Well well well, this should be fun. And messy. And fun. But probably mostly messy, I should imagine.
I’ve booked out both floors of the Queen Charlotte Rooms down in Leith, so we are going to have two stages. The downstairs room will be with a full PA, with Jesus H. Foxx, Inspector Tapehead and Meursault playing. And the upstairs room will be a bit more acoustic, with Yusuf Azak, Rob St. John and The Savings and Loan. It won’t be entirely acoustic, but the room itself has no sound-proofing so we’ll have to keep things relatively quiet so we don’t get the Queen Charlotte Rooms in trouble.
Tickets are going to be limited to about 170 or so, so I guess it’s probably wise to buy them up in advance. There will be DJs too – probably myself for a bit, and I would imagine Michael H. Foxx, but if anyone’s specifically up for it then feel free to let me know and I am sure you can have a turn on the decks. Or CDs. Or iPods. Or whatever else you fancy I suppose.
And erm, that’s about it, really. Good bands, getting pished, and erm, I’d recommend taking Friday off work because it’s eagleowl’s party the next day and then Kid Canaveral’s after that. Sunday may need to be entirely slept through I imagine!
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Whee, back on the radio. And for some reason tonight’s playlist is going to consist of lots of pretty well-established artists. There is no reason for this at all, it just worked out that way when I was selecting the playlist.
Nevertheless, I find myself focussing so much on new music that the old stuff kinda gets neglected these days. I have actually stopped listening to my digital music collection for pleasure, and now only listen to vinyl when I am actually listening for the pure enjoyment of it. This isn’t an ideological stance against digital music, more a logistical one. The drive with all my music on is now upstairs, and I haven’t been arsed to set up a link to the stereo yet.
As per usual I will update the playlist live below as I go along, so feel free to chip in with any suggestions and comments and assorted smart-arsed remarks you might have.
1. Sleepy Horses – Lubbock Love Song
2. Paul Simon – Graceland
3. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Optimist vs the Silent Alarm
4. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Graceland
5. Paul Simon – Adios Hermanos
6. The Scottish Enlightenment – Necromancer
7. Jesus H. Foxx – Elegy for the Good Times
8. Droney Mitchell – An Empty House (Droney may actually be Rob St. John. Just perhaps.)
9. The Savings and Loan – Pale Water
10. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow
11. White Antelope – Silver Dagger
12. Saint Etienne – Like a Motorway
13. The Maladies of Bellfontaine – Black Biro
From about 9pm or so UK time we will have the live stream of the Savings and Loan house gig in the player on this post. I’ve put it below the jump because the player has a habit of slowing the whole page down, so click here to view. And if those fuckers try and advertise Maroon fucking 5 to you then I promise it is NOT my fault – it just comes with the basic UStream service and there’s fuck all I can do about it. Read the rest of this entry »
Before we get onto the tedious ritual of me listing good gigs every week and you ungrateful fuckers not going to any of them, I felt the need to share something quite special with you. I spent my entire weekend going through lists of blogs who might be interested in the music we release and building mailing lists of people who have bought things from the label in the past and so on and so forth, so it’s not been the most exciting weekend of our lives, I have to confess.
Consequently, by bedtime last night, having spent most of the previous forty-eight hours staring at a computer screen all I was really intellectually capable of was a bit of empty-headed cinema and an early night. Mrs. Toad tends to specialise in intellectually dormant movies, but I think it’s fair to say that this time she has pretty much excelled herself. I really don’t know how she can ever top this one: The Saint, starring (so to speak) Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue.
Anyone who has read the Simon Templar books, or even seen Roger Moore’s series as that character back before his Bond days, will know that this is light, genuinely entertaining fluff. There’s not much to it, but it has a certain style and is eminently enjoyable. By contrast, the movie was so bad it veered from train wreck to masterpiece and back every thirty seconds or so.
