Right, welcome to the revamped, retooled and rewritten version of yesterday’s very brief exercise in commercial opportunism:

Yesterday: Milk Maid, PAWS & Plastic Animals at Henry’s Cellar Bar – Fiver in, and it was fucking awesome!

I have to confess, I was mildly terrified about putting on a gig in Edinburgh on a Monday night, particularly at pretty short notice, but it was really busy and I had an absolute blast.

It turns out Mrs. Toad loves PAWS.  I told her she would!

Anyhow, we now have the whole rest of the week to deal with, and as you have possibly deduced from the graphic I will be engaging in a bare minimum of fun – until Friday, that is.

Wednesday 15th June 2011: Wu Lyf at Cabaret Voltaire.

This has got to be the trendiest gig in Edinburgh for fucking ages.  Wu Lyf are one of these bands who were snapped up by a posh label before they were out of their proverbial musical nappies, or at least that’s kind of the impression I get (with, admittedly, precisely zero basis in actual research). On that basis alone this could make for an interesting night.

Friday 17th June 2011: Meursault, Inspector Tapehead & Beerjacket at The Caves.

Meursault’s already bulging tour bus will swell to nine occupants for this gig, I believe, making them even more unwieldy than a stampede of startled cows. A venue as striking as The Caves, however, is probably the best possible place for that kind of grandiosity and I am really looking forward to seeing them at full tilt.  Due to a series of increasingly annoying coincidences I haven’t seen Inspector Tapehead for a good while now, so I am really looking forward to that, as well as my first chance to see Beerjacket.  Tickets can still be bought in advance, either from here or from Avalanche Records.

Meursault – Flittin’

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Friday 17th June 2011: Edinburgh School for the Deaf album launch at Sneaky Pete’s.

If only some arse hadn’t put Meursault, Tapeheads and Beerjacket on just round the corner I would most certainly be here on Friday.  As it is I will try and dodge along the street and catch as much of their set as I can while Inspector Tapehead and Meursault change over.  I don’t, admittedly, know ESftD’s music all that deeply but what I have seen, particularly live, has been intense, loud, epic, rough as tits and absolutely excellent.

Edinburgh School for the Deaf – 11 Kinds of Loneliness

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Saturday 18th June 2011: ‘Armelloday’ – Armellodie Records all-dayer at Avalanche Records.

A series of in-stores arranged by Glasgow’s really rather brilliant Armellodie Records, with the running order as follows: Cuddly Shark, 2pm; Le Reno Amps, 2.30pm; Something Beginning With L, 3pm; The Scottish Enlightenment @ 3.30pm.

The Scottish Enlightenment – The Universe is Drifting Apart (Toad Session)

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Saturday 18th June 2011: The Douglas Firs, Something Beginning With L & Plastic Animals at Sneaky Pete’s.

Plastic Animals were excellent last night, and the new Douglas Firs album really is splendid, so this one is shaping up to be an excellent late-night bevvying follow-up to the Armelloday event at Avalanche during the afternoon.

The Douglas Firs – Grow Old and Go Home

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For anyone wishing to sneak back and forth between the Edinburgh School for the Deaf gig and the Toad one at the Caves, I am roughly expecting stage times to be along these lines: Beerjacket 8pm-8:30pm, Inspector Tapehead 8:45-9:15 and Meursault 9:30-10pm, and apparently Edinburgh School for the Deaf are onstage at about 9pm, although that is just something I heard down the pub so don’t hold me to it.

Also, bear in mind that Meursault and Inspector Tapehead don’t have the simplest of all setups, so fifteen minutes changeover time might be really quite optimistic.

If you’re reading this for tips, I’m afraid you’ve already missed the best gig in Edinburgh this week: Yo La Tengo at the Queen’s Hall, tonight.  Sorry about that.

There’s not much else, unfortunately, although Sneaky’s have Talons, Lady North and Jackie Treehorn on Wednesday, followed by Thomas Tantrum, New Fiction and Acrylic iQon the following day. Both of those look pretty interesting, but I can’t honestly claim to know much about any of the bands.

We also have a couple of Ides of Toad gigs next week, starting with Fatcat’s new signings Milk Maid on Monday 13th June at Henry’s Cellar Bar, supported by the awesome PAWS and new Edinburgh band Plastic Animals.  Then on Friday 17th June we have Meursault and Inspector Tapehead at The Caves.  Tickets for both of these can be found here, or at Avalanche down on the Grassmarket.

As for myself, this week I will be heading to GoNorth in Inverness. I’ll be participating in a couple of seminars, in case the shit I talk on Song, by Toad isn’t enough for you, so it would be nice if you fancied swinging by to say hello.

On Wednesday we have the Fringe events, where I’ll be on a panel on starting your own record label, alongside Jen from Euphonios and Lloyd from Olive Grove Records.  So if you want the kind of runaway global success we’ve achieved then I can tell you how to get it.

