Song, by Toad

There is a betting shop under the house next door who once offered us something like seven or eight grand, or something like that, to build a fire exit out of their place into our back garden.  Quite apart from whether or not that compensation would actually match the resulting devaluation of the house, which it probably wouldn’t have, the idea of having Ladbrokes employees peering into our garden while we were sitting out there with a cup of tea didn’t really sound appealing.

Also, they claimed that the door would be alarmed, but we didn’t really have a lot of faith in that, and rather feared the employees finding a way around this and spending a lot of time smoking fags in our back garden.  In the words of Han Solo: “No reward is worth this!”

Anyway, betting shops have always kinda fascinated me.  They always look so desperate, like the people inside are clutching to the last tiny strand of courage they have left and vesting it all in some ropey old nag in the 4.30 at Doncaster.  It’s that haunted, defeated kind of look and the 1980s cross-channel ferry decor that just makes them look like the most appalling joy-sinks imaginable.

In any case, gambling is something I have never been drawn to in the slightest, primarily because games of chance are governed by mathematics and in the long run you will lose, and when it comes to placing bets based on close inside knowledge, I always seem to be surprised no matter how much I know about the topic in hand.

I mean, I know football inside out, particularly the English Premiership and I seem to have absolutely no ability whatsoever to predict the results.  I know the Scottish music scene pretty well these days, but would I honestly have faith in my ability to pick the Next Big Thing Out of Scotland?  No, probably not, not to the extent that I’d bet on it anyway.

Now you may say that in starting a record label that this is exactly what I’m doing, but I’m not, I’m making a different kind of bet altogether.  I have noticed over time that for all I like alternative stuff, my taste still conforms to a certain part of the mainstream, and I am betting that if I just stick to releasing stuff I really like, rather than trying to second-guess a band’s potential for making it big, then my natural overlap with the mainstream will mean that we release enough music people like to make the whole venture financially sensible.

That’s the theory anyway.

So, there are some good gigs this week, so please attend them and take the opportunity to take photos of hipsters looking hip and enter them into our competition to win a copy of the wonderful Communion Compilation.  Just email your pictures (old or new) to me at songbytoad -*- hotmail.co.uk, and we’ll pick a winner in a week or so.

Oh, and please do de-lurk, that’s what this thread is for, y’know.  You’ve read the comments before, you know the kind of clowns I’ll be stuck with if you don’t!

1. Ever bet on anything and won?
2. Which kind of gambling might you be tempted by?
3. Kind of gambling you’ll never understand.
4. What are your odds of scoring on Valentine’s Day?
5. Name your favourite underdog of all time (doesn’t matter what field).

The Pogues – Bottle of Smoke

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The Clash – The Card Cheat

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Bob Dylan – Rambling Gambling Willie

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Bruce Springsteen – Meeting Across the River

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Hem – Betting on Trains

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The Excast is so named because I am playing a lot of people’s former bands.  There’s Shane MacGowan’s Nipple Erectors, Phil Chevron’s Radiators, Shilpa Ray’s Beat the Devil and Billy Bragg’s Riff Raff.

I concentrate so much on new music these days that I often decide whether or not I like a band on the basis of a handful of demos, maybe a single, sometimes a debut EP, stuff like that.  And of course, bands don’t stumble into the world fully-formed, it takes some of them ages to become brilliant, and a lot of the time the initial forms of a band can be really strange, presumably because the people in question were still casting around a bit for their sound.

So there’s a bit of that here, but it’s not all that rigid a theme, and the playlist is a bit messy but, erm, well never mind.  There are some great songs, so enjoy!