Elizabeth Shue takes, rather predictably, the Christmas Jones role of Nucular Physicist who has, it seems, invented Cold Fusion. She even hosts a presentation at Oxford where an undergrad (in a white coat, so you know she’s sciencey) asks what fusion actually is, presumably not having had to complete GCSE Physics in order to gain a place at university, unless of course she was a vet student or something who happened to be in the wrong lecture. Shue then holds aloft some sort of pickle jar with a glass coil inside it and explains that she just feels Cold Fusion to be possible, and that’s all the justification for this lecture we are given.
Apparently she has ‘a formula’. Because that’s what it takes to create a stable fusion reaction, a pickle jar and a formula, not a gigantic installation of state of the art engineering, apparently. She’s just got two hours of ‘figgerin’ left to do to figure out which order to put the bits of her equations in. Now, I may not know much about Nucular Physics but…
But in all honesty Shue is the least of your worries when watching this – she’ll look back on the script and cringe, but not particularly on her own performance. I suppose that’s the benefit of these one-dimensional, utterly implausible, hot-babe twenty-something lady scientist characters – they’re such ironclad stereotypes that you can’t really do much with them good or bad (assuming, Miss Richards, that you can at least pronounce the name of your allotted discipline correctly).
Anyhow, the real highlight of this two hour festival of toe-curling agony, was Val fucking Kilmer. The man is a legend. His character’s superpower was having no actual identity and being good at disguises, something which was accomplished so cartoonishly badly that every new persona made us cackle with horrified glee. The character in that clip above (don’t watch it all, I really don’t think you could take it) was pretty much the piece de resistance however.
He discovered that Shue’s character loved Byron (or something like that, I can’t remember) so decided that in order to seduce her he would need a character with an artistic soul. I can only imagine the howls of woe from all the charming, well-mannered Oxford scientists who had been trying to slip her the salami for the previous few years, when it turned out that all it took was one of the worst haircuts in cinematic history, a pair of hilarious leather pantaloons and a completely baffling choice of accents to get into the old dear’s knickers.
“Er, sir, the Chateau Latour is four hundred pounds per bottle.” “Very well, we’ll take two of them.” Zing!
Anyhow, after foiling the plans of the Russian energy magnate who created an energy shortage by stashing Moscow’s entire supply of fuel oil under his fucking house and then decided that the best way to take advantage of this shortage was by providing Cold Fusion power to the people of Russia, thus presumably negating his entire basis of power in an instant, rather than, say, just jacking up the prices of fuel oil and controlling supply to make his fortune and keep a political stranglehold on the country’s government, but I digress… Yes, so after this, Shue decides to give Cold Fusion to the world so she and Val can live happily ever after – once she’s spent the two hours necessary to figure out which way round her formulae go (something presumably not covered in the preceding years of research) in a back room at the American embassy in Moscow, that is.
Anyhow, those are some of the edited highlights, but really this film has to be seen to be believed. You have to be tough though, because I really don’t think many people could take it. Particularly the bit where Val’s hiding in the river in Moscow and the baddies looking for him conveniently fuck off for ten minutes so he can stumble to the shelter of the nearest block of flats, only to return (again, for no fathomable reason beyond evil ESP) five minutes later to resume the excitement of their narrow escape.
Anyhow, I’ll stop now. Please, please watch this for yourself, it really is the worst film I think I have ever seen, and considering the woman I married that really is saying something. Absolutely all of it is bad. All of it. Every line, every plot device, every character, every single premise, absolutely everything. Cold Fusion! In a pickle jar with a glass coil! It looked more like she’d brought her cuppa soup in the fucking thing, honestly.
Oh hang on, I was supposed to be talking about something else, wasn’t I…
A couple of splendid Glasgow bands are coming through to play at the newly re-opened Liquid Rooms. The re-decorating may be complete, but the sticky floor and smell of stale beer have apparently been lovingly preserved. Still, it was always a good venue to see bands, because the stage is high enough that you can always see, and the PA is really fucking loud. Look for the Twilight Sad to give it a good workout!
