I am learning to despise hotel internet.  Whether I book myself and end up staying in a fucking Travelodge or Mrs. Toad books and we end up staying on one of the larger guest suites at Buckingham fucking Palace, absolutely all of them have such risibly bad internet connections that recording a podcast leaves me tearing my fucking hair out.

I couldn’t even get the online image editor to load properly, so the image is that rather pathetic, borderline clipart stinker you see in the top right hand corner.  Dreadful.  My art teachers would be justifiably disappointed.

Anyhow, this is called the Plancast for one simple and far from compelling reason: the fact that Mrs. Toad and I are down in London and have had to be clinically heartless in who we do and don’t see.  We don’t exactly have lots of friends down South, but still far too many to see in one weekend and at times in the past we have tried to do too much and ended up being inadvertently rude to everyone.

Direct download: Toadcast #174 – The Plancast

01. Love Inks – Blackeye (00.06)
02. Dubstar – The Day I See You Again (04.57)
03. Rev I.B. Ware with Wife and Son – I Wouldn’t Mind Dying (But I Gotta Go By Myself (12.01)
04. Billy Bragg & Wilco – Airline to Heaven (18.30)
05. Ezra Furman & the Harpoons – Hard Time in a Terrible Land (23.12)
06. I Break Horses – Hearts (29.39)
07. Tusk Tusk – Out of Tune and Out of Time (37.22)
08. Sandy Denny – By the Time it Gets Dark (41.01)
09. Girls Names – Nothing More to Say (46.02)
10. Thomas Tantrum – Hot Hot Summer (51.33)
11. Jarad Miles – Darjeeling (56.04)

I’ve been in an awful mood this week, for some reason.  Things have been fun, and stuff has been motoring along happily enough, United trounced Schalke and the sun has been shining… and still I’ve been grumbling away without ever really knowing what’s been annoying me.

Anyhow, the centre of Edinburgh is deserted today, which made the trip to and from Penicuik to get the Toad Van serviced relatively painless.  IKEA and Stewart’s Brewery, where we get the kegs for our house gigs, are both out there so I make the journey quite regularly, but on the way back in today I sat on the top deck of the bus, and it was kind of interesting.

With that extra bit of height you get a strangely different vantage point, particularly out in the suburbs where houses are rarely more than two floors high, meaning you can actually see quite a lot. Don’t get me wrong, there were no killer insights to be gleaned or anything, it was just kind of interesting.

And I do hope you are all planning to come and help us collect for the lifeboats tomorrow.  Our house from about eleven am, for those of you intending to chip in.  There will be plentiful booze and food provided.

Anyway, I have a lot of artwork to organise and email to send, so I guess I better get on with the Fives.  As almost everyone else in Edinburgh is out drinking all day, though, I might indulge myself and knock off early.

1. Where on the bus do you tend to sit?
2. What is your most rage-inspiring public transport etiquette transgression?
3. Something that’s irritated you this week.
4. What do your neighbours do which winds you up the most.
5. Give us a happy thought to banish all the rage.

These five are from a collection of pre-war American gospel I found on eMusic this week, tracking down an older version of Wouldn’t Mind Dying from the Honorable Worm’s album, which I reviewed last week.

Blind Willie Davis – I Believe I’ll Go Back Home

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Blind Mamie Forehand – Honey in the Rock

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Rev. I.B. Ware with Wife and Son – You Better Quit Drinking Shine

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Rev. I.B. Ware with Wife and Son – I Wouldn’t Mind Dying (But I Gotta Go By Myself)

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William and Versey Smith – When That Great Ship Went Down

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