Having weaselled out of our Fresh Air show yesterday because I was too busy trying to get Loch Lomond sessions edited and generally ready to go away on holiday, so Ruth missed out on her weekly opportunity to take the piss out of me, which must have been a shame for the poor lass.

Anyhow, we decided to remedy this by recording a podcast for publishing while we’re away, so Ruth came round with a CD of twenty songs and we bumbled our way through an evening chattering nonsense (as per usual).

We’re a teeny-tiny bit short of cutting edge new tunes for this week, but I think we can live with that for a week, eh.  As Ruth would insist, her choices are all better than things I would have chosen anyway…

Toadcast #139 – The Comfortcast

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01. Animal Magic Tricks – Pinkening (05.04)
02. Eurythmics – Love is a Stranger (11.21)
03. Iron & Wine – Upward Over the Mountain (19.11)
04. Mountain Man – Mouthwings (25.54)
05. Yo La Tengo – Take Care (28.04)
06. Fred Astaire – Top Hat, White Tie & Tails (35.42)
07. Gomez – 78 Stone Wobble (41.43)
08. The Everley Brothers – Be Bop a-lula (49.21)
09. Edith Piaf – Non, Je ne Regrette Rien (51.37)
10. Pulp – The Boss (Demo) (58.23)

So erm, does not having a traditional working week mean Friday is a bit less Friday-y now?  Kinda, I guess.  I have been deprived of my much-cherished King’s Wark lunches by the fact that I am on the other side of town now (well, not quite, but far enough away to make it impractical) and nowadays if I have two pints at lunch and then skive away the afternoon I am basically just ripping myself off.  Which rather makes it less fun, I have to confess.

Mind you, it’s sunny as arse out there, so the sooner I get my jobs done and can nip out into Inverleith Park to play some basketball the better.  I played for the first time since 1998 this week and, erm, well it really wasn’t pretty.  I actually used to be okay at this game, believe it or not.  By which I mean that I could at least shoot the fucking ball without having to fetch it from the adjacent field every two or three shots, which seems to be happening with disturbing regularity at the moment.

It’s a bit of a shame how you can lose skills, actually.  I used to be pretty much fluent in German.  I worked a telesales job in Austria over one Summer, all in German, and although I was shit at the job that was more to do with the fact that I despise telemarketing rather than any kind of language difficulty.  Embarrassingly enough, though, these days I could barely tell an old lady to fuck off in German.  And you’d be surprised how often you need to do that if you ever want to ride on public transport in Vienna…

*Cough*

Anyhewwwww… yes, it’s Friday, which means pish-talking and a big fat de-lurking amnesty, so come out of the woodwork and give us five silly answers to five banal questions and then while away the afternoon leaving silly comments and smart remarks.

1. What were you good at once, but would bungle horribly if you tried now?
2. What is your most obscure skill?
3. Name a talent you have seen someone display where your only thought was ‘how on earth could they be bothered actually putting in the time needed to be that good at something so utterly pointless’?
4. What do you wish you were good at?
5. Tell us about a public transport etiquette nitpick which winds you up.

Ugly Casanova – Hotcha Girls

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Kid Loco – Cocaine Diana

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Jason Ringenberg & Steve Earle – Bible and a Gun

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The Flatlanders – Going Away

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Pulp – Down By the River

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Because of electiony things and my trip down South this weekend I am writing this after an evening out drinking gin, and a night spent watching the election and drinking wine whilst Mrs. Toad snoozes on the couch.

Voting for the fucking Tories, honestly what a bunch of idiots this country has turned out to be (see graphic).  If you’re minted, you can afford to vote with your conscience.  If you’re less than wealthy then voting Conservative is basically just voting for aggressive, hostile rhetoric over self-interest, which is just weird.

I am getting sick of this ‘voting for change’ pish which is being dropped into chat all over the place.  Change?  Change?  Seriously?  Are you fucking kidding me?  Change would have meant the Lib Dems becoming a serious third party, which I actually think would have been good news.  Multiple parties implies something closer to proportional representation, and it happens and works across Europe.

Adversarial two-party politics is a weird concept, when you look at it.  You end up with Celtic v Rangers, United v City, God Bless America vs Evil Communist Russia – it’s just such a simplistic and superficial narrative to apply to a question which is actually quite nuanced and complex I am not sure how we ended up here.

Anyway, delurking, that’s the message for today.  Delurk, unlurk, exlurk and say hello.  That’s what these Friday posts are for, and I will be on a train all afternoon and eager for some sort of entertainment so please come out with some bollocks.  Any old bollocks will do!

1. Name your independent political party.
2. Make a spurious election promise.
3. Suitable insult for your opponent.
4. Something vs what?  Name a new deathmatch!
5. What the fucking fuck happened to the fucking Lib Dems?  Eh?  Fucksake.

Blur – Death of a Party

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Supergrass – In it for the Money

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Pulp – Pencil Skirt

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Belly – Gepeto

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The Bluetones – The Fountainhead

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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)

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Pulp – Joyriders (Acoustic)

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Supergrass – Caught by the Fuzz (Acoustic)

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Fun Lovin’ Criminals – Scooby Snacks (Acoustic)

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Pearl Jam – Black (Live Acoustic)

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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’ve been on Blogfresh Radio a few times in the past, and always enjoyed the experience. I used to chat to Bill Pearis, which was always fun, but he’s moved on now. These days when I talk to them it’s with a chap called Dev Sherlock who has proved to be just as much fun to chat to as Bill. A little too much fun actually – it seems to be traditional that when I talk to Blogfresh I prattle on endlessly for fucking ages, and then they face the unenviable task of trying to cut it down to a concise minute or so. Poor bastards – still, someone’s got to make them work for their money.

