than I really am.

Stephen Tin Tin Duffy – Kiss Me (Mixe Plural)

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Lloyd Cole – My Bag (Dancing Mix)

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Echo & the Bunnymen – Never Stop (Discotheque)

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ABC – Tears Are Not Enough (12″ Mix)

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Kid Creole & the Coconuts – I’m a Wonderful Thing (Baby) (12″ Mix)

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*As opposed to something which actually fucking works, like a Volkswagen, but those are made in Socialist Yurp, aren’t they.  Which might be why they work in the first place.

I don’t know what the damn hell it is about dressing formally which makes me feel so uncomfortable, but it does.  Presumably just because I’m such a scruffy fucker for the entire rest of my life, those few hours every year I spend in a (vaguely) ironed shirt and pair of proper shoes just seem so completely out of character as to be really quite discomfiting.

Still, at our age everyone we know seems to be either getting married or breeding (and not infrequently both) so the old whistle is going to have to get used to seeing a little bit more action over the next few years, it seems.  The ludicrous thing is that I actually have a couple of really nice suits, but I never get round to wearing the fuckers because it just all seems too much like hard work.

This weekend, people.  In a suit.  Me!  Would you believe it.  I really should thank all these marrying bastards for saving my investment in suits from being complete waste of money it would be if I actually was left to my own devices.

Toadcast #109 – The Suitcast

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01. Joker’s Daughter – The Bouncing Liquorice (02.22)
02. Lloyd Cole – Undressed (05.52)
03. The Besnard Lakes – Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent Pt.1: The Innocent (11.53)
04. Shearwater – God Made Me (18.52)
05. King Post Kitsch – Alaska (24.52)
06. Cold Lake Flight School – Driftwood (30.16)
07. Dan Sartain – Ruby Carol (32.52)
08. The Japanese War Effort – Lanark (38.01)
09. Oreaganomics – Self-assembled Martyr (45.35)
10. The Stands – Some Weekend Night (53.45)

The missus and I got pished and did a podcast! Huzzah! It was a lovely Summery day on Wednesday and we sat out and had a meal in the back garden and then when it got chilly we came inside and did a podcast.

There’s not much of a theme this week because I can get a little bored of them, and from time to time it’s nice to just throw some tracks together that you like. And then get hammered and ramble on about them at interminable length. Sorry about that.

Toadcast #29 – The Summercast

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01. Lemonjelly – Nice Weather For Ducks (01.47)
02. Elbow – Station Approach (10.47)
03. The Eighteenth Day of May – Cold Early Morning (19.07)
04. Aberfeldy – Tom Weir (25.56)
05. Tiny Tim – Tiptoe Through the Tulips (27.47)
06. Uncle Moon – Pepper (34.41)
07. Lo-Fidelity Allstars – On the Pier (41.32)
08. The Boo Radleys – Find the Answer Within (48.17)
09. The Libertines – The Good Old Days (56.41)
10. The Undertones – Teenage Kicks (65.51)
11. The Von Bondies – C’Mon C’Mon (68.11)
12. The Builders & the Butchers – Spanish Death Song (76.41)
13. The Walkmen – The Rat (82.59)
14. Calexico – Corona (93.33)
15. Lloyd Cole – You’re a Big Girl Now (106.46)

I know this is a little infantile but really, I laughed and laughed. So much for sophistication.

This is a collection of some choice Engrish-isms – where people in the Far East butcher the English language even more so than our American cousins. Actually, I better watch what I say about Americans as our dear friend Campfires & Battlefields is getting a little punchy these days, and the last thing Scotland needs is to be reclassified as part of the Axis of Evil. Mind you, anyone crazy enough to invade the Gorbals deserves all they get.

Anyway, fun with Engrish and, surprisingly, I found a couple of songs that seemed rather appropriate.

Robert Wyatt – Foreign Accents
Lloyd Cole – Music in a Foreign Language

There have been some splendid comments on this site recently, from the chatter about what makes a good Christmas, to DC’s frothing rant about airports and the recent sniggering about Bowie and Bing, but this one is quite special and bears repeating for everyone’s enjoyment.