This’ll be a gorgeously Americana-flecked night of acoustic pop. Dan Mangan’s new album Nice, Nice, Very Nice is really, erm, very nice indeed (sorry, had to be done).
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Honeytrap are wild fun, and this will be my first chance to see Sebastian Dangerfield, but I’ve talked enough about this gig already, so you know what to expect by now – or at least you should. Tickets here.
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This is the first glimpse of The Savings and Loan in about five years, and probably the first proper one just about ever. Their debut album is out on Song, by Toad Records in early December, and they will be supported by The Last Battle, fielding a rather minimal lineup (it is our living room after all). We’ve sold about half the tickets already, and whilst you are likely to be able to get in on the night, it might be safer to buy tickets in advance from here. It would help us out if you did, anyway.
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Ohhh what jolly fun it’s been this week. Â Now I know why bands find it so hard to find booking agents: because it’s a shit job and no-one in their right mind would want to do it.
Then, just as I was hating promoters for all I was worth, I started into the organisation for all my own gigs that I had to book and suddenly developed a new-found sympathy for them too. Â So WHO IS TO BLAME FOR MY SHIT WEEK, THEN? Â I can’t think of anyone, it’s most frustrating.
Anyhow, I think I am now just about sorted for everything, so here are some announcements for you, so you can add all sorts of Toady nonsense to your calendars. Once again, I am putting all the label announcements into a Sunday Supplement so that the blog itself isn’t totally over-run with self-pimping during the week, which I am assuming would bore the shit out of everyone, myself included.
Inspector Tapehead Hooops Session was recorded by the lovely gentlemen from OLO Worms as part of their kind hospitality to our Tapeheady friends on their recent tour – thanks lads.
Cloud Sounds Song, by Toad Records Special seems, according to Ted, to have been purchased for the price of a pint when we were down in Manchester last weekend. Â It’s one of my favourite podcasts, and if you want to be even nicer, you could buy the first and thus far only (I think) Cloud Sounds Split 7″ – the song by Onions is worth it all by itself.
Peenko’s Scottish DIY Labels series features Song, by Toad this week. Â I am always impressed with quite how good I am at making myself sound like a total dickhead in so few words when it comes to these mini interview thingies. Â Ah well, we all need a talent of some sort I suppose, I was just hoping mine might be martial arts or a snappy dress sense or something like that instead.
All those gigs in full (more or less):
Honeytrap launch their new album Petrushka (Toad review here, listen in full and buy here), this Saturday at Medina. Â Jesus H. Foxx & Sebastian Dangerfield are also on the bill, and tickets can be purchased here. I was skeptical about Medina as a venue at first, but I was at an Acoustic Edinburgh show there during the Festival and really liked it – the atmosphere was ace, and I think this is going to be an excellent night. Â Doors will be kinda early though, because there’s a club night on after us, so don’t be too late.
Savings and Loan House Gig will be pretty much everyone’s first chance to see Song, by Toad Records’ latest ‘signing’ (if you can really call it that, which you can’t, honestly) before their album Today I Need Light comes out on 6th December. As it’s at our house and tickets are going steadily I would ask you to buy one in advance just so we have a reasonable idea of numbers in advance. Â You can get tickets here, and I have just confirmed a (very) stripped down set by The Last Battle will also be on the cards for the evening.
The Yusuf Azak Album Release Tour is being booked up slowly but surely. Â Turn on the Long Wire is every bit as good as I would have expected from Yusuf, and is out on the 15th November. Â There are album launch nights booked as part of a joint tour with Ethan Ash on the following nights:
Thursday November 25th, Cellar 35 in Aberdeen. Friday November 26th, Gambetta in Glasgow, with Jonnie Common. Saturday November 27th, The Roxy in Edinburgh, awaiting confirmation.
The first single from his album, Eastern Sun, will be out as a free download in a week’s time or so.
