eBay is a dange… hang on.  How the fuck are you supposed to capitalise eBay at the start of a sentence?  I suppose it has to be EBay doesn’t it?  It just looks wrong. ITunes? Damn these people and their stupid typography.  I miss the days of Wilberforce Carmichael’s Internet Music Emporium and the like.

Anyhow, as I was saying, eBay is a fucking menace.  I am looking up old record players on there at the moment, and have been distracted by even older mics.  It’s terrifying, particularly with their seductively low bids when things are a day or two away from closing.  so tempting, so very very tempting… Which is exactly how our living room ended up covered in Russian propaganda posters.

See:

See what I mean.  Just a clicky-clicky away from disaster. Anyhow, bollocks to all of this, it’s Friday, which means talking garbage on the internet and generally wasting what little remains of the working week.  This is a good thing.

1. Shopping disaster.
2. Shopping triumph.
3. Top present you’ve ever received.
4. Top present you’ve bought for someone.
5. Top present you will be buying for yourself as soon as you can afford it.

Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – Summer’s Been Good From the Start

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Shivaree – Reseda Casino

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

 
Mark Eitzel – Move on Up

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Phantom Planet – California

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Rufus Wainright – One Man Guy

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Fookin’ marvellous, not only is it Friday but this weekend is supposed to be stunning and there are all sorts of fun and capers planned between now and Monday.  Firstly, tonight Honeytrap – one of my favourite bands – are playing Sneaky Pete’s with Meursault, and I am really looking forward to it.

Then tomorrow we have a marathon double Toad Session day of mentalism, with Found coming in at about two in the afternoon and Honeytrap at six.  It is going to be, I think it’s safe to say, fucking hectic and probably very drunken, but the stuff we get out of it should be absolutely fucking amazing.   It’ll no doubt take some time to get through all of the stuff we generate, but I think it will be worth it for a couple of brilliant sessions.

So, while I go out and find somewhere to have a couple of pints in the sun over lunch, please take this opportunity to come out of the shadows and have your say.  Fridays are de-lurking amnesty threads, so if you’ve never chipped in before, why not make today the time you pop your cherry.  Fill in your five and then talk total pish with everyone else for the rest of the afternoon, whilst you’re supposed to be working hard but are secretly just waiting for 5pm so you can bugger off down the pub.

1. Most sinister-looking animal.
2. Favourite movie villain.
3. What goes best on toast?
4. Favourite cocktail.
5. Best place to have a cup of tea.

Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – The Summer’s Been Good From the Start

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Shivaree – Reseda Casino

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Mark Eitzel – Move On Up

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Come Ons – Strangelove

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Rufus Wainright – One Man Guy

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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

The tenth Toadcast is a Pink Podcast, celebrating all things gay in indie music, but trying to steer well clear of any sort of annoying Graham Norton stereotypes. So, in avoiding anything that might have seen this lapse into the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert podcast I enlisted the help of my friend James, who was Mrs. Toad’s best man at our wedding.

As well as being gay, James is a real indie fan so I though he’d be perfect to consult with on the playlist and most of these songs are his choices.It’s surprising actually, just how indie this ended up being.I left off quite a few things I really wanted to play and it’s still the longest ever Toadcast.

Ultimately, I’ve tried to explore the relationship between the gay community and indie music, but needless to say there are times where it descends into slightly angry ranting. Hopefully not too much to allow you to enjoy the music though. It’s also not really ended up being as much of a discussion of gay culture as I’d hoped and that is almost entirely down to my own ignorance. I should probably have got James round to help actually present, but that would have been a right pain the arse logistically, as well as technically in terms of capturing both voices on one shitty little webcam microphone.

On a technical point, there is a bit of an echo on the vocal recording. This is because we have moved out of our house for a couple of months while builders tear it to pieces and I am having to rather make do in terms of recording location. I’ll try and sort this out by next week. And I at one point describe the Book of Ruth as being in the New Testament, which is also wrong. What a muppet.

