It’s teh next Great Depreshun oh noes!  Or maybe we’re just moaning like a bunch of fucking girls.  After the doom and gloom in the papers it seems time to actually compare the current financial tantrum to the Great Depression and tell anyone who makes that comparison to fuck right off and stop being so self-indulgent.

It’s even ridiculous when compared to the rough times in the fucking eighties when Margaret Thatcher eviscerated everywhere in England outside the M25.  She destroyed the country.  Annihilating nationalised industries which were no longer economic makes sense, but completely destroying the industries that keep a town alive at the same time as you destroy the support networks provided by the state and also refusing to do anything to encourage industries to grow that might replace the thousands of jobs you have just made vanish is just slash and burn social policy.

There may be a little too much opinionated political opinion and general drunken rambling between myself and my darling girl Mrs. Toad, but erm, well, fuck it you’re own your own.  Listen if you think you can face it.  But you must understand, we were vewy bewwwy drnk.

Toadcast #44 – The Whingecast

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01. Woody Guthrie – Do Re Mi (04.20)
02. Ray’s Vast Basement – Black Cotton (12.52)
03. The Specials – Ghost Town (15.31)
04. The Clash – Career Opportunities (25.33)
05. Billy Bragg – To Have and to Have Not (36.04)
06. Jane’s Addiction – Been Caught Stealing (36.03)
07. 4 or 5 Magicians – Forever on the Edge (39.25)
08. The Men They Couldn’t Hang – The Ghosts of Cable Street (52.29)
09. The Willard Grant Conspiracy – Evening Mass (62.44)
10. Phil Ochs – No Christmas in Kentucky (68.29)

Final score: Bottles of wine: 5.  Bottles of beer: 3.  Night night bitches.

It’s hardly surprising that I find myself saying that Google have turned their old motto, Don’t Be Evil, into something of a sad parody, rather than the idealistic mission it once used to be. It’s also a little sad that what prompts me to write is not their spineless compliance with internet censorship in China, but something a little closer to home.

Ed, writer of 17 Seconds, is the latest to fall foul of Google’s draconian, utterly corrupt and morally bankrupt policies towards copyright. A year or so ago Ed wrote an in-depth interview with Glasvegas, back when the band were shopping about a few rough demos, barely more than a whisper on the lips of a few of us up here in Scotland. Yesterday Google deleted that interview from his blog. The whole thing, without permission, without dialogue, without warning: they just deleted it and told him it was gone.

The reason they gave was that it had been the subject of a DMCA complaint from Columbia Records, presumably on the basis that the interview write up contained links to long-since removed mp3 files of Glasvegas early demo recordings of songs now on their debut album. Despite the contemptuous, disgusting nature what both Columbia and Google have done, I can’t even feel angry about this; just depressed. But this is wrong in so many ways it’s difficult to know where to start.

First and foremost, none of you should ever pay for a Columbia product ever again. Fuck them. If you feel you can’t live without their music then just download the bastard stuff illegally, better yet just live without it, but under no circumstances give these chiselling vipers a cent of your money ever again. Could someone who knows more about this correct me if I am wrong, but there is to my mind no way whatsoever that they could own the rights to those demos, which were recorded and circulated for free long before they were ever involved with the band. Read the rest of this entry »

Right, given Dadrock seems to be the enduring theme of the moment, let’s poke a little further shall we? Actually, Dadrock in our house was pretty fucking cool. My Dad introduced me to the Waterboys, the Pogues, the Men They Couldn’t Hang, as well as the stuff he grew up with: Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, The Band and various other classics. Mum wasn’t bad either: Depeche Mode, Bowie, the Stones and The Pet Shop Boys, as well as some splendidly camp pop such as ABC, Erasure, Kate Bush, Elton John (just the early stuff, calm down) and things like that.

There were some moments of genuine shame in there too, to be fair. Who knows, we may look back on the Decemberists with derision for their pretension and intricacy, so you can never entirely tell which music will and won’t age with dignity.

I still make my parents a lot of compilation CDs, even though I don’t make them for myself anymore. In fact, ever since I left home in 1993 I’ve been regularly returning with a little pile of pre-filtered new music for them. I try and steer clear of the Libertines and the Von Bondies, but maybe that’s silly because you know who introduced me to the Dead Kennedys? Yup, my folks.