Toadcast #96 – The Excast

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01. Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers – Beating St. Louis (04.07)
02. Beat the Devil – Plea Bargain (11.09)
03. Bright Eyes – Neely O’Hara (19.56)
04. Richard Hawley – Naked in Pitsmoor (26.16)
05. The Young Republic – The Alchemist (33.20)
06. Construction & Destruction – The Signal (41.24)
07. The Nipple Erectors – Nervous Wreck (48.34)
08. The Radiators – Walking Home Alone Again (50.39)
09. The Pogues – Lorca’s Novena (56.37)
10. Riff Raff – You Shaped House (63.33)

This weekend there will be a trip to Manchester. Meursault have a gig there – in the Saki Bar on Saturday, I think – and Mrs. Toad and I are taking the opportunity to drive them down and visit my Granddad, on my Mum’s side, who lives there. He’s lived in the same house for the last forty years, one which he bought for something like two thousand pounds when the family moved out of Moss Side. See, I told you I was nothing like as posh as you think I am, despite my (raised in Moss Side, remember) mother’s determination to surround herself with begonias, organic vegetable patches and copies of Country fucking Living magazine.

So, we’ll drive down, see the gig, say hi to Granddad and then hopefully cook a Sunday roast the next day before coming back to Edinburgh. Sunday roasts are one of my strongest memories of that house. Back when my Grandma was alive Sunday lunch was a pretty bloody big deal – the house was always full and I absolutely always, without fail, got in trouble for quietly disappearing at some point to gnaw on the bone in the kitchen.

Manchester is an odd place for me, though. I suffered massive, massive culture shock when, thinking myself basically English, I moved there from Vienna to go to university. It was a horrible year: I was too foreign to be English, and too English to get the kind of tolerance actual foreigners get, so basically people just didn’t know how to interact with me at all. It was, however, the first time I really started getting into indie music and going to gigs and so on, so I suppose there are advantages to not wanting to spend time with your peers.

The other time I lived in Manchester was when I was inbetween uni and my first job, working in a gangster nightclub (guns pulled, stabbings, brawls, the lot) and with no idea how to actually get a job in my actual professional field. I was flat, flat broke and really fucking fed up – mind you I discovered some great albums then too – inevitably I suppose. So I always think of Manchester quite negatively these days, just because I’ve always been so fucking miserable when I’ve lived there. It’s no fault of the city itself of course, but I really can’t shake that unpleasant reaction I get to the place. And, stupidly, I really like Glasgow and the two cities are virtually identical in almost every sense.

1. Strongest memory of childhood times in your Grandparents’ house.
2. What do you irrationally hate, just because your life was shit when you encountered it?
3. Great album found during a shit time in your life.
4. Where did you go to University, if at all?
5. Most embarrassing muppet you’ve introduced to your grandparents.

The Lemonheads – If I Could Talk I’d Tell You

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Barenaked Ladies – You Will be Waiting

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The Pogues – First Day of Forever

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Yo La Tengo – Cherry Chapstick

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Moby – Run On

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Dear God I never thought of what I do as an endurance sport before – after all, it’s really just a case of endlessly farting on about some tunes which I happen to like – but this year’s Festival is going to become just that.  This week has been punishing enough already, and next might be even heavier going.

This week so far I have been to a fucking superb performance by Jesus H. Foxx on Tuesday at Electric Circus, supported by my first real experience of Art Fag, who tortured songs by Meursault and Enfant Bastard with considerable enthusiasm.

Then on Wednesday I witnessed a shambolic performance by the sound guy at the Forest Cafe, presumably determined to ensure that the White Heath EP launch would be dominated by his own World Championship levels of incompetence and indifference, and fuck those arrogant bands and their ridiculous notion that people might actually have turned up to hear them play songs.  Someone should point out to him that just because Debutant is only a bloke and a guitar doesn’t mean no-one wants to listen to his music or that a sound guy can necessarily spend the entire gig with his head wedged firmly up his own arse as his sound system totters and staggers around him.  Oh, and White Heath have a pianist and a violin player in the band for a reason: because what they are doing is supposed to actually make a contribution to the sound they are trying to make – if they were just there to be like Bez they wouldn’t bother miming away on instruments, would they?

