The reason this is called the Nukecast is because I am pretty irritated by the exaggeration of just how horrible it is to be alive in 2011.  2011 is a total piece of piss.  It’s easy, unthreatening and perfectly comfortable, and the idea that the modern world is in any way topsy-turvy is just plain silly.

I am not all that old, but even the eighties, when I was a kid, were far rougher than this.  There was actual genuine menace, the world might just have been about to end in a nuclear fireball, and no-one had anything you could honestly call a proper job.

So I complain about this for about an hour, while Mrs. Toad calls me an idiot.  Welcome to the drunken Toadcasts.  Again.

Direct download: Toadcast #179 – The Nukecast

01. Tom Lehrer – Who’s Next (00.08)
02. Billy Bragg – Think Again (10.34)
03. Milk Maid – Girl (21.07)
04. Odonis Odonis – Mr. Smith (24.06)
05. Sonny & the Sunsets – I Wanna Do It (31.09)
06. Phil Ochs – Talking Cuban Crisis (41.19)
07. Crystal Swells – Dead Awake (47.43)
08. Male Bonding – Bones (52.07)
09. M.J. Hibbett & the Validators – The Fight for History (63.10)
10. Tom Lehrer – So Long, Mom (72.33)

I happened across that fascinating little video this week sometime, and it’s a really odd mixture of hypnotic, fascinating and really quite unsettling.

The video is simply a plot of nuclear explosions over time, and despite being ten minutes in length, is nevertheless really difficult to turn away from.  What’s particularly disturbing is watching how a flurry of test detonations in any one country seems to trigger a retaliatory fit of posturing in another.

It’s also kind of chilling to watch the increases in activity triggered by events like the Cuban Missile Crisis.  It’s easy to think now that they’d never have really done it, but human beings are not particularly good at measuring self-interest when they decide that someone needs to be taught a lesson.  In fact being willing to inflict harm on yourself just to punish someone else with sufficient force is a notable quirk of how collective morality is maintained by social animals. So umm… yes, it was probably closer than we allow ourselves to think from the safe distance of 2011.

Human beings seem to have particularly laughable memories when it comes to this sort of thing actually.  I was spectacularly annoyed by all the financial analysts proclaiming the worst recession since the Great Depression, when the housing and credit markets collapsed a few years back.  Fuck, were none of these cunts alive during the eighties?

I know we remember the eighties as being full of comical haircuts, synth pop and twats from ‘The City’* making shitloads of money, but it was also the decade which spawned the Miners’ Strikes, the Poll Tax Riots (just) and Boys From the Black Stuff.

And even as a kid I remember the threat of nuclear annihilation feeling very, very real.  All this chat about the world not being a safe place now because of the ever-present terrorist threat is total bollocks.  The IRA were extremely active during the eighties, and they’ve killed more people than fucking Al Qaeda (thanks America, sucks when people harbour terrorists, doesn’t it), but beyond that we all lived with that constant feeling of low-level dread that at some point the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. might actual just melt humanity clean off the face of the fucking planet.

So umm, how about some fun, after that little rant then.

1. Can you think of a decent song about nuclear armageddon?
2. Name someone nowadays you would least trust with the Big Red Button.
3. Was there anything good about the Cold War?
4. Where were you when the Wall came down?
5. Who seems most likely to go fucking mental and nuke someone in the current political landscape?

M.J. Hibbett and the Validators – The Fight for History

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

 

Phil Ochs – Talking Cuban Crisis

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Tom Lehrer – We Will All Go Together When We Go

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Billy Bragg – Think Again (Dick Gaughan Cover)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Piranhas – Tom Hark

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

*The City?  That’s lovely, which one?

Fucking hell, it’s been battering it down for the last few days – ‘torrent’ial, see, nothing to do with the naughty internets!  We’ve had snow in the morning and pishing rain for the rest of the day – fucking rotten.  Combine this with our worryingly leaky roof and honestly, it’s a bit of a surprise I am not in a worse mood.

As it is, however, I feel relatively chirpy.  There is footie tonight, and I will sit up late with some wine and make mixtapes for… well, for no obvious reason whatsoever I have to confess, apart from the fact that I am getting fed up of being embarrassed by the music taste of my nineteen-year-old self whenever I randomly select a tape to play in the van.  Also, making tapes is a nice way to listen to vinyl singles which might otherwise be neglected.

