This particular podcast was somewhat railroaded by two different things, and hence has very little of the new music/inbox harvesting stuff you may have come to expect from Song, by Toad.

Firstly, I went to see Jeffrey Lewis on Wednesday.  He was supported by Seth Faergolzia from Dufus and covered 2+2=? by the Bob Seger System, which explains two of the songs.

Secondly, I went out to visit a couple of pals on Thursday night.  That resulted in an epic Pearl Jam-a-thon, so I was looking for some Pearl Jam to play today, only to happen across an old compilation with Pearl Jam, Luna, The Magnetic Fields, Yo La Tengo, Beck and others on it, which explains a couple more songs.  As for the rest, well, there’s just no excuse really, is there.

Direct download: Toadcast #198 – The Revivalcast
Subscribe to the Toadcasts on iTunes

01. Soulsavers – Revival (00.16)
02. Pearl Jam – Bu$hleaguer (08.47)
03. Seth Faergolzia – Weird Old Toad (16.40)
04. Bob Seger System – 2+2=? (19.53)
05. Lords of Bastard – Chant (25.24)
06. The Blue Runes – Stream Fog (31.59)
07. Beck – Golden Age (37.54)
08. Luna – Black Champagne (42.24)
09. The Eagles – Outlaw Man (52.25)
10. Honey Train – Yo Toad/Deepness (Demo) (58.37)

 When you start a business, certain things which stamp you with the mark of legitimacy are basically just a nuisance.  Completing your accounts for the year is very much one of these: an awful chore, which never at any point makes you feel like your are a proper business-owning muthafucka and don’t you forget it, more like a twelve-year-old staring resentfully at their homework.

Being a blogger doesn’t help.  If I called myself a writer or the owner of one of the UK’s most upwardly mobile record labels then I would feel like… I dunno, like I wasn’t just making shit up as I go along and hoping to get away with it.  But the very term ‘blogger’, no matter how many of the world’s most respected writers now write blogs too, still reeks of a misunderstood teenager complaining into the vast, indifferent wastelands of the internet, whilst sitting in his parents’ basement at three in the morning with his hand down his pants and a half-eaten jumbo pack of Cheesy Wotsits spilling over the keyboard.

Recently, though, I have started to have to do things which actually make you feel awkwardly legitimate.  Not legitimate specifically because you have to do them, but because the very act of doing them makes you finally realise that actually it is legitimate and right for you to be doing them, which is actually a bit of a shock when it finally dawns on you.

I have written, for example, a couple of employment references for people in our bands, and over the last couple of years, a couple of employer references for people renting flats.  And actually, given the nature of the music industry, I am probably just about the right person to be doing it, which is an odd sensation.

And, seeing as I am now defining pissing about on the internet as being a proper job, how do I define skiving?  When you fill in your Friday Fives and then bugger about talking pish for the rest of the afternoon you are genuinely skiving, but when I do it am I executing business strategy?  I liked it better when it was just outright skiving, frankly.

1. Thing you do which makes you feel most like a proper grown-up (n.b. you don’t have to actually be a grown-up to answer this).
2. Thing which still makes you feel like a child – not past-time, we all have those, more a chore of some description.
3. Thing you thought would make you feel grown-up but didn’t.
4. Something you have entirely grown out of enjoying.
5. Thing which, despite growing up, hasn’t lost its appeal.

Luna – Dear Diary

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.

Pearl Jam – Bu$hleaguer

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.

Beck – Guess I’m Doin’ Fine

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.

Yo La Tengo – Upside Down

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.

Future Bible Heroes – Losing Your Affection

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.

Do you remember shuttle runs?  They were the single most unpleasant fitness exercise I ever remember being forced to do, and I was quite fit as a young ‘un.

Anyhow, today I am charging back and forth from Carluke, where we are getting some mastering done for the label, to the house, to the printers to collect some promo material, to the house to get them couriered down to London and then back to Carluke once more.  I don’t know if I’ll need a pint or a nap more desperately by the time all this shit is done.

I am also bracing myself for a little bit of trouble with the fearsome Mrs. Toad.  I may have queried Record Store Day a fair bit this week, but that doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to it, and I am most certainly going to be out of bed sharpish to trundle into town on Saturday and see what’s what.

Where this may prove to be a controversial decision is that Mrs. Toad has been away in God Bless America for the last week and only gets back on Saturday morning, and I would guess that she might anticipate a little more love and attention than ‘Hello darling, nice to have you back, but I’m off to the shops and I’ll see you in a few hours’.  Ah well, some people are football widows, and Mrs. Toad is a music widow. Them’s the breaks.