At least he couldn’t ruin the Meursault solo set.  With a voice like Neil’s that would be a challenge for even the most determinedly ham-fisted sound guy, and proved to be beyond even whichever distant relative of Coco the fucking Clown had turned up that night.  Mind you, the  monumentally pig-ignorant pseudo-hippies who seemed to fill half the place were clearly determined to raise their dreadlock-sporting, oatmeal-knitting, soap-dodging, dismally joyless conversations above any and all bands who thought that they might try and play some tunes, their slightly desperate, vacant faces grimly clinging to the last vestiges of the illusion that their particular hollow brand of bovine conformity represents something even mildly alternative.  It doesn’t.  You’re just another bunch of sad cunts in need of an identity to submit yourselves to in a pitiful bid to avoid having to face your lack of anything much to contribute to the world.  Sorry, welcome to real life, we all have to face it at some point.  And no matter how fucking loud you try and talk, Neil is louder than you, which makes me feel good about the universe.  And presumably cheered the front half of the audience too, who were brilliant, lest it seem that I am trying to tar everyone with the same brush.  I assume there are plenty of good people who both run and use the Forest Cafe; unfortunately there also seem to be some pretty bloody depressing ones as well.

Anyhow, the talky hippies and the clod of a sound guy clearly put Neil in a mood, which meant his set was confrontational and fucking brilliant.  I am starting to realise that the best way to make Meursault really famous might be to send them on a Hostile Venue Tour of the UK – fuck we’d get some good shows, although we might have to keep the engine running in the Toad Van out the back.

Oh, and yesterday was FOUND vs Cybraphon, which was ace.  Most of it was a presentation about the genesis of the moody musical wardrobe, followed by it accompanying the band on about four songs.  It was a great talk actually, as witty and whimsical as the project itself.  And being in an actual art gallery made me feel like a more worthwhile person for a little.  Support the arts and all that, jolly important stuff.

Tonight, Shenandoah Davis is playing at Carter’s Bar on Morrisson Street, and I will be going along to sample her live set in advance of recording a Toad Session tomorrow.  And on the subject of Toad Sessions, the FOUND one goes up this weekend too, which is why I was up until 5.45 this morning working on it.  Which is why I may be just a little more grouchy than is entirely reasonable this morning.

Then it’s Trampoline on Saturday night, after the Toad Session.  Then Retreat the following day.  Then Broken Records, Frightened Rabbit, Meursault and so on at the Queen’s Hall next week, and Playing With the Past.  And… oh never mind, my body has just given up on me.  By the time the Festival ends I may have to sleep through September just to get over it.  My Latest Novel have been added to the Broken Records bill on Monday, incidentally, which is good news as I haven’t seen them live for quite a while.

Apparently there are things on at the Festival which are Not Music.  At this rate it looks highly unlikely that I am going to be found at any of them.

De-lurk.  Oh stop it, just fucking de-lurk, alright?  I’m too tired to ask nicely, but I’ll secretly be happy if you do, even if I don’t realise it until I’ve had a good sleep.

Fucking hippies, honestly.  SHUT UP – no-one came to listen to your tedious excuse for a conversation.

1. Last proper art thing you went to.
2. Favourite grown up art form.
3. Most under-rated form of art which still isn’t treated as being as bloody clever as it is.
4. Most boorish arty attitude you have.
5. Most intellectual and highbrow arty attitude you have (pseudo or otherwise – we’re all pseuds to one extent or another).

Art Brut – Modern Art Just listen to the lyrics – this song is a work of genius.

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Shenandoah Davis – These Rocks

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The Pogues – Lorca’s Novena

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Enfant Bastard – Landscape Painting is Easy

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Sleepy Jackson – Acid in My Heart

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When we were out in Italy on our holidays Mrs. Toad and I had very few CDs with us but one of them was an Uncut compilation of prison blues and murder ballads which, amazingly, given the very promising subject matter, really wasn’t very good.  In fact, it was rotten, so I’ve made a podcast based on the self same concept, but with what I personally think are vastly better songs.