Direct download: Toadcast #165 – The Torrentcast

01. David Thomas Broughton – Ain’t Got No Sole (00.29)
02. Lab Coast – Really Realise (06.54)
03. M.J. Hibbett & the Validators – The Gay Train (17.49)
04. Bonnie Prince Billy & the Cairo Gang – Island Brothers (24.19)
05. Bob Dylan & the Rolling Thunder Revue – Romance in Durango (29.12)
06. Dolfish – Your Love is Bummin’ Me Out (35.56)
07. Daniel Knox – Ghost Song (39.59)
08. The Honorable Worm – Behind the invisible hedges, into the unimaginable fields… (43.29)
09. Elbow – Lippy Kids (52.37)
10. Honeydrum – Those Babes (63.17)

Maybe it’s because the weekend seems to be within reach, so the idea of slightly overdoing it on Thursday doesn’t seem so bad. Maybe it’s because you don’t get the chance to sleep it off like you do on Saturday or Sunday. Or maybe it’s because feeling a bit shit seems so much worse when you have a deadline and a hell of a lot to accomplish in order to meet it. That, in fact, is probably it.

Mrs. Toad made cheesecake yesterday. Considering that she is the World’s Least Domesticated Woman (TM) this is something of a turn up for the books. Mind, it was for something work related (although I got one out of it myself – mwah hah haaa!) so this morning she was swearing at it and wondering aloud why the fuck she’d bothered when she could have just bought something. It was, after all, just for work.

I love cooking, actually, but I never bake. Mrs. Toad does, but only once in a blue moon. She baked brownies when we did the Meursault Toad Session, and they were fucking lovely, so maybe I have her to thank for getting them signed to Song, by Toad Records. But for such a pair of foodies, we don’t really bake – or do deserts at all, for some reason.

I mean, I do have a sweet tooth. I munch my way through all sorts of biscuits at work – which they provide for us in pretty much limitless quantites for free. At first this seems like a good idea, until you realise that in the fight between self-control and biscuits, the biscuits always win. And I drink enough beer, I don’t need another arch-enemy in the fight against impending obesity.

But yes, deserts are not really my thing. We tend to have cheese if we have anything after a meal. I would have sorbet, but a sorbet is supposed to be icy, not creamy, and served in a portion no larger than that which would fit inside an egg-cup, and so many places treat it like a serving of ice-cream these days I am becoming somewhat disillusioned with the stuff.

So if you can bear that sort of banal, tedious whine of distress, please take the opportunity to de-lurk this Friday and chip in with your Friday Five. The hardcore group of commenters on this site shifts over time, but it would always be nice to meet some new people. Almost a thousand people read this site every day – who are you all? Are you nice? Hopefully not especially.

I like the sound of Lovvers tonight, at Sneaky Pete’s. That, after recording the Funkcast for tomorrow. Yes, you heard me, the Funkcast. Don’t miss it!

1. Favourite kind of cake.
2. What was the last thing you baked, if anything.
3. After a meal – cheese, sorbet, or ‘desert’?
4. What don’t restaurants do like they oughta anymore?
5. Last really domesticated thing you did.

M.J. Hibbett & the Validators – Do More, Eat Less

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Riff-Raff – Sweet as Pie (Billy Bragg’s band before he was just Billy Bragg)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Morcheeba – Women Lose Weight

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Howe Gelb – Cake Baked in the Sand

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Hey! Elastica – Eat Your Heart Out (Thanks to JC for this one)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

When people say ‘mixed review’ they tend to mean that they kinda like an album, but that they aren’t entirely convinced.  In this particular case however, I mean that I love fifty percent of the songs and really dislike the other fifty percent.

The previous album by this band, We Validate, was pretty fucking brilliant, to be honest.  Songs like The Lesson of the Smiths, The Gay Train and The Fight for History had real emotional bite to them, and as an album of old-school indie it really was terrific.

This one is a good deal softer, both in terms of the music and the lyrics.  It’s almost like the theme album to the TV series Grumpy Old Men, whereas the previous record reminded me strongly of Frank Turner’s lyric “I’m young enough to be all pissed off/ but I’m old enough to be jaded”.  In some ways that might seem like a subtle distinction, but it’s surprisingly obvious in practise.

Basically, MJ Hibbett & the Validators play indie inspired by the tail end of the 80s, when the original movement which gave the genre its increasingly meaningless name was in rude health.  Lyrically, the record charts the idle and less idle contemplations of a man approaching middle age, and it does so with genuine wit. So for someone like myself, who is probably in the exact same situation as Mr. Hibbett, the songs which really hit home are the ones which chime with me on a personal level.  Being Happy Doesn’t Make You Stupid, Do More Eat Less, All the Good Men and We’re Old and We’re Tired are absolutely brilliant – catchy, funny as hell and touching as well, and when they’re good this is the kind of fantastic stuff this band can create.

The ones which miss, however, even in a musical sense, tend to be the ones I just don’t engage with lyrically.  It Only Works Because You’re Here, Best Behaviour and My Boss Was in an Indie Band Once completely fail to hit the mark with me in terms of lyrics, but then they also seem to be the ones I can’t hum along to either.  Consequently I find myself wondering if I like this album more for the wry nods or for the tunes themselves.  Not that it really matters.

