Song, by Toad

Fxkhdfkj Fkjhs Foiks

Foiks really should be a proper word, shouldn’t it.  I think that might be as close as I get to the infitnite number of Booker Prize-winning monkeys.  That would be quite disappointing actually, wouldn’t it – Booker Prize-winning monkeys.  You wait almost an infinite amount of time (say, ‘ages’, for example) for your infinite number of monkeys to rattle off some Shakespeare and all they fucking lazy simian bastards come up with is the latest Joanne Harris Novel for Menopausal Women Who Think Their Artistic Side is Being Neglected.  Fuck you, monkeys!  The Girl With the fucking what?  Jesus, as if I didn’t feel like I was having my period already.  Mind you, it could be worse.  They could write Jeremy fucking Clarkson’s autobiography.

That picture at the top there is how we are hoping to get the Toadmobile  painted.  We spent Thursday night getting drunk together and fannying about with Photoshop to come up with a few different ideas, and that was a narrow favourite, just ahead of one in bright metallic green with black and white racing stripes down the middle.  It also was very cool indeed.  Christ knows what our mechanic is going to say when we show him that picture, but, erm, well we’ll just leave that for another day shall we.

Grmpf.  That’s it, really, so please de-lurk and chip in with your Friday Five, as pinched from the talkboards on the Guardian.  And if you want to chip in next Friday’s five then just email me at the usual address.

1. Favourite not-a-word-but-should-be.
2. Place name which sounds completely made up.
3. A word doesn’t exist for this, but it should.
4. Cool-sounding foreign word.
5. Word you could never spell.

Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs

Wilco – I’m Always in Love

Gomez – Make No Sound

Lambchop – Grumpus

My Teenage Stride – Actors’ Colony

Indiecater Christmas Goodness

There’s a lot of Christmassy stuff happening in the blogosphere at the moment. Basically, given that the music industry tends to grind to a halt over this period, I guess that there isn’t that much for people to write about, particularly those of us who are primarily driven by new music.

To fill this gap a lot of musicians, particularly Americans – who seem to take Christmas music a little more seriously than we do here in the UK, where it is regarded with a sort of awestruck horror most of the time – seem to record one-off Christmas songs. Nevertheless, it is to an Irish label that I point you, and none other than Indiecater Records, set up by fellow blogger Kevin from mp3 Hugger. Indiecater tend to release one of two kinds of album: either long lost albums which Kevin feels do not deserve to be lost to the mists of time; or Indiecater compilations, which are paid assemblies of songs by independent bands, which Kevin sells in order to both spread the word and bring a little revenue to the artists whilst doing so.

Given this general approach, it hardly came as a surprise when it turned out that he was releasing and Indiecater Christmas Compilation. As per usual, I hardly know any of the bands, but then that is part of the point of things like this. It’s a very small amount of money – six and a half Euros – and that money goes to help support independent music by directly putting money into the pockets of the bands who are the bread and butter of websites like mine, and like Kevin’s.

Two bands on there who I do know are My Teenage Stride and The Winks, both of whom are superb. So here’s an incentive to shell out your hard-earned.

My Teenage Stride – Ears Like Golden Bats
The Winks – Slumber Party Let’s Go

Five Fabulisms for Friday

It’s fucking Friday, three hours from Beer O’Clock, bloody marvellous! Mrs. Toad is away for over a week in Australia, which is quite frankly disastrous news. I’ll have a wanking hand like a fucking Fiddler Crab by the end of the week. Still, on the plus side I will have loads of time to do worky things. Not Proper Job worky things obviously, no, Toady worky things like getting promo copies of the first couple of Toad releases off to the music magazines, writing up interviews and editing the video, and publishing the Sparrow & the Workshop Toad Session.

So it’s another week in my underpants, glued to a computer screen and eating gherkins out of the jar for me I’m afraid.  Think of that while you’re out leading your exciting, exotic lives, snorting coke and banging hot babes.  Yeah, yeah, it’s fine for you lot you bunch of fly-by-night flibbertigibbets, but just you mind who puts in the real work around here.

This week’s splendid Five for Friday is as follows, and as usual please do take this opportunity to come out of the closet and spit your penny’s worth into the communal bucket.

1. A band none of us have mentioned but who we really should love (MySpace link might help).
2. Book that most reminds you of your childhood.
3. Worst thing you’ve ever said about an ex (no names, obviously).
4. Percentage of your day not spent doing what you are being paid to do.
5. Percentage of your internet usage that would qualify as being too porny to comfortably share with your other half.  If you have no shame about sharing that sort of thing with your other half, then pretend you do for the purposes of this list.

