Song, by Toad

Well the Funkcast was probably about as gentle a ‘tell me about this genre’ podcast as you’re likely to get.  This, on the other hand, is not gentle.  I suppose it was never likely to be – there’s only so gentle an introduction you can give to this kind of music.

Basically, I was becoming increasingly curious about the number of alt-folkies I know who come from heavy metal backgrounds.  Loads of my friends here who I know because we all listen to indie rock or alternative folk or all sorts of things inbetween seem to have been really into metal when they were young.  This doesn’t entirely make sense to me because I see very little connection between the two kinds of music, and for so many people to have made that transition it must be a strong connection.

Then, of course, it turns out that loads of people whose music I listen to – alt-folk, once again – also grew up listening to metal.  The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle, Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie and, more locally, Dan from Withered Hand and Neil from Meursault.  So, having been round at the house doing artwork for their single releases I asked the Neil and Chris from Meursault and Matthew who helps out with the label to put together a metal podcast.  It might not be quite as pleasant to cook your bacon sandwiches to on Sunday afternoon, but erm, well I never made any promises with these bloody podcasts anyway – just deal with it, we’ll probably be back to the alt-folk next week.

Toadcast #91 – The Metalcast

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01. Half Man Half Biscuit – Vatican Broadside (0.00)
02. Withered Hand – Takeaway Food (05.03)
03. AC/DC – Whole Lotta Rosie (13.17)
04. Slayer – Jesus Saves (17.25)
05. Mount Eerie – Wind’s Dark Poem (24.21)
06. Nirvana – School (35.13)
07. Dinosaur Jr. – On the Way (37.50)
08. Lightning Bolt – Ride the Sky (42.59)
09. Richard Cheese – Rape Me (47.47)
10. Children of Bodom – The Trooper (53.50)
11. Meshuggah – Autonomy Lost (57.05)
12. The Mountain Goats – No Children (62.01)
13. Anal Cunt – You’re Old (Fuck You) (73.27)

Hello, more Toadcastery. I’ve, erm, focussed on Dadrock for this one. Not too much of it on the playlist, fortunately, although there’s a couple of well-known names on there. In my defence though, I couldn’t bring myself to feature Coldplay, so I was forced into the compromise of playing an almighty butchering of one of their songs by the splendid Richard Cheese.

Basically I spend most of this podcast trying to justify the presence of so much bland music in the charts and how the hell that came to pass. There’s plenty of chatter about how music is used as a sort of social glue as well, in which case the quality of the stuff becomes almost secondary. There are some really good new bands on this as well – The Velcro Quartet are particularly brilliant, as are the songs by Mumford & Son, Yoshimi! and Honeytrap. Enjoy responsibly.

Toadcast #32 – The Tribecast

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01. Hercules & Love Affair – Hercules Theme (01.32)
02. The Velcro Quartet – Dead Dog’s Hill Replaced with Johnny Cashback, at the band’s request. (07.53)
03. Seabear – Teenage Kicks (11.17)
04. Athlete – Shake Those Windows (21.02)
05. Richard Cheese – Yellow (30.31)
06. ESL – Czarne Oczy (31.59)
07. Emiliana Torrini – Me & Armeni (39.50)
08. Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal (43.24)
09. Snow Patrol – Last Ever Lone Gunman (48.11)
10. The Killers – All These Things That I’ve Done (58.17)
11. The Pictish Trail – All I Own (66.52)
12. Mumford & Sons – White Blank Page (73.01)
13. Honeytrap – Song For Nona (82.17)
14. The Velcro Quartet – How to Kill Your Wife (87.04)
15. Yoshimi! – Song For Suzy (Demo) (94.34)
16. Frank Turner – The Outdoor Type (100.34)

Ah thank goodness. The weekend, beer o’clock, beverage time, whatever – slipping into the welcoming arms of comatose alcoholic oblivion, no knowing where you’ll wake, next to whom or how many tattoos you’ll have. Marvellous.

The Edinburgh International Festival of Unbearably Pretentious Thespian Twattery commences this week some time and suppressing the Toad instinct for homicidal artistic criticism will be extremely difficult. It is a trying duty, but one which I nonetheless take very seriously, to have to reduce one aspiring performer after another to tears of desolation by relentlessly driving home the fact that what they are doing, rather than opening anyone’s heart to the possibilities of releasing their inner beauty, is in fact just some sort of pestilential form of spasmodic social syphilis. In fact, rather than giving people the opportunity to think differently about their lives what you are in fact doing, sweetie darling, is pissing everybody off, distracting them from their pints and making an utter twat of yourself in the process.

Congratulations. Won’t you be proud of your pointless fairying about, come the final reckoning:
St Peter: “And how spent thou thy precious earthly days?”
Eternal Soul 1: “Well, St Peter, I worked tirelessly on a cure for cancer.”
St Peter: “Splendid my son, on ye go. And your hippy friend here?”
Eternal Soul 2: “Erm, well, see I tried to express challenging thoughts through the medium of interpretive dance and bongo drums.”
St Peter: “You silly cunt.”

Who’s worse – the poncing thesps themselves or the fat fucking American tourists and crinkly old British coffin-dodgers who give them just enough financial encouragement that they somehow do not end up sticking their fucking knobs in a blender by the end of the Festival and thus relieving the gene pool of their weak and flabby genetic material altogether. Gah. Well at least there are some decent bands playing in Edinburgh for a change. Not many mind, but a couple.

I console myself with beer, gin, music and fornication. Breathe in with me Toadlets… and out… and relaaaaax!

Ad Astra Per Aspera – Everybody Lets Me Down
Elvis Costello – Clubland
Mayor McCA – I Love the Summer ‘Cause I Love the Women
Richard Cheese – Rock the Casbah I think this may now be the definitive version of this song.
Talking Heads – Radio Head