Uncut Magazine and I had a pretty amazing relationship between the turn of the millennium and about 2004 or 2005.  Basically, I would buy it every month and turn straight to the reviews section and the cover mount CD of what they considered to be the best of new music released that month, and devour both simultaneously, taking notes about what I wanted to spend that month’s meagre wages on.

Those cover mount CDs were amazing, at the time, and almost invariably related to that month’s new releases, but in the last few years they have become way, way more concepty, and I have started to enjoy them less and less.  For some reason, Uncut’s relationship with contemporary music seems to have come adrift even faster than my own, even as I approach my mid-thirties.

Even if I am exaggerating that particular claim – maybe blogging is keeping my tastes young(ish), you never know – it seems a shame that I have drifted away from what was one of my major sources of new music for years, so this podcast is something of a retrospective  and also a salute to all the stuff I picked up from Uncut and in particular their amazing cover mount CDs over the years.

Toadcast #78 – The Uncast

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01. The Magnetic Fields – I Don’t Want to Get Over You (03.36)
02. Ismael Lo & Marianne Faithful – Without Blame (10.01)
03. Gemma Hayes – Over & Over (14.19)
04. Elliot Smith – Memory Lane (19.01)
05. The Woodentops – Well Well Well (26.59)
06. Lift to Experience – To Guard and to Guide You (31.07)
07. Heather Nova – I’m On Fire (39.55)
08. Roddy Frame – I Can’t Start Now (46.36)
09. The Flatlanders – Going Away (50.10)
10. The Acorn – Crooked Legs (59.37)

…through the medium of popular song!

It wasn’t intentional, but as my relationship with an ex-girlfriend was coming to a rather long drawn-out and bitter end there were a couple of songs, all from Uncut compilations, that just kept popping up on the stereo. She took them as a message and, as much as it wasn’t intended to be one, I felt no need to disabuse her of this impression. You know when you’re just done with someone and they irritate you, you irritate yourself for not just getting rid, and then she irritates you more for tolerating you despite the fact you’ve clearly turned into a complete dickhead? Well, you get the picture. You know you’re being a dick when you actually blame someone else for letting you act like an arsehole, but I suppose most of us have done it at some stage.

It was a bit like letting an animal die from exhaustion rather than just putting a bullet through its head and being done with it.

Roddy Frame – I Can’t Start Now
The Replacements – Unsatisfied
The Flatlanders – Going Away