The Raincoats – Balloonacy
Jake Flowers & the Carol-Anne Showband – Rosalie
Eva Cassidy – Kathy’s Song Is there a more heartbreakingly lovely line in all of music than “There but for the grace of you go I”?
My Teenage Stride – The But for the Grace of You Go I
Art Brut – Emily Kane

Musical Maturity of a 25-Year-Old

I am a mere 32 years old. Some of you may be gasping at such superannuation, others chuckling indulgently at callow youth. In the world of music there seem to be a large clump of enthusiastic kids, a big chunk of people like me – getting a little too old to be indie kids but still are – and then another big clump of folk in their forties who decided a few years back that they were never going to be too old for all this and fuck anyone who suggests they are.

I seem to find myself easily identified as the middle category: not enough knowledge of Joy Division to be the latter, nor enough enthusiasm for Blood Red Shoes to be the former, and this is pretty much accurate. The problem is that almost everyone in this country of my age grew up listening to the sort of music that is being reprised right at this very moment, and I missed it. Spending your teenage years in Vienna and Singapore you just didn’t hear current music, ever. Beyond pantomime metal and shitty disco pop it just didn’t make the leap.

This means that when I hear groups like Cats on Fire, Decoration, The Siddeleys, My Teenage Stride, Shout Out Louds and countless others who are either reinterpreting – or just plain ripping off, depending on your view – this sort of sound I actually don’t hear a rip off.  I am hearing a good chunk of this music for the first time, despite it conjuring up a slightly disembodied sense of nostaligia, which is slightly odd because just about everyone my age over here is pretty familiar with this sound from the first time round.  There are patches of knowledge because we did have MTV and my cousin Steve used to send me mix tapes on my birthday, but for the most part my musical knowledge starts almost entirely from scratch in 1993, when I first moved to the UK to go to university.  I was seventeen.

Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, The Soupdragons, The Wonderstuff and The Levellers were just fading from public approval and Britpop was about to take off.  My first year in Manchester was the year Definitely Maybe, His ‘n’ Hers and Parklife were released.  So I missed C86, despite the fact that I should just have been starting to develop an interest in music at the time.  I was the only person I knew who had heard of The Stone Roses.

This is why you will often hear me get all excited about groups almost anyone else my age would probably dismiss as a bland knock-off of stuff they heard years ago.  For me the first time that is likely to happen is when the 90s Revival kicks in and grunge comes back.

The Cure – Killing an Arab
The Smiths -  Shakespeare’s Sister
The Siddeleys – Sunshine Thuggery
My Teenage Stride – Terror Bends
The Wonderstuff – Welcome to the Cheap Seats
Levellers – Liberty Song
Pulp – Pink Glove
Blur – Tracy Jacks

Airports: Could Hell be Much Worse?

I just found out that on their way back from France, my brother and his missus were stranded in Charles de Gaulle for the best part of a day due to snow in Iceland (yes, seriously).

Now airports are bad enough, but Charles de Gaulle in Paris is absolutely one of the worst.  At least in the UK people have slowly started to realise that it is not absolutely mandatory for them to resemble all the joys of a 70s council tower block staffed by recently lobotomised members of the living dead.  It doesn’t make the conference centre carpet any the less depressing, nor the chairs anything less than an absolute masterpiece of anti-ergonomics.  They have not one single comfortable position – not one!  Mrs. Toad travels regularly in America and assures me that theirs are worse, although I haven’t seen it for myself.

But Charles de Gaulle amazes me.  Given the French have such pride in their love of the good things in life, why the flying fuck is it so impossible to get a decent meal at their biggest national airport?  Eh?  It’s almost like they want people to arrive in Britain or even America and be grateful for the food.

And while we’re on the topic of airport stupidity, I’d be a lot more receptive to our pretence of taking national security at all seriously if we didn’t put its enforcement in the hands of our stupidest people.  Nail clippers. Honestly, if you’re desperate and dangerous enough that you are capable of hijacking a plane armed only with a set of nail clippers then I seriously doubt removing them from your possession is going to make much difference.  How about a thick book?  Or a wooden spoon?  Or caustic wit and hurtful sarcasm?  Fucking retards.

I have nothing but sympathy for anyone forced to spend more than about twenty minutes in these desolate cathedrals of idiocy and depression.

The Handsome Family – All the Time in Airports
My Teenage Stride – To Live and Die in the Airport Lounge

Synaptic Spasms

I heard a song by The Wombats today. I do not especially like The Wombats, but they have done some good things, and this song isn’t half bad. Thing is, it inspired a couple of bizarre synaptic leaps that seem related to the very raison d’etre of this entire blog.