Most  obviously, to my mind, there were very few contemporary songs in there, and I thought that was a little weird.  Now, I actually think that the level of political commentary in popular music is just a little weak at the moment, but there are nevertheless some amazingly good prison and criminal justice-related songs to be had, and certainly some exceptional murder ballads, although I must confess that the most recent bit of genuine social commentary here pre-dates the 1990s by a couple of years.  There was probably more recent material I could have used, it just didn’t spring to mind at the time I’m afraid.

So here we have the Jailcast, complete with some largely incoherent ranting about politics and my own stupid fucking jail story which Mr.s Toad takes such delight in sniggering about at every available opportunity, the bitch.  It’s not that exciting, really it isn’t.

Toadcast #80 – The Jailcast

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01. Tom Waits – Jockey Full of Bourbon (02.05)
02. Willard Grant Conspiracy – Drunkard’s Prayer (08.37)
03. Pulp – Down by the River (16.14)
04. Bob Dylan & the Rolling Thunder Revue – The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Live, 1975) (19.42)
05. The Pogues – Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six (31.36)
06. Bruce Springsteen – Vigilante Man (Woody Guthrie Cover) (39.33)
07. The Radiators – Prison Bars (43.34)
08. Enfant Bastard – Compilation Tapes (50.10)
09. Nightjar – The Hanging Tree (55.30)
10. Pete Wylie – Stay Free (Clash Cover) (60.49)

I am currently off work sick, which sucks donkey balls.  Even worse than being sick of course is actually having to phone in sick.  I get into a conundrum – I actually do feel like shit, but I don’t sound like I do at all, so how the hell do I convey the fact that I am actually telling the truth over the phone.  In one sense I feel that seeing as I really am ill I shouldn’t have to try, and then risk sounding deliberately perky, which seems like the wrong approach, but then trying to actually sound ill probably sounds forced and even less convincing.  So I think I generally just end up sounding indecisive, which is crap.  Maybe from now on I should aim to only contract illnesses which leave an obvious audible signature in my voice, like bronchitis or something like that.

It would be easier if you could just tell the person who answers the phone and bugger off back to bed of course, but we aren’t allowed to do that, we actually have to speak to the director in charge of whatever project we’re working on and explain to them, which has the rather unnerving effect of making you feel like a naughty schoolboy.  I’m thirty-three years old for fuck’s sake, why do I feel like I’ve been caught pissing in the plant pots?  Gah!

Anyway, there is going to have to be much delurking today as I am going to be asleep or in bed being a moaning baby for most of the day I am afraid.  As you can tell from recent threads, we’re a really nice, friendly bunch here and the chat, whilst obscure, is always the very epitome of good-natured.

It’s nice outisde too, and I don’t even have the gumption to go and sit in the garden with a nice cup of tea.  Moan moan moan.

1. Most unbelievable but genuine excuse you’ve ever had to make for missing work.
2. Worst thing about being off work sick.
3. Best thing about being off work sick.
4. Off sick munchie menu.
5. Bed or couch, for sleeping it off?

Alabama 3 – Too Sick to Pray

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The Sick Bed of Cuchuliann

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The Smiths – Still Ill

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Grandaddy – Pull the Curtains

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Eels – Hospital Food

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Fucking lurgy.

Me and the missus are rambling away together on this one.  It’s largely new music, bookended by a couple of more well-known things.  We Invent a new term – a weird combination of food and sex called culiniungus.  We offend the Irish and the Scots.  In fact, we are as offensively and predictably us as you could imagine.

We were out and totally smashed at the Broken Records gig at the Bowery yesterday, followed by some hot Sneaky Pete’s action.  There are some disastrously embarrassing pictures here, if you want to point and laugh.  The gig was amazing.  I knew a group like Broken Records would be amazing in a small space like that, and so it proved.