Anyhow, in the meantime, I should stop wasting time and get on with wasting time.

1. Your favourite form of exercise.
2. Your least favourite form of exercise.
3. Which hobby always takes up just a little more of your time than any partner might reasonably be expected to understand?
4. We were too disorganised this year, but what should Song, by Toad Records do for Record Store Day in 2012?
5. How many pairs of shoes do you own?

Luna – Dear Diary

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.

 

Pearl Jam – Bu$hleaguer

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.

Beck – Guess I’m Doing’ Fine

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.

Yo La Tengo – Upside Down

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.

Magnetic Fields – Sad Little Moon

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.

We have been collecting for the lifeboats today and as usual we have had a massive, lovely meal prepared by my darling Mrs. Toad.  It was fucking awesome, I have to tell you, and anyone who wasn’t here truly did miss out.

We, and the RNLI, owe a massive debt of thanks to Sharon from the Wirral, Euan from The Kays Lavelle (and many other things), Peter from next door, Matthew from Glasgow (as of last week), Ella from the Last Battle, Lucy and Catherine from Mrs. Toad’s Finance Corp., Jamie from Broken Records, and Dylan and Ed who turned up and were nice but didn’t really do much, and of course the internationally renowned musical expert, the esteemed Dr. Millar.

In terms of actually making a difference, it’s worth pointing out that the collection in Stockbridge has hovered around the £200 mark for about the last thirty years, but since us young ‘uns have been involved that number has almost tripled, which is sort of nice.  It actually does make a big difference when you all turn up and show some enthusiasm and commit even just a few hours to helping out.  Charity people can be a bit pushy at times, so it gets a bit of a bad rap, but it really does make an important difference.  So thank you.  And hopefully we’ll see you all again next year.

Toadcast #120 – The Swing-O-Cast

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.

1. The Bonzo Dog Band – No Matter Who You Vote For, the Government Always Gets In (5.35)
2. Billy Bragg – The Marching Song of the Covert Battalions (13.27)
3. Wham! – Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do) (22.23)
4. Pet Shop Boys – Opportunites (28.59)
5. The Dead Kennedys – Kill the Poor (41.00)
6. Bruce Springsteen – Atlantic City (44.04)
7. REM – Ignoreland (52.33)
8. Pearl Jam – Bu$hleaguer (60.39)
9. Gao Yuqian, Liu Changyu, Qian Haoliang – The Party Has Taught Your Son to be a Man of Iron (80.01)
10. Erase Errata – Another Genius Idea from our Government (81.44)

I’m not sure why the end of the noughties should necessarily lead to any kind of retrospective of the nineties, but it has.  I guess it has a lot to do with the fact that I just feel it’s way too early for me to figure out what I make of the noughties.

So, given that it must be about time for the nineties revival (actually, probably best give it another year or so) and given that the nineties are now quite a long way away and given that, erm… well I dunno. Given I was poking around at that stuff recently and listening to some Pulp and Gene and Blur and stuff I figured I might as well pop the whole bloody lot into a podcast.

Toadcast #97 – The Nineties

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. Pearl Jam – Even Flow (Unplugged) (4.16)
02. The Stone Roses – (Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister (12.23)
03. Belly – Untitled & Unsung (18.37)
04. Echobelly – Insomniac (22.13)
05. Blur – Yuko & Hiro (29.00)
06. Gene – Wasteland (36.14)
07. Ben Folds Five – Underground (38.49)
08. Blur – Country Sad Ballad Man (44.56)
09. REM – Parakeet (52.03)
10. Radiohead – Everything in its Right Place (59.30)

Right, given we’ve come down to Manchester for the Meursault gig, I thought I might make a podcast based around the two years I spent living here.  As I mentioned on this week’s Friday Five, however, those were really not very happy times so basically this podcast is just a great big hour-long whinge about how shit my life was a couple of times a few years ago.

Nah, not really.  I mean, I do describe why life was tough then but it really isn’t just a great big moan, I promise.  For some reason the music in my life at those times seems to have really stuck in my head and become incredibly strongly associated with the period in question.  Partly, I suppose, because the emotional succour you get from music when things are a bit rough is something you’re grateful enough for for it to really form an important connection.