Toadcast #10 – The Pink Podcast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. Pet Shop Boys – It’s a Sin (01.20)
02. The Mamas & the Papas – Dream a Little Dream of Me (08.35)
03. Bloc Party – This Modern Love (13.55)
04. Rufus Wainwright – The Rebel Prince (18.08)
05. The Radiators – Under Clery’s Clock (24.34)
06. The Magnetic Fields – When My Boy Walks Down the Street (29.15)
07. Donna Summer – I Feel Love (35.28)
08. Soft Cell – Sex Dwarf (41.36)
09. The Ballet – I Hate the War (47.52)
10. Madonna – Ray of Light (51.02)
11. Blur – Girls & Boys (60.00)
12. M.J. Hibbett & the Validators – The Gay Train (67.25)
13. David Bowie – China Girl (71.50)
14. Morrissey – November Spawned a Monster (80.40)
15. R.E.M. – First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin (90.27)
16. Scissor Sisters – Return to Oz (103.20)
17. Elton John – Ballad of a Well-Known Gun (112.12)

Gosh it’s multi-post bonanza of obsessive lunacy on Song, by Toad today. I know this is far too many posts for a sane human being, but honestly the news today is bringin’ the crazy and there’s no way I could let it pass without a round of applause.

Item No1: Paris & the Mystery Meat
Everyone’s favourite talentless whore has been released and gave an interview to CNN in which she described her meals in the Big House as containing “mystery meat”, which she then rather perplexingly described as “really scary”. Seriously. Anyone here remember the last time Ms. Hilton had any sort of difficulty wolfing down mystery meat with all the glassy-eyed enthusiasm of a sedated Alzheimer’s patient? No, me neither. At least true to form she’s still talking about god, albeit in slightly different context than usual, playing that time-honoured Get Out Of Jail Free Card that the American public never seem to tire of falling for.

Rufus Wainright – Old Whore’s Diet

Item No2: Tom Cruise: Verrückt und Verboten!
Or, bonkers and banned, as we’d (vaguely) have it in English. Apparently he has been banned from filming his latest movie in Germany – allegedly about Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler – because they think he’s just a bit too mad. If they’re worried about his inability to accurately portray sensitive historical material then fuck me, how are they not attempting to extradite Mel Gibson for public tarring and feathering? Honestly, I’ll be gutted if they ban Scientology. Scientology is easily the coolest religion in the world – a great big fuck you to people who believe in the preposterous things that infest every religion. Walking on water? Resurrection? Virgin birth? Chicken feed! That’s primary school make-believe, that is. Try great big fucking flying spaceships and alien beings and volcanoes, you pussies! It really makes the other religions look like they just weren’t really trying when they came up with their creation myths.

Also, it’s like a great big finger of deranged lunacy that points helpfully at every single one of its hilariously credulous followers reminding us all to point and laugh every time they raise their heads above the parapet. Fucking idiots.

Ballboy – Essential Wear For Future Trips to Space

Item No3: Best Oddly Not Good Enough
Real Madrid, having won precisely bollocks all of any import for five years have finally won the league title in Spain. Fabio Capello, the man who guided them to this momentous triumph, has needless to say, been sacked immediately. Now, they didn’t win it in style, and Barca may have imploded spectacularly to clear the way, but sacked? Scolded, maybe. Told to do better, perhaps. But the first title in five years and he’s sacked – are these people on drugs? Well, high on their own galactic levels of vanity perhaps…

Midlake – Excited But Not Enough From back when they sounded just like Radiohead.

Item No4: Beware the Ghost Ducks
Yes, seriously. 30,000 rubber duckies were washed overboard when a particularly enthusiastic storm hit their container ship in the middle of the Pacific back in 1992. Due to the vagaries of global oceanic currents they circled, as a group, around the North Pacific for years until a misadventure with Arctic pack ice spat them out, bleached a deathly white, into the Atlantic early in the new millennium. After flirting with America’s Eastern Seaboard they are now caught in the Gulf Stream which should bring them en masse to the shores of Ireland, Cornwall and the Southwest later this year. Christ, you’d think you were mad, wouldn’t you. A 30,000-strong fleet of ghostly rubber duckies approaching your shores – it’d be terrifying!

Crash Test Dummies – How Does a Duck Know?

Makes all that boring shit about people dying in Iraq by the thousands and the increasingly militant stance of the Russian government and the slippery avoidance of any sort of accountability by Dick Cheney seem like no more than the hum of a distant bee, doesn’t it.