Some of the tracks are downright poignant – Leicester’s Trying to Tell Me Something and We Can Start Having Fun – so it’s not all wry comedy, they are a genuinely good band.  But oddly on this album I feel like they’ve missed the mark surprisingly wildly on some songs, considering how squarely they’ve hit the bullseye on others.

MJ Hibbett & the Validators – We’re Old and We’re Tired (and We Want to Go Home)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MJ Hibbett & the Validators – All the Good Men

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Website | More mp3s | Buy direct from the band

Coming back from holidays is traditonally a bit more rough than I had realised.  Apparently post-holiday blues is a common phenomenon, but this is the first time I’ve really experienced it before.  I’ve been really fucking down this week for some reason – probably the hot weather outside and the realisation that I can only take another day and a half of holiday for the rest of the year.  That’s fucking annoying, that is.  I have no damn idea where it’s all gone, honestly.  I’ve taken stray days here and there to go to London to speak to Sony, to interview Jason Lytle and a week or so for Toad Session recording and Homegame. Add that to our two weeks in Italy and that’s pretty much my lot for the year.  That means the entire last half of the year without a single long weekend, a day off or anything at all.  How fucking depressing.  Jesus.

In, um, other news… er, I am preparing the release PR for another half dozen or so Toad Records releases at the moment, and then Mrs. Toad is away for two weeks, during which I intend to finish up and post the Found Toad Session.  So much to do, as usual, and I think two weeks is going to be the longest we’ve been apart since I moved up here four years ago.  I’m not sure I even remember how to properly indulge in coke and whores any more, and the idea of going out and picking up flaky young hussies while I have the chance… well, it doesn’t sound terribly appealing I have to confess.  So it’s gin and tonics with a jar of pickles and tin of anchovies whilst sitting at the computer in my underpants as usual, I suppose.  Maybe I’ll go wild this time, and indulge in some pickled onions.

So, in a dismal funk this Friday, please to stop in and try and cheer me up by saying something fun or entertaining or bizarre or something like that.  Don’t sit out there and lurk like the sulky bastard I have turned into this week, consider it your public service duty to come out of hiding and chip in this week.  You know you’ve got it in you.  You can start with Nigaz.

1. Where was your last holiday?
2. What is your next one?
3. Name something which really cheered you up recently.
4. Favourite accidentally naughty name.  You know, like therapistfinder.com
5. Your worst ever excuse for feeling a bit sulky.

Gummi Bako – I’m Depressed

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Tom Waits – Town With No Cheer

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Oh, alright, I’ll pack it in.
Eels – Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MJ Hibbett & the Validators – Being Happy Doesn’t Make You Stupid

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Divine Comedy – The Happy Goth

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This is not so much the holiday podcast as the pre-holiday podcast because, for all we are away now, I recorded this on Thursday night before going away, as we prepared ourselves for the unspeakable burden of doing absolutely fuck all for two weeks.

I am taking a pile of books and a pile of new music and we are going to do pretty much nothing at all.  My parents used to do really adventurous travelling when we were young, but honestly I don’t have the energy.  I am so incredibly fucking exhausted from constant Toadery that actually, despite having a holiday inferiority complex, pretty much all I can cope with at the moment is a couple of weeks of fuck all.

Even last year when we went to Portland for a couple of weeks, we took all the technology and recorded interviews and all sorts at Pickathon.  It was relaxing and nice, but I still got a hell of a lot of work done.  This time I will take along some tunes which I have been meaning to catch up with, perhaps record a podcast or two, and basically spend the rest of the time lying in the sun by the pool.  My folks might not be all that impressed, but the recharging of the batteries is the sole purpose of this trip and I think we might manage just that.

Toadcast #73 – The Holiday Podcast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. MJ Hibbett & the Validators – Being Happy Doesn’t Make You Stupid (04.17)
02. Midnight Oil – Bushfire (10.06)
03. Headless Heroes – Hey, Who Really Cares? (Jon Hopkins Remix) (16.56)
04. Alela Diane – Pieces of String (21.05)
05. Inspector Tapehead – A Fillet of Bozo (25.42)
06. Maxwell Panther – Shiver on a Twist of Fate (33.19)
07. Jack Richold – Lady of the Calico (37.00)
08. Grant-Lee Phillips – Calamity Jane (41.16)
09. Billy Bragg – Bread & Circuses (50.20)
10. The Divine Comedy – Les Jours Tristes (57.45)

It’s been a longish week, but believe me this weekend is going to be worse.  I am offering up my poor old Volvo for sale, which breaks my embittered little alcoholic heart, so it does.  I am going to miss that car, we’ve had some wonderful times pottering about in her and I am going to miss the silly old girl, really I am.