The other aspect is that on both those occasions I had so little music with me that the stuff I did have got played over and over again, so a really small amount of stuff really dominated my listening habits at that point, and became incredibly strongly intertwined with all of my memories of the time.  So, er, yes.  Here you go: The Manchester Podcast.

Toadcast #88 – The Manchester 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. Pearl Jam – Dissident (03.16)
02. The Newcranes – Box of Shadows (08.53)
03. James – Say Something (17.17)
04. The Lemonheads – Into Your Arms (20.30)
05. Blur – Clover Over Dover (27.00)
06. Yo La Tengo – On Our Way to Fall (39.47)
07. Moby – Southside (41.31)
08. Calexico – Removed (48.10)
09. Jolene – Constantinople (51.46)
10. The Magnetic Fields – Yeah! Oh, Yeah! (57.57)

You may point and laugh, people, but I am currently lying in my bed, a mere sneeze, twitch or yawn away from unspeakable agony. I fucked my back playing football on Monday and at the moment any kind of movement is like a wild gamble. Do it wrong, and my lower back spasms to extent that it can take me ten minutes to focus on the individual muscles one by one and try and relax them. It’s bloody crap.

On the plus side, my doctor has prescribed me Diazepam which, according to the Daily Mail, will turn me into a jobless, benefit-scrounging, teenage single mother by the evening.  I was offered opiates as well, but turned them down on the basis that I would snigger about it too much.  Also, I am not fond of painkillers to begin with: I prefer to actually know what’s going on if I can.  I want to be able to know how much it hurts and consequently have a reasonable idea when it’s all getting better.

The other annoying thing is that I literally cannot do anything.  When you’ve got other illnesses you can at least potter in the garden for an hour here or make some phonecalls there or do some video editing or whatever the hell else, but I can’t even sit at a desk for more than twenty minutes before everything starts clenching up, so I am quite literally confined to lying either on the bed or the living room floor, or hobbling about the house to try and loosen up.  I have watched every shitty movie known to man in the last three days.

You know what was a real disappointment though?  Neighbours.  And Home and Away to an extent, but mostly Neighbours.  Even seven or eight years after leaving uni I could still comfortably slip back into Neighbours – face it, the plot moves at an absolutely glacial pace – but this week I haven’t had the patience.  It’s a bit gutting – like I’ve finally lost touch with an old childhood friend.  Maybe the pain in my back has eroded my patience for this kind of thing.

Anyway, while you’re off gallivanting, spare a thought for me, watching American Pie: the Wedding or some other such total horse manure, and unable to even drag myself out for a bloody pint – anaesthetic beer, mmmmm!  And what better way to kick off your Friday fun than by mocking the cripple.  You heartless bastards.

1. Most pain you’ve ever experienced.
2. Coolest sounding drug you’ve been prescribed.
3. Worst thing you’ve ever watched whilst off work sick.
4. Most innocuous injury you’ve ever had a ton of sympathy for.
5. Most painful affliction you’ve ever had which seems too lame for sympathy.

This Friday I have some mid-90s acoustic versions of stuff to share with you.

Evan Dando & Juliana Hatfield – My Drug Buddy (Acoustic)

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.

Pulp – Joyriders (Acoustic)

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.

Supergrass – Caught by the Fuzz (Acoustic)

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.

Fun Lovin’ Criminals – Scooby Snacks (Acoustic)

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.

Pearl Jam – Black (Live Acoustic)

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.

Well, as DC pointed out on Five Friday Fatwas, the 90s revival is not quite upon us yet.  It’s both totally inevitable and somewhat due, so it will be here sooner rather than later, but for the time being it has yet to entirely arrive.

So in anticipation of the inevitable, I thought I might just make a podcast which partly tried to anticipate the revisionism and partly talked just a little about what I myself might remember when the 90s revival hits full swing in a couple of years.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a child of the 90s, but I think that I might be wrong in neglecting to do so.  When they started I was 15, just moved from Singapore back to Vienna and very much a kid.  By the time they ended I had finished my Master’s degree and spent a long time pouring pints waiting for a proper job, which in some ways I suppose might just make you an adult.  It was an interesting era for me personally and when the revival arrives, as it inevitably will, I am downright fascinated to know what the younger generation will make of the music with which I grew up.