On Wednesday I am also involved in some one-to-one mentoring sessions, so if you want to sit down and go through the stages of my Guide to Self-Releasing an Album, or indeed talk about anything else, then send an email to jennifer@hailmusic.com.

On Thursday 9th there is the Scottish Music Bloggers Showcase night at a place called Flames. Jason, Lloyd and I looked through the successful applicants (I wasn’t part of that process, just picking the showcase once the shortlist had been made, so if you aren’t on there and I like your music I am denying all responsibility) and chose Indian Red Lopez, LightGuides, PAWS and Kid Canaveral.

And finally I’m also on the Music Blog panel on Friday at 2pm, talking to Lloyd again, who’ll be wearing his Peenko hat this time, Jason from The Pop Cop and John Robb about the effect of music blogging on the industry, and how best to get through to them if you are trying to promote your music.

So there you go – a busy fucking week.  If the posting schedule gets a little erratic you’ll know why, but I’ll try and keep things ticking over properly while I’m up North.

Well there’s no real way of stitching this little lot together coherently, so I suppose a big old pile of stuff in no sensible order is the only real way to do it.

Edinburgh School for the Deaf have a new single out. It’s digital download only, so I can’t very well put it up here for you, but you can expect a song in this week’s podcast, so keep an eye out there.  For those disinclined to wait, you can simply pop over here and buy a copy from Bubblegum Records.

It’s a two-song business, with Orpheus Ascending being more acoustic and pretty, and their trademark (alright, alright, they’re a bit new to have a ‘trademark’ yet, sorry) fuzzy guitars very much in evidence on its sister track Orpheus Descending.

Horsecollar have a Kickstarter project to make a 7″ from the two songs on their Bandcamp page.  I am really only encouraging you to contribute to this because I personally want one.  The jauntiness of Christopher in particular deserves to be immortalised in this manner, so get on with it – you can contribute here.

There is a Lau vs Adem EP approaching, and it looks extremely interesting.  Around the time Silver Columns first emerged I had the chance to interview Adem (and Johnny of course) and he came across as a really nice, really thoughtful guy, so I am really looking forward to hearing more from this.

As it is I have a brief promotional video and a completely fucking different remix (see this week’s podcast) to share with you.  I’ll confess to knowing very little about Lau, unfortunately, but then again, this is why this kind of collaboration is so interesting, because it takes you from one artist you know to exploring another you might not.

Finally, I have a couple more gigs to announce. Fatcat Records’ recent signing Milk Maid have agreed to play a show on Monday 13th June, supported by two of Scotland’s most promising new bands: Glasgow’s PAWS and Plastic Animals from Edinburgh (tickets here). In July these two bands will be joined by the awesome Scottish Enlightenment in a sort of Toad Rapture lineup to celebrate the release of Plastic Animals’ debut EP.  I am really looking forward to both of these gigs.

Milk Maid – Such Fun

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PAWS – Ariel

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Plastic Animals – Test

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I really am running out of stupid names for these fucking things.  I’m sure I’m going to end up just numbering them in future, but for now you’re going to have to put up with the bloody silly names I’m afraid.

In my effort to squeeze eleven songs into an hour I actually don’t ramble very much on this one, only to find out that the podcast ends up being much less than the usual hour and a bit, for a change.  Do I really talk so fucking much the rest of the time?

Anyhow, this is a fucking ace podcast of new music.  I don’t generally pay too much attention to how cool (or otherwise) these things might be, but I reckon any haircut merchants out there might rather enjoy this one.  For the rest of you, those without Haircuts with a capital haitch, well, just get on as best you can.  Let’s face it, if I love it all, it can’t really be all that cutting edge, can it.

Direct download: Toadcast #164 – The Roadcast

01. FOUND – Machine Age Dancing (00.25)
02. Girls Names – Seánce on a Wet Afternoon (07.00)
03. Sonny & the Sandwitches – A. Grassley – Throw My Ashes From This Pier When I Die (12.19)
04. The Honorable Worm – Wouldn’t Mind Dying (14.46)
05. Li’l Daggers – Ya Tu Sabe (22.54)
06. The Louche FC – Back Bedroom Casualty (29.27)
07. Milk Maid – Such Fun (33.24)
08. Brown Brogues – Treet U Beta (35.56)
09. The Honey Pies – Hair of the Dog (41.07)
10. Zed Penguin – This Town (46.49)
11. Manners – Knives (56.44)

I may sound like I work for the BBC, but if anyone asks me, I do tend to tell them that I am not really all that English.  My mum was born and raised in Moss Side though, which is one of the scummier parts of Manchester, and I lived in the city myself for a year apiece at the ages of seventeen and twenty-four, so if I am actually from anywhere in England in any meaningful sense, then it is probably Manchester.

I’ve always harboured a sort of simmering resentment for the place though, in that unfair way you do when your life is shit for all sorts of reasons and it ends up rather unreasonable reflecting on where you are living at the time.  I’ve been through this all before on the Manchester Podcast, but I’ll rehash it here quickly, just to explain myself a little.