Having heaped them with praise, it must be confessed that after many years of cool, my Mum did rather embarrassingly lapse into a penchant for the Lighthouse Family. Or, in the recent traditions of this site, the Fucking Lighthouse Fucking Family. Or that Italian clown Eros Ramazotti. Dad has remained pretty steady, to credit the old bastard, but he is still the man who introduced me to Billy Joel, so some responsibility does need to be taken there, irrespective of the quality of Captain Jack and Piano Man.

So if you’re lurking, lurk no more. Now is the time to come out of the woodwork and alternately shame and praise your family. Come on, they can’t be all bad.

1. Your Mum’s most shameful crime against music.
2. The coolest thing your Mum listens to.
3. Your Dad’s worst moment of musical shame.
4. Dad’s moment of musical triumph.
5. The most shameful musical thing that you and your folks have in common.

David Bowie – Let’s Dance
The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Scarlet Ribbons
Depeche Mode – People Are People
Bob Dylan – Drifter’s Escape
Pet Shop Boys – What Have I Done to Deserve This

I’ve just recently heard a couple of versions of an old folk song called Barrett’s Privateers, and neither quite captured my imagination.  Two groups I know – The Men They Couldn’t Hang, whom I love, and the now defunct Australian band Weddings, Parties, Anything, whom I quite like – have covered the song, and presumably there are countless more.  Neither recording really captures the experience I once had hearing it live, and both are live recordings themselves.

The first time I actually heard the song was when The Men They Couldn’t Hang performed it at King Tut’s in Glasgow back in about 1995.  They, as is generally the way, sung it entirely unaccompanied (acapella just sounds a bit gay, I can’t call it that) and it was absolutely spine-tingling.

The song itself was written by Canadian Stan Rogers back in the 70s and tells a pretty convincing tale of a young man lured away to the sea and piracy, only to end up broken and crippled at the age of twenty-two after a brief and disastrous expedition to plunder American trading vessels in the Carribean.  The venom with which the Men They Couldn’t Hang snarled it out brought the bitterness of the song vivdily to life in a way, I suppose, that a studio recording would find it nigh on impossible to capture.

Their live recording isn’t bad, it must be said, but hearing it live was something else.  Have a listen and see if you can quite imagine what I mean:

The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Barrett’s Privateers
Weddings, Parties, Anything – Barrett’s Privateers

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to post on Remembrance Sunday, but here are some things that spring to mind.

A friend of mine was sitting on a train once and a bloke marched into the carriage and stabbed the lad sat across the aisle from him with a kitchen knife.  As he stared at the blade embedded in his chest all that the fellow could think to say was “Don’t kill me mate.  I’ve got a life.”  He died moments later.  “If he’d been left-handed,” my friend said, “that would have been me.”

A former boss of mine is massively religious, in the borderline learning difficulties sort of way.  He could never understand my view of the world.  “Yes but are you saying that your love for Kate doesn’t mean anything?”  This never struck me as a problem.  In a universal sense my love for the people around me means nothing, and neither does yours.  As a friend of mine so aptly put it once: “Do you think your stubbed toe means anything to anyone either?  No, but that doesn’t mean it means any less to you at the time.”

Nowadays everyone seems so obsessed with being a Person of Significance.  Celebrity is lauded for possessing no other merit than fame.  Anyone who dies in a tragic manner was a special person and every death in that pointless shitfest in Iraq is a hero.  Why does our human vanity fear our own meaninglessness so much?  The fact that my life has no global significance does not make it mean any less to me and my loved ones.

The fact that people killed in wars are for the most part basically just ordinary, mediocre people does not make their passing less tragic.  Normal lives with normal loved ones that could have happily pottered along for years.  Lots of hands to hold and meals to share and ordinary, boring everyday things to do with people you love.  It’s the mundanity of death that actually moves me the most.

“Don’t kill me mate.  I’ve got a life.”

The Men They Couldn’t Hang – The Green Fields of France

Anyone at all surprised? No, thought not.  While you sit, either in your office skiving off work or in your dark basements wanking yourselves blind to internet porn, I am down somewhere in the South-ish of England at the End of the Road Festival, enjoying tunes all by myself.  All by myself?  Well yes, for the scurrilous Mrs. Toad has fled to Australia on the work shilling and will not be accompanying me, so I am going solo.  I have an interview or two lined up, which should be nice, and I am planning to share a pint with a certain Growling Gentleman, so I will be entertained, but I guess for the most part I shall be enjoying my own company.