On the post which my brother wrote a while back about the damage that the quest for loudness is doing to the quality of recorded music, which inspired some interesting comments at the time, some genius called snyder has popped up with this little gem which really did make me laugh:

why does it matter how well it’s compressed. i think it still sounds good. maybe ur all just touchy faggets.

This same mentality is the one which led to the American Dream being interpreted as meaning ‘any asshole should be able to become president’ instead of the perhaps less worrying ‘if you are talented enough to be president, then the opportunity will be there for you to realise that potential’. When running against Bush, John Kerry was told to under no circumstances humiliate him for being thick for just this reason.

I love that after hundreds of words worth of intelligent debate this budding savant decided that the entire discussion could be rendered redundant by his own penetrative analysis and misspelled insults. And to a degree he actually does have a point. A recording that is levelled out and then horribly over-amplified does indeed sound perfectly good enough for the radio, for cheap earphones and for most other applications. It is pretty poor, but it is generally good enough.

It exists for the same reason that reality TV exists; for the same reason that The Sun exists; for the same reason that formulaic rom-coms and by-the-numbers action thrillers exist. Because none of us care. Some of us look for genuine skills and genuine achievement and genuine excellence. But sadly most of us, like you snyder, are dull, vapid, shallow, boorish, one-dimensional, mentally limited, turgid, pointless, dull, depressing, mechanical slugs who stumble blindly through our meaningless and trivial lives without once doing anything to make anyone’s lives, let alone the world at large, anything other than a slightly less joyous place for the dubious benefit of our barely noticable presence. You and your banal mediocrity, my friend, are the reason that post exists in the first place. Well done.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – People Just Ain’t No Good
Lloyd Cole – People Just Ain’t No Good

The wench is away and I am here by myself, managing the last few days of our house project. You can imagine what fun that must be, I’m sure.  Still, we move back in this weekend, so it may be a crap couple of days but it’ll all be over soon and then you’ll be relieved of me constantly whinging about it, which will be nice for you.

Given we’re living in a basement flat on a short term let for a month I got quite into the basementy idea with this playlist. I digressed into The Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan and the Band, but mostly it’s music from ’95/6 when I was living in a damp, grotty basement flat in Glasgow with a mate and the girl I was seeing at the time.

I bought stacks of CD singles back then and lost them all when someone broke into the flat.  Thanks to the joys of the internet I’ve been able to track most of them down recently, so you get a few of those, as well as some of the stuff I was listening to at the time.

It’s interesting as a historical document, to me anyway, but I am not sure how well the playlist itself works.  There’s something about this podcast that I’m not sure I like as much as the others, even though I like all the songs on it.  I don’t know, let me know what you think.  Perhaps Tears of Rage, Oasis and the Cranberries aren’t good enough songs to have all on the same podcast.

Toadcast #17 – The Cellarcast

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01. Blur w. Francoise Hardy – To the End (03.33)
02. Oasis – Rocking Chair (10.54)
03. Bob Dylan & the Band – Tears of Rage (17.59)
04. Bob Dylan – Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (Live) (25.54)
05. The Band – Rockin’ Chair (29.17)
06. Lloyd Cole – Unhappy Song (37.59)
07. Hootie & the Blowfish – Sad Caper (48.40)
08. Elvis Costello & the Attractions – Shallow Grave (54.03)
09. Tom Waits – November (55.55)
10. Barenaked Ladies – The Old Apartment (63.26)
11. Ray’s Vast Basement – Black Cotton (68.33)
12. The Bluetones – Colorado Beetle (71.08)
13. The Boo Radleys – Almost Nearly There (79.35)
14. The Cranberries – Joe (87.07)
15. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Ballad of Robert Moore & Betty Coltrane (96.13)

The cover of Lloyd Cole’s Antidepressant is one of my favourite album covers of the year. I just love that painting for some reason. Looking at the cover for The Most Serene Republic’s new record Population I see a record cover that, although there is not much more than a passing visual similarity, feels the same. It really strongly feels like the barest variation in the central idea behind the Lloyd Cole cover, don’t ask me why.