I had to do some very pointed Standing Up though, which was fucking annoying.  What the fuck is it with people, sitting down at fucking gigs?  If the room’s empty that’s one thing, but the room was full, people were on tiptoes up the back, and this shower of cunts insisted on sitting on their fucking arses down the front, protecting a meter and a half of empty floor space between them and the band.  So, as Mr. Discreetandtactful, I went and stood in front of them.  Fuckwits.  The band did get everyone on their feet after a song or two, which was a fucking relief, but honestly… it’s rock ‘n’ roll bitches, get up off your fucking hippy folk arseholes and stop acting like the Chipping Sodbury Chapter of the National Union of Knitting Champions.  It’s not, to paraphrase a friend of mine, the fucking Teddy Bears’ Picnic.

This delightful little anecdote does have a darker side, however.  Some lass tugged on my sleeve to ask me to sit down during the first song, and I attempted to politely but firmly say no thank you.  Unfortunately I may have succeeded more at the latter than the former, and ended up just being rude to the woman.  Who was very pregnant.  Well done me.  Picking fights with pregnant women isn’t really all that clever, is it.  So, er, sorry pregnant lady, I didn’t mean to be quite so terse, nor did I mean to imply that you should just stop moaning about your baby and stand up.  But then, you can’t really expect to sit two metres back from the stage and object to anyone standing in front of you either, because that’s just silly.

Oh, and we met Peej, a reader from New York, who was in town for the week and said hello.  He was a really nice chap, so why he reads this fucking site is a mystery, to be honest, but it was brilliant of him to say hello, and then to put up with our drunken stumbling later on as well.   Sometimes I love teh internetz.  Not times like this of course, but sometimes.

Toadcast #68 – The Leprecast

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1. Joy Zipper – Dosed & Became Invisible (01.40)
2. Love Like Fire – William (08.37)
3. Rock Plaza Central – O Lord, How Many are My Foes (13.17)
4. Animal Magic Tricks & Neil Pennycook (17.24)
5. Ambulances – Last Old Fiver (24.45)
6. King Creosote – Camels Swapped for Wives (27.11)
7. Jesus H. Foxx – I’m Half the Man You Were (33.51)
8. God Help the Girl – Act of the Apostle (44.15)
9. The Limes – Dead Furniture (46.47)
10. The Pogues – Night Train to Lorca (58.06)

This podcast is sort of like the Clustercast should have been.  I haven’t actually listened to it yet, so I don’t know if it’s any good, but it sort of felt better, somehow.  It isn’t anything like that incoherent and garbled anyway, which is a relief.

We spent the day collecting for the lifeboats, along with some excellent help from our pals Dylan from Blueback Hotrod, Neil from Meursault, Ed from 17 Seconds, Dave, Michael and the Stormettes from The Stormy Seas and Morgan from, erm, Glasgow.  I have to point out how important their help was as well.  It’s easy to talk a good game and then to pussy out at the last minute, but despite the fact that both Neil and Ed had other things on today, everyone made the time to come down and help out, which is bloody good of them.  We collected a fair chunk of cash – Mrs. Toad’s pretty blonde colleague collected the most, rather predictably.  Maybe we need fewer beardy alt-folkies and more hot babes next year.

Enjoy the podcast, then; we’ve got a lot of nautically-themed songs this week and could have had even more.  There are loads of songs, and we had far more on the list before trimming.  It’s a bit out of control, this podcast, but actually I think it’s quite good.  Dylan’s roving reporter slots are just… well, they’re just.  They’re just. That’s what they are.  Experience them for yourself.  Good luck.