The first time around was my first year of university.  Compared to everyone around me in Vienna and Singapore, where I was raised, I was really quite English.  I liked English and American music, I supported Manchester United and I visited England quite regularly to see my family in Manchester.  When I actually moved to England for the first time, however, I found it didn’t really work like that, that I wasn’t very English at all, and promptly endured a year of pretty severe culture shock.

The second time around I had been distracted for a year after graduation by accidentally becoming a restaurant manager, had been offered a design internship in Milan, only for that to fall through and for me to find myself stranded in Manchester again, flat broke, working in a pub and having a very hard time of getting the job for which my degree had allegedly prepared me.  This led to a few too many conversation which went roughly like this:

“What do you do for a job then?”
[I look around myself in a confused manner, as if the fact that I am standing behind a bar, pouring drinks and then demanding money in exchange for those drinks should make the answer to that question somewhat obvious.]
“I’m a barman.”
“No, I mean as a real job.”
“I am a bar man.”
“But surely you’re far too well-spoken and intelligent to be just a barman!”
“Well, you’d think.”

It was shit, but I did listen to some fine music while I was there.  Here are a couple of songs, one from the first spell and one from the second:

James – One of the Three (buy here)

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Yo La Tengo – Last Days of Disco (buy here)

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Anyhow, after my shite experiences living there have tainted my memories of Manchester for the last seventeen years, things have slowly started to change.  A few years ago I discovered Red Deer Club and Humble Soul, two of my favourite independent record labels in the UK.  Why, I am not sure, but for the last year or two I have just been bumping into one cool Manchester music enterprise after another, and suddenly I find my negative associations with the place starting to evaporate.

Firstly, I came across Cloud Sounds, now my favourite podcast, and the blogs Folly of Youth, A New Band a Day and Pigeon Post.  As well as being good in their own right, all of these lovely people have been incredibly supportive of what we’re up to here as well.

Secondly, Ruth from Fat Northerner kindly invited me to take part in two Unconvention events, one in Macclesfield, where my dear friend Tom Smith is from, and one in Salford, where United and stabbings are from.  Around the same time I went to last year’s In the City as well, so I ended up spending a fair bit of time in Manchester last year and honestly, I had a blast.

So with my good relationship with the city almost entirely restored, I now also seem to be finding all sorts of interesting music stuff happening there too, and have ordered a pile of vinyl from small labels in Manchester recently.

The above picture is the vinyl starter pack from Sways Records, which just dropped through my letterbox this morning, and I can’t wait to get stuck into it tonight.  I bought this for the debut single by The Louche FC, which can be heard below.  I first heard these guys on a Cloud Sounds podcast, and am trying to get them up to Edinburgh for a live show sometime soon.

The Louche F.C – Motorcycle Au Pair Boy by sways

I’ve also just received Suffering Jukebox singles from Milk Maid and Manchester’s current A&R darlings Brown Brogues, and have been playing them loads recently.  Brown Brogues are playing SXSW this year, and because they make a right old racket I might actually be able to persuade Mrs. Toad to go and see them.

I Just Don’t Know by brown brogues

Also, Static Caravan sent me through a whole pile of awesome 7″ aural pleasure recently as well – help yourself here.  I found them by searching out the debut single by The Maladies of Bellafontaine, and ended up with a pile of other records as well.

And finally, Debt Records is the home to the likes of Red Tides (whose lead singer – I think – is absolutely lovely – I accidentally bumped into her upstairs at Fuel Cafe in Withington, while she was doing some embroidery or something, if I remember – this whole thing has been bit random) and Louis Barabbas & the Bedlam Six who are, of course, playing this week’s Ides of Toad gig at Henry’s.  Debt Records’ ethos is to embrace live performance, focussing on good gigs in interesting places, as a way of reacting to an environment where in order to become popular recorded music is becoming more and more boring.

So apart from all these interesting projects which I have happened across in the last year or so, what I’ve found really interesting has been the self-image of Manchester’s music scene.  A certain friend of mind has dismissed it as being ‘full of fucking sneering hipsters’, and given the city itself reminds me heavily of Glasgow, I think I always thought of Manchester as fashionable hipster haven.

But when I told one of my friends there that Edinburgh is good to work in because all the ambitious fashion whores tend to fuck off to Glasgow sharpish, which makes it hard to make progress here, but at least tends to mean that the people who remain are interesting and stubborn and not focussed on celebrity or stardom, their response was ‘Oh right, a bit like Manchester is with London then?’

And I suppose I’d never thought of it that way before. I’d always thought of Manchester as somewhere cool, somewhere to kind of envy, as a lot of other Edinburgh people think of Glasgow I suppose.  I do forget that no matter how much you achieve, especially in something as status-orientated as the music industry, there is always someone more successful to cast envious glances towards.  So next time we Edinburghers whinge about Glasgow, maybe we should just stop whining and be grateful we aren’t as isolated as Aberdeen.