Is that copying? No, it’s the way that art works. People absorb what’s going on around them, assimilate it into their work and move it on a little. People generally don’t know it, but that is actually the definition of innovation: incremental improvements to existing things; although it is generally confused with invention: making shit up out of thin air. Only recently has innovation come to imply anything more than the mundane act of improving upon what is already there.

Often people don’t really know where they get their ideas from. We all absorb so many influences from one moment into the next, and our brains work in such flaky ways, that when inspiration hits us it is virtually impossible to know where it has really come from. At Proper Job I myself am basically paid to innovate, so I am pretty familiar with the process and the act of having new ideas – they tend to just pop in there. If you document your process, as we do with sketch work, then you can often trace the chain of thought back to some extent, but this is unusual, and doesn’t really help you identify exactly where each individual spark originates.

Another example would be these two snippets of violin, one from the start of a Broken Records song Out on the Water, and one from Nick Cave & Warren Ellis’s soundtrack to the bleak but brilliant film The Proposition. When I pointed out to Broken Records that the two refrains were all but identical they were mortified. They’d never even seen the film.

Broken Records – Out on the Water
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis – The Proposition #1

I am certain that, similar as the two sound, this was not a case of copying. Ed over at 17 Seconds posted this recently, which sounds more clear cut. Surely Nirvana had to have pinched the riff from Come as You Are from the Killing Joke song Eighties didn’t they?

Killing Joke – Eighties
Nirvana – Come as You Are

Well honestly, I’d be surprised if they did, actually. I left a comment on Ed’s site saying that it would have been very hard for them to defend in court, as the similarities are strong and obvious. But really, this kind of thing happens all the time. Sometimes people simply do have the same idea.  Other times you hear something somewhere, or see something, and it sticks in your head somewhere in your subconscious. Quite apart from the fact that Killing Joke compassionately dropped the suit after Cobain’s suicide, how can you possibly prove something like this? It is easy for me to imagine that riff dropping out of the back of someone’s head, almost whole, without them having any idea where it came from. Honestly, in the creative process this happens all the time.

I am not saying that protecting people’s genuinely unique thoughts should cease. An artist’s ideas and creations are their lifeblood, even in my job, which is very commercial. But intellectual property law is absolutely throttling innovation. Honestly, it’s insane. People now use patents like buckshot. No matter what they ever intend to do or ever will do or how spurious or idiotic the patent, almost everything in the field of medical device design (my field) is bound and gagged by patents. So many of them are idiotic as well – patenting the idea of using a battery in a hand-held electronic device or something equally stupid. Either the muppets granting these patents don’t really pay any attention to their jobs or, probably more likely, the Western economy is now so frantic about owning thoughts and ideas that pretty much any old nonsense passes muster as patentable.  The fact that the Chinese treat it with utter contempt seems only to have intensified the scramble, oddly.

Now I repeat, I know intellectual property must be protected. It’s what I live off.  But the very concept of intellectual property is supposed to value and encourage innnovation, and in many industries it is simply strangling it.  We, simply, have to issue less patents.  And we definitely have to be far more bloody choosy about what we deem to be a patentable idea, because at the moment some of the IP I have seen is utterly spurious.

The problem is that the commercial process is all about ownership and competition, but for a huge part of its output it relies entirely on the creative process, which is the absolute opposite.  Creativity (and I include pure science in this) relies, in general, on collaboration, sharing of ideas, cooperating, and building slowly from one concept to the next.  Eureka! moments, if not entirely mythical, are marginal.  The two approaches are directly at odds, and the more commercialism encroaches on the creative process the more it kills it.

With lawsuits and all it may get messy occasionally, but in general I look at the sort of movement of ideas in the music industry and I get a little jealous.