Toadcast #67 – The Wuzzlecast

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01. The Pogues – The Ship Comes In (05.57)
02. Sad Day For Puppets – Big Waves (09.07)
03. Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (17.44)
04. James Yorkston – Sir Patrick Spens (26.22)
05. The Second Hand Marching Band – Not Yet (38.40)
06. The Stormy Seas – The Sea Wind (42.40)
07. Ute Lemper – Little Water Song (50.31)
08. Frightened Rabbit – Floating in the Forth (57.25)
09. Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians – The Wreck of the Arthur Lee (64.53)
10. American Music Club – The Song of the Rats Leaving the Sinking Ship (75.43)

For reference, here are some YouTube videos which inspired this podcast:

For those of you coming along to help collect for the Lifeboats tomorrow, that you so much.  If you know where we live, then just swing by and we’ll give you a tin to shake for an hour (or more if you like) and then you can stick around for tea and cake (or beer as the hour grows later) or go about your business, as you please.  If you don’t know where to come along to, then just drop me an email and I’ll tell you.  I’m not too keen to just type our address out in the middle of teh internetz, although god knows it’s hardly a secret anyway.  Thanks so much for everyone who has agreed to help, it really is good of you.

Now, on to the more frivolous business of the day: it’s Friday and hence time to get silly.  We had our first real expedition in the mighty Toadmobile yesterday, driving through to Glasgow for the Hinterland Festival.  Honest to goodness, that van fucking rocks.  I stopped to ask a copper where the best place to park it was and he – yes, a policeman – said “This is Glasgow, mate, nowhere’s secure.”  Then we embarked on a ten minute conversation about how cool the van was, then he recommended I do a massive great illegal u-turn in the middle of the road.  Glasgow cops: tremendous value!

In honour of the Lifeboat collection effort tomorrow, I thought the five this week should have a vaguely nautical theme, so here we go.  It has become a most sociable post in the last couple of weeks, with all sorts of reckless de-lurking and far more people than the usual suspects taking part, which I think all of us appreciate, so go on, go for it.  Step out of the sordid intershadows and reveal yourselves.  Actually, that sounds more than a little wrong.  Just chip in, that’s all.  Then talk pish to your heart’s content.

1. Best name for a kind of boat.
2. What’s the most camp, being in the navy or riding a motorcycle?
3. When was the last time you actually went swimming in the sea?
4. Coolest boat-based movie.
5. Ever been on a boat journey where you feared for your life?

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Ship Song (Live)

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The Men They Couldn’t Hang – Dover Lights

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The Pogues – South Australia

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Van Dyke Parks – Greenland Whale Fisheries

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The 6ths – The Sailor in Love With the Sea

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This post isn’t supposed to be quite as portentous as the title might imply. It’s actually more of a casual observation: basically there are some songs, and quite often they are early Bob Dylan ones, where all I hear is the legend, and I can’t really hear them as songs any more.

The two most obvious ones are both on the same album: With God On Our Side and The Times They Are a-Changin’. I think it might be because my parents talked such a lot about the importance of these two songs in particular when they were introducing me to Bob Dylan, and consequently I actually have no idea whether or not I like either track. I actually think that as pieces of music I am not that keen on either.

I’ve always thought, in fact, that I just didn’t like that entire album all that much but that is, or at least should be, nonsense. It sounds so much like so much stuff I love, and is pretty much an anti-folk album, despite the fact that he was considered by many to be a folk singer. Mind you that boundary is so fuzzy anyway that it makes very little difference in the first place. In any case though, you get the point: given what I else I love, I really should like it.

And looking at the tracklist before writing this I realised that actually, maybe I do. When the Ship Comes In and Hattie Carroll are two of my favourite Dylan songs, so maybe it really is just their status that puts me off those two tracks. Maybe they really are so famous and such iconic songs that I just can’t hear the song anymore. Maybe it’s similar to the way some actors become so famous that you can’t watch them as characters anymore, and simply see someone so famous that they have actually transcended any artistic achievements they might manage by virtue of being such powerful symbols in and of themselves.

Bob Dylan – The Times They are a-Changin’
Bob Dylan – When the Ship Comes In
Bob Dylan – The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
And here’s something of a surprise cover, from the Pogues last ever album. This was two albums after the departure of Shane MacGowan and pretty much sank without trace, but there were some good things on it, like this Dylan cover.
The Pogues – When the Ship Comes In