This is a joint podcast, seeing as how I was in the pub with Dylan and the poor whelp seemed to have nowhere else to go, I invited him back to the house to add his own particular brand of incoherent nonsense to this week’s podcast.  Because lazy racial stereotyping is something of a stock in trade around here, I find myself making several lame attempts to bring up Welshness and national identity and all that pish, but ultimately this is just two drunk people chattering about music.

More or less the usual, then.

Toadcast #64 – The Welshcast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. Billy Bragg & Kirsty MacColl – A New England (05.12)
02. Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – Miniature Kingdoms (14.54)
03. Manic Street Preachers – From Despair to Where (18.53)
04. M.J. Hibbett & the Validators – The Fight for History (27.46)
05. Broken Records – And They All Fell Into the Sea (35.50)
06. Drunk Country – The Rain That Almost Drove the Windows In (44.44)
07. Meursault – William Henry Miller (49.34)
08. Super Furry Animals – Into the Night (57.24)
09. Supergrass – Moving (65.15)

The tenth Toadcast is a Pink Podcast, celebrating all things gay in indie music, but trying to steer well clear of any sort of annoying Graham Norton stereotypes. So, in avoiding anything that might have seen this lapse into the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert podcast I enlisted the help of my friend James, who was Mrs. Toad’s best man at our wedding.

As well as being gay, James is a real indie fan so I though he’d be perfect to consult with on the playlist and most of these songs are his choices.It’s surprising actually, just how indie this ended up being.I left off quite a few things I really wanted to play and it’s still the longest ever Toadcast.

Ultimately, I’ve tried to explore the relationship between the gay community and indie music, but needless to say there are times where it descends into slightly angry ranting. Hopefully not too much to allow you to enjoy the music though. It’s also not really ended up being as much of a discussion of gay culture as I’d hoped and that is almost entirely down to my own ignorance. I should probably have got James round to help actually present, but that would have been a right pain the arse logistically, as well as technically in terms of capturing both voices on one shitty little webcam microphone.

On a technical point, there is a bit of an echo on the vocal recording. This is because we have moved out of our house for a couple of months while builders tear it to pieces and I am having to rather make do in terms of recording location. I’ll try and sort this out by next week. And I at one point describe the Book of Ruth as being in the New Testament, which is also wrong. What a muppet.

Toadcast #10 – The Pink Podcast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. Pet Shop Boys – It’s a Sin (01.20)
02. The Mamas & the Papas – Dream a Little Dream of Me (08.35)
03. Bloc Party – This Modern Love (13.55)
04. Rufus Wainwright – The Rebel Prince (18.08)
05. The Radiators – Under Clery’s Clock (24.34)
06. The Magnetic Fields – When My Boy Walks Down the Street (29.15)
07. Donna Summer – I Feel Love (35.28)
08. Soft Cell – Sex Dwarf (41.36)
09. The Ballet – I Hate the War (47.52)
10. Madonna – Ray of Light (51.02)
11. Blur – Girls & Boys (60.00)
12. M.J. Hibbett & the Validators – The Gay Train (67.25)
13. David Bowie – China Girl (71.50)
14. Morrissey – November Spawned a Monster (80.40)
15. R.E.M. – First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin (90.27)
16. Scissor Sisters – Return to Oz (103.20)
17. Elton John – Ballad of a Well-Known Gun (112.12)

Hooray for Spoilt Victorian Child, for not only has Simon being busy filling the life of the lovely Liz with sunshine, he has also consistently and generously made time to fill the rest of our lives with quality tunery. So bless his Spoilt Victorian Socks, because a few months back I came across these characters on his website – what a quality find!

Put as glibly as possibly, Hibbett is a modern day cross between Billy Bragg and the Wedding Present’s David Gedge, most particularly in his ability to turn everyday sentences into perfectly metered verse without the slightest hint of contrivance. He also manages a well-judged range of subject matter from the banal everyday observation to the angry political rant, which brings real depth to this musically slightly ramshackle-sounding album. You can hear, in this, where Frank Turner’s influences are coming from as well, I’d reckon.

Not every song is brilliant mind, but most of them are pretty bloody good, and there’s a good half dozen absolute fucking gems to be found here. Between the fiddle and the anger and the guitar sound, this could easily have been released in about 1991, but there’s a lot of this kind of sound around at the moment and I am liking it. He has a new single out called The Gay Train, a dual A-Side with the equally brilliant Lesson of the Smiths, and the album as well, both of which are well worth your shilling. Fucking marvellous.

M.J. Hibbett & the Validators – The Gay Train

M.J. Hibbett & the Validators – The Fight for History
website | myspace | amazon