This is not, contrary to appearances, a plea for sympathy.  Mrs. Toad and I spent the first two and a half years of our relationship 400 miles apart so, although we are less used to it these days, this is not something that we will find traumatic.  In fact it’s quite pleasant really, pottering about by yourself in peace, reading books and going to whatever things catch your fancy.  And there’s always the fact that I am sure the Growls will not necessarily want a drunken lush hanging around them all weekend and swearing at their newborn to consider.

The really stupid thing I was alluding to is the fact that I have failed to take Monday off work.  I am a retard.  The last gig I want to see at EotR is The Twilight Sad who are playing until 1.45am on Monday, with DJs carrying on until three.  Somewhere near Salisbury.  I then have to be at work in Edinburgh by nine, and we are hugely busy on a very important project and it is way too late to ask for more time off, and it is at least a seven hour drive even if done irresponsibly fast.  This has not been well planned really, has it.

Eels – Woman Driving, Man Sleeping
The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Map of Morocco
Boyz II Men – End of the Road Haha – oh yes I have – take that you bastards!

My short companion and myself are in London for the weekend, so there will be a paucity of posting until perhaps Sunday evening or some time on Monday.

I understand how devastating this will be for you all, but such is life. I can’t spend all my time keeping you muppets entertained you know. Bugger off and do something a little more wholesome like surf internet porn or get drunk and shag someone you shouldn’t.  Face it, I’m nothing like as diligent as a certain Villain we all know and love.

I’ll be going to see Andrew Bird at the Scala while I’m down, so there’ll be a review of that one to look forward to in the near future. Having read how much the lovely Marcy enjoyed it, I am positively twitchy with anticipation for this one.

I miss my old London pals actually. I lived there for about three years and loved the place. People in Edinburgh have this sort of insecure reflex whereby they have to instantly assert London’s inferiority, long and loud, as soon as you mention not having hated the place. I think this comes from the fact that quite a few folk from here move down to London at some point (both places have huge financial industries, for example), miss the more laid back pace of life and move back up quite quickly. Generally, they seem nervous that this is seen as some kind of cop out and that people will think less of them for it, particularly someone who loves London, like myself. It’s weird though. Try saying you love London around Edinburgh people, they really don’t like it.

I don’t personally care, myself. I like both cities, they are in no way comparable and I am quite happy to like both for different reasons. So, a few days meeting up with old pals, and I’ll be back with you all early next week. And by way of apology, lots and lots of songs with this one.

Calexico – Guns of Brixton
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Grief Came Riding[
The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Blackfriars Bridge
The Pogues – The Dark Streets of London
Cinerama – London
Saint Etienne – London Belongs to Me
Frank Turner – The Ladies of London Town

I am not a historian (yes, I know it’s ‘an’ historian but it really does sound pretentious) or a patriot, so I am not going to go on about this, but there are two things that bug the living shit out of me when wars are mentioned, and World Wars in particular. I think these points need to be made because they address the two most irritating misconceptions I tend to find people have about the World Wars, in particular WW2. The songs are really, really fitting too so please don’t just pop them on. Actually listen.

1: Surrender Monkeys

I hear this said about the French all the time by both Brits and Americans and it really annoys me. Germany invaded and overran France in WW2 and their advance ground to a halt there in WW1. In fact in WW1 the extent of the slaughter was unprecedented in the world, and the battles in Northern France are legendary for their brutality and loss of life.

We have a house in France, and in every village there is a war memorial. On every war memorial is a list of names. The list is so long, for both world wars, that it beggars belief the town could have been even half that big in the first place. In most cases families lose numerous men. Over the course of both wars which were, let’s not forget, only twenty years apart, many families suffered double figure losses, and this is in every single tiny little village for miles and miles around.