Anyhow, in addition to the more usual approach where a blogger chats a little bit to introduce a song they’re really enjoying at the moment, Blogfresh have very kindly done a profile on Song, by Toad on their latest show. There’s inevitably vanity at play here, of course there is, but I am nonetheless really chuffed that they decided to feature this blog on their recent show. It’s nice because I like what they’re doing, and they’re nice people. So go an listen and make a point of listening regularly. Their shows are short and sweet, unlike my rambling dispatches, and give you a really good taster of what’s going on on the blogs that week. It’s weird to hear a blogger’s actual voice, because sometimes I’d imagined something entirely different, but rather cool nonetheless.

In other news, I am back on Fresh Air Radio (click on the Listen Live thingy) this weekend. I have two shows, Saturday 12-2pm and Sunday 2-4pm both this weekend and next.  So if you want to hear me successfully managing to not swear – no seriously, it happens – tune in.  It’s Freshers Week at the uni as well so I might concentrate on a bit of an introduction to the Edinburgh music scene, and also play some songs from my own time as a first year student. That’ll give the game away something chronic about just how bloody old I am but fuck it, why not, it sounds fun. And there’s nothing to help people settle down and get over their nerves about being new to a place that finding some silly old fart to snigger at.

Here’s a couple that I might well consider:
Lemonheads – Being Around (Acoustic)
James – Say Something

Or my first year in Glasgow:
Gene – Sick, Sober & Sorry
Pulp – Common People

Greetings and Happy Valentine’s day my little Toadlings. Wait, what’s that? You hate Valentine’s Day? Loathe it in fact? Would dearly love to nuke fucking Hallmark and every last shitty little shop peddling their tawdry baubles and meaningless rubbish that serve no purpose other than to defile the pure concept of true love and disrespect the dignity of the un-mated?

Good. Me too. In fact, us too, for the wildly popular (grumble, sulk) Mrs. Toad is back to do the great Valentine’s anti-podcast with me. To bitch and moan, to get side-tracked, to ramble and to poke pointed sticks in the side of the great marketing behemoth that the most shallow and meaningless of public celebrations has become. If you do not like Valentine’s Day very much, then this is the place to be.

Toadcast #21 – The Lurvecast

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01. Nirvana – Where Did You Sleep Last Night? (00.23)
02. The Velvet Underground – Femme Fatale (08.06)
03. The Raveonettes – Little Animal (10.57)
04. R.E.M. – The One I Love (13.57)
05. Half-Man Half-Biscuit – Paintball’s Coming Home (20.54)
06. The Pierces – Boring (25.43)
07. (The Real) Tuesday Weld – Terminally Ambivalent Over You (31.03)
08. Shane MacGowan & the Popes – Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway (34.41)
09. The Wave Pictures – When I Leave You For Somebody Else (38.30)
10. Pulp – Pink Glove (45.33)
11. The Raincoats – Don’t Be Mean (50.15)
12. Rufus Wainright – One Man Guy (59.34)
13. William Shatner – Ideal Woman (66.34)
14. The Sequins – Nobody Dreams About Me (71.45)
15. The Smiths – Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want (77.31)
16. The Walkmen – Don’t Forget Me (82.58)
Feeding BritCaster.com

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

This is not a post about Clem Snide, I just thought the album title was highly appropriate and I love the artwork.  What this post is really about is that precise moment you see the fashion train about to leave the station and instead of running to jump on before the doors close you give a wry smile, slow to a stroll and calmly watch it pull away and head off into the distance.  Ah well.

Most people aren’t all that fashionable between the ages of say, ooh, about one and perhaps eighty-five anyway, but I am referring more to that point at which you suddenly realise that fashion is for the Yoof and you are no longer young enough.  Most of us, especially the indie types likely to be reading this, rejected large portions of the current fashion all the way through our youth anyway, either for reasons of modesty, taste, curmudgeonly refusal to join in, indifference, or myriad other reasons.  Famous one-line smart arse Oscar Wilde did, after all, brilliantly say that “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

But even as kids, not being fashionable was a choice we made based on what the cool people were wearing – it was a current choice.  This 80s revivalism is actually rehashing fashions I already rejected nearly twenty years ago.  So suddenly, for the first time in my life, they are reviving fashions which I didn’t even like the first time around.  And that, my dear readers, is when you know that fashion has passed you by one final, irretrievable time.

Ben Folds – There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You
Billy Bragg – The Busy Girl Buys Beauty
Squirrel Nut Zippers – Flight of the Passing Fancy

And one more thing: Song, by Toad will NEVER wear skinny jeans.  Ever. Unlike virtually 98% of the people who do wear them I am well aware of the fact that I am the wrong build and my arse is far too big and I would just look like a total prat.  Do you wear skinny jeans?  If the answer is yes, please be aware of the fact that there is an empirically undeniable 98.3% chance that they make your arse look either too big or just not there at all and your legs look like carrots.  None of these are flattering.  You’re welcome, just thought you should know.

Pulp – Pencil Skirt Now these are sexy.
The Clash – Just the Right Profile