The song is called Let’s Dance to Joy Division, and it immediately put me in mind of a song by My Teenage Stride that Ed posted last week some time, with the chorus ‘You only dance to the Happy Mondays’. Simultaneously, the truly splendid Half-Man Half-Biscuit track Joy Division Oven Gloves popped in there as well.

I think, apart from the peaceful ruminations and the impassioned ranting, that may be one of the key reasons people a/ write about music so much and, b/ why music is said to be good for the brain.

Synaptic leaps and generally keeping one’s grey matter well-exercised are said to be important in keeping it healthy and staving off dribbling senility. Presumably the brain is forever making these kinds of little associations, often, I would imagine, more musically than simply in the superficial terms I am talking about. So perhaps with the vastly increased number of songs, pop music can achieve the same as classical, which is generally more recommended as brain food, despite the songs being shorter and far less complex.

And in terms of all kinds of talk about music, sharing these little associations and leaps and somehow recording them – preserving your inner music monologue in aspic – is something which motivates a few of us internet weirdos to an oddly great extent. Why? Who knows, but recording all my inner musical thoughts is a big motivation behind writing this blog. Even the stupid ones that take me from Liverpool indie-pop to Brooklyn Cool and then to middle-aged punky smart-arsery in a matter of seconds.

Song, by Toad: thoughts in aspic for your eternal perusal. Inspiring!

The Wombats – Let’s Dance to Joy Division
My Teenage Stride – Happy Mondays
Half Man Half Biscuit – Joy Division Oven Gloves

Deuxieme Podcast, by Toad

Yes, another one. Mwah hah haaa. Lock up the kids, Campfires & Battlefields, because the Song, by Toad musical cuss-o-rama is back on air for more blethering, swearing, slurring and first class tunery.

Actually, I don’t think this one is anything like as good as the first, if I’m honest. It’s a bit over-long at fifteen songs so I think in future I’m going to limit myself to ten or twelve at the most, not least because my shitbox of a computer starts having a panic once I’ve stuffed that many audio files into a single project. So, fifteen songs then, with a bit of an emphasis on late 80s jangly indie guitar and containing one of the most brilliant ever drunken fuck-ups about three-quarters of the way through. Beware the horrors of letting your children turn into indie kids, people! So a bit too long, and occasionally too much inconsequential chatter, but we live and learn and the next one will be better, I promise.

Toadcast #2, the 80s English Indie One

1. My Teenage Stride – Terror Bends (01.00)
2. Honeytrap – Let’s Do Naked Dancing (03.37)
3. The Mutton Birds – The Queen’s English (09.38)
4. The Veils – The Wild Son (17.38)
5. The 63 Crayons – Devils (21.40)
6. The Smiths – I Started Something (26.05)
7. Honeytrap – Death Before the Silver Screen (31.03)
8. Lloyd Cole & the Commotions – Morning is Broken (36.14)
9. The Indelicates – New Art For the People (41.57)
10. The Indelicates – Stars (45.51)
11. MJ Hibbett & the Validators – The Lesson of The Smiths (50.32)
12. The Specials – Guns of Navarone (55.02)
13. Echo & the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon (57.20)
14. Honeytrap – Mussolini’s Son (66.06)
15. Frank Turner – Heartless Bastard Motherfucker (73.25)

My Teenage Stride – Ears Like Golden Bats

Ears like Golden Bats produce sounds like golden honey. There’s an uncomplicated beauty to this album which really gives me a warm, happy feeling inside.  Occasionally some of the songs can be a little too even to be quite catchy enough, but in general this is a superb album.

The benefit of the 80s revivial, apart from the angular New Wave resurrection and the comedy dance floor cheese, has been the re-interpretation of the late 80s jangly indie guitar music we’re starting to hear more and more of.

I draw the line at anyone trying to resurrect Ned’s Atomic Dustbin (90s really), but when your tunes are steeped in the kind of stuff the black-clad, misunderstood outsiders loved in 1987 then you are barking very directly up my tree. The guitar, vocal and low-key Moog-a-like backing of My Teenage Stride remind me of the classic indie bands of this era like The Smiths and The Cure and it’s excellent to see people poking around in this particular box of tricks again.

Where it differs from these groups is in having a generally more laid-back atmosphere – it’s generally less angsty than The Cure and less miserable that The Smiths. People who were actually in the country and not being forced to listen to David feckin Hasselhoff in Vienna when this stuff was first popular will be able to give you far better comparisons than I can, but it is definitely of a piece with the jangle-pop guitar bands of this era. I’ve been more than a little bit slow on the uptake with these characters, but I’m glad I got there at last.

My Teenage Stride – To Live & Die in the Airport Lounge
My Teenage Stride – The Genie of New Jersey

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