The UK and the US have no idea what it is like to resist an actual invading army – the Spanish Armada in 1588 is, I believe, the last time Britain has come even close – so we quite simply have no right to judge what we do not understand. Can you imagine German officers in your home town? Can you imagine almost every single man between the age of about 17 and 45 being killed defending his home – literally too, none of this ‘defending our country against Tourism’ bullshit? No you bloody can’t, so if you want to talk Surrender Monkeys do it well the fuck out of my earshot because you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

Leonard Cohen – The Partisan Lyrics (gut-wrenching)
The Men They Couldn’t Hang – The Green Fields of France Lyrics

2: We saved your goddam asses in the Second World War

You think so do you? Well, I am not about to deny that the Americans played a hugely important role in the Second World War because that would be stupid. But you want to know who ‘saved everyone’s asses’? Well, do you remember what happened to the Grande Armee de la Republique in 1812? What happened to the Germans in the First World War? The Nazis in WW2? I’ll tell you what, they all stupidly invaded Russia and their armies were slowly ground into submission in one long, horrific war of attrition after another.

How many Americans died in WW2? About half a million. British? Roughly the same. It sounds a lot doesn’t it. Well it’s peanuts – the Greeks lost a similar number. If you want to know who ‘saved our asses’ in WW2 consider that current estimates put Russian casualties of that war at about 26 million, split roughly in half between civilian and military deaths. Hitler was stupid enough to invade Russia before he’d polished off Britain and his army was ground down in one of the hardest, bitterest and most miserable campaigns imaginable. Over a third of all deaths in the Second World War were Russians. That’s who saved our asses in WW2.*

Funnily enough, the second on the casualty list? China, with 20 million, roughly 16 million of whom were civillians. Browsing that list I also notice that the Poles lost 20% of their population. Russia lost 13.4%. America lost 0.32% and Britain less than 1%. Sobering, isn’t it.

Billy Bragg – Think Again Lyrics
The Waterboys – Red Army Blues Lyrics

*Dear proper historians – no, I am not claiming it was that simple, just making a single, isolated point. And yes, I do know there was a war in the Pacific as well, but that’s a whole different story.

Red Six. Who was he? What was his like motivation, hm? Who really cares? Well today Song, by Toad cares. Today it is all about Red Six, or that poor anonymous Lieutenant in Star Trek – the one you can be absolutely certain isn’t going to survive the episode. Does anyone else remember Porkins from Star Wars with such affection as Mr Toad? This haven for losers, wastrels and ne’erdowells embraces Porkins, the only fat, bearded star fighter pilot in the universe, and today we dedicate some tunes to him. Or, at least, to his sort: the selfless, silent assistant, the unnamed extra, someone as crucial as, but far less celebrated than, Chewbacca the Wookie, someone without whose presence an album would never be as good as it is and who needs to be mentioned by me because no-one else is going to give the little trooper a pat on the back.

In other words, today at Song, by Toad, we will be celebrating the little man whose contribution to a song makes the music what it is. I don’t mean someone like Joby Talbot of The Divine Comedy, who is clearly crucial to Neil Hannon, because I just don’t know enough about music to directly discern his contribution. I’m talking about people like Bobby Valentino (who? I hear you ask) who played fiddle for The Men They Couldn’t Hang and never gets a mention. How about Steve Wickham – who was he? Well he was the brilliant fiddle player on Fisherman’s Blues, The Waterboys’ phenomenal late 80s folk explosion. He is relatively well known and respected in Ireland, incidentally, but not in indie-pop world, despite his contribution to one of the all time great folk-pop albums. And then there is Warren Ellis, who also plays the fiddle, this time for Nick Cave. And Dave Woodhead, who doesn’t play the fiddle, but the trumpet. Who was Dave Woodhead I hear you ask? Well you’ll find out.

Bobby Valentino – Shirt of Blue
Steve Wickham – We Will Not Be Lovers
Warren Ellis – The Willow Garden
Dave Woodhead – The Saturday Boy

More seriously, I always wonder how much of a contribution these guys actually make. Warren Ellis is the most well known of the bunch and as a bona fide Bad Seed I assume he is pretty central to the group, but what about the other guys. Billy Bragg had a few absolutely iconic trumpet solos in his early songs, so how did it work? Did he whistle it first, like he does at his gigs, and Dave Woodhead then played it? Or did Dave write the whole thing – in which case these lads are far more important than they ever get given credit for.

And as for the bloke who wrote Porkins’ Wikipedia entry, well firstly how did you manage to garner quite so much information from two or three seconds of film, and secondly, YOU SAD FUCK. Christ, imagine having that level of detailed knowledge about a minor character in fucking Star Wars, don’t you have any friends to spend your time with for Christ’s sake? Fuck me, that’s almost as sad as knowing the name of the bloke who played the fiddle for The Men They Couldn’t Hang. Eh? Oh.