Toadcast #61 – The 1990s

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. Pearl Jam – Go (03.47)
02. R.E.M. – Oddfellows Local 151 (11.05)
03. Cocteau Twins – An Elan (18.16)
04. Gene – Sleep Well Tonight (21.46)
05. Counting Crows – Omaha (30.33)
06. Supergrass – She’s So Loose (38.37)
07. Echobelly – King of the Kerb (41.33)
08. Alice in Chains – Nutshell (47.47)
09. Pavement – Gold Soundz (53.22)
10. Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra – Eggshell Miles (59.01)

Well, not me obviously, because the answer to that is no-one.  But Mrs. Toad and I were purchasing a little wine on our way home from the pub tonight and instead of going into some sort of warehouse off-license we ventured into the Edinburgh Wine Shop, which is small, friendly and, I suppose, slightly dorky.  It’s the sort of place where the staff know about wine, where they sell lots of real ale and no fucking Fosters whatsoever and where, generally, they play classical music.

Classical music has always kind of baffled me, not out of general dislike or anything, more out of pure ignorance.  I don’t know it, understand it, or anything.  Nor could I hope to intelligently critique it.  However, I wonder sometimes about what causes stuff to stick in the memory, or to stand the test of time.  Great classical musicians, once they achieved fame, found their music performed to royal courts; to the largest audiences available at the time.  A bit like Britney Spears.

So was Mozart really the best available to his time, or was he just Madonna – some pushy, stringy old lady whose thirst for celebrity and knack for manipulating the press far outweighs any measurement of talent.  I don’t, as I’ve said, have the knowledge to really answer that question, but the people who read this blog are all fans of alternative music.  Not alternative in the sense of being NME readers rather than MTV fans, but in the sense of genuinely loving really alternative music.

Even fucking Celine Dion has performed to royal audiences.  Britney Spears, Take That, Madge, all these people have achieved something akin to the twenty-first century equivalents of patronage – the barometer for the best and best-remembered classical composers.  So, without wishing to enter into an argument about which classical composers truly deserve to be remembered at the expense of which others, what have we actually lost?

Where are the Nick Caves of that era, compared to the Coldplays?  Do we really need to remember Eric Clapton?  I mean, his politics are fucking detestable, but was he good enough to deserve immortalisation?  And even if you take the attitude that might means right – that being that popular is justification enough in itself – then what of the bands who would be the equivalent of Jeffrey Lewis.  Or the Wave Pictures.  Or even Wilco.  How long will these guys live in human memory without that massive groundswell of popular approval which ends up sanctifying an artist for all time.  And what of the likes of Daniel Johnston, for example, who is barely known in his own era and might so easily disappear within a couple of decades, once he passes on, because apparently All fucking Saints were invited to perform at the fucking Royal fucking Variety Show and he was not.

Pearl Jam – Jeremy (Yeah yeah, Nirvana, yadda yadda…)

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.

Giant Sand – Flying Around the Sun at Remarkable Speed

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.

Eef Barzelay – Ballad of Bitter Honey

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.

Ah, mates.  Can’t live with ‘em, can’t kill ‘em.  Mrs. Toad’s best friend from her reckless yoof is visiting us here in Edinburgh with her gentleman friend, and consequently I got to thinking about my own old friends, and all the people who, over the years, have introduced me to so much brilliant music.  So I started to patch together a playlist of all the important friends who have added a lot of music to my life.  The problem is that it became way too long for my one hour restriction, so for this week I cast that aside, and allowed myself an extra ten minutes.

Honestly though, old friends are so important, this could have gone on for two hours, easily.  Every one of the people I mention here has a whole story of their own, and it was quite difficult to resist telling all of them in proper detail.  It seems such a shame, actually, to reduce all of these people to a two-minute link.  I could almost do a whole podcast for any one of these scenarios really, and maybe I’ll do that in future.  For now, though, you’ll have to make do with this.  It may be shabby, but it really could have been so much worse.  Meanwhile, Mrs. Toad is fucking plastered.  Oh good.  Enjoy!

Toadcast #50 – The Friendcast

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. Pink Floyd – On the Turning Away (02.27)
02. Pearl Jam – Black (11.23)
03. The Tragically Hip – Wheat Kings (18.30)
04. Gene – Her Fifteen Years (25.23)
05. Radiohead – Black Star (28.04)
06. Verve – Lucky Man (34.41)
07. Weeping Willows – Eternal Flames (39.19)
08. Billy Bragg – Days Like These (DC Remix) (45.41)
09. Bob Dylan – Po’ Boy (49.42)
10. Elbow – Newborn (55.46)
11. Blanche – Do You Trust Me? (63.19)
12. Maximo Park – Apply Some Pressure (69.07)