AND FINALLY, the Song, by Toad Records Christmas Party has been confirmed for Thursday 16th December at the Queen Charlotte Rooms in Leith. Â We’re going to have an electric stage downstairs headlined by the Savings and Loan, for whom this will also be their album launch, and an acoustic stage upstairs. Â I am working on the full lineup at the moment, so there will be more announcements to come about this soon enough.
Yes, finally, we have managed to coax the Savings and Loan’s debut album out of the bastards, and will be proudly releasing it at the very beginning of December this year.
I thought this was the band’s first ever gig, but the promiscuous fuckers have just informed me that it’s only their first in five years, not quite their actual first, so it won’t be as special a night as I first thought. Not bad though.
The Savings and Loan is Andrew Bush, formerly of Chemikal Underground favourites De Rosa amongst other things, and a friend of mine, Martin Donnelly. I think it was maybe three or more years ago, back when the blog was in its relative infancy, when I received an envelope at the door containing a single CD and not a word of explanation. Very few people even had my address at that point, so I was a little suspicious, but what gave the game away was that Martin credited his girlfriend with the cover photo. He only used her surname, but that name is distinctive enough that I was finally able to guess where the package had come from.
The EP they included was absolutely gorgeous (see the review I wrote at the time) and Martin and I shared a good couple of pints round the pub when Song, by Toad Records was a mere glint in my eye and pain in my wife’s arse, so in a sense this was supposed to be one of the first things we ever released.
Andrew and Martin decided however, once we really finalised plans to release the EP, that they wanted to take the start they had made and flesh it out into a full album. Whoever says that the album format is dead certainly hasn’t let many bands know. Anyhow, they’ve been poking away at this project for almost two years now, and now it is finally finished.
Compared to the EP there are a couple of the original tracks, a couple of re-recordings and a couple of new ones, so the lucky few who have actually heard and loved it will not be disappointed. And for those of you who know nothing at all about the band, I think you are going to be in for a treat.
As per usual with house gigs it will be BYOB, and all the money will go straight to the bands. It helps us enormously with planning if you buy tickets in advance as the place just isn’t that big, and this ticket link should be live any minute now.
Swallows is one of the songs which has been re-recorded for the new album, and I can’t really let any of that out of the bag just yet, so here’s a taster from that first EP for now.
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So, we are off to Eigg this weekend for the Fence Away Game. Â Being a gallant sort I booked tickets for Mrs. Toad as well, as I thought she would enjoy such a picturesque setting, but the grumbling noises emanating from my better half over the last week or so have suggested that she is planning on weaselling out at the last minute. Â Fucking typical, is all I can say.
Anyhow, this week’s podcast is the usual mixed bag of new stuff and old stuff, and also includes an expectation of the dubious concept of Mixtape Infidelity, as well as new tracks from Honeytrap, British Sea Power, Mount Erie, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Savings and Loan.
Please do not confuse this with the Eggcast, by the way. Â I know the names are awfully similar, but I only have a limited imagination and couldn’t be arsed thinking of anything more original.
01. Honeytrap – Roslin in a Cylon (00.17)
02. Mount Erie – I Whale (06.50)
03. Timber Timbre – Lay Down in the Tall Grass (15.17)
04. Wilmer Watts & the Lonely Eagles – She’s a Hard-boiled R0se (20.12)
05. British Sea Power – Zeus (27.30)
06. The Scottish Enlightenment – Drip Feed (36.22)
07. Grant Lee Buffalo – Crashing at Corona (45.45)
08. The Raincoats – Don’t be Mean (49.47)
09. The Savings and Loan – Pale Water (58.01.)
10. Neutral Milk Hotel – Snow Song Pt.1 (63.15)
I may only have lived in the Wiltshire village of Seend for about four or five months about ten years ago (seriously, ten?) but the fact that I had no job, nor was able to find one, meant that the music I listened to ended up with an extra resonance.
Apart from looking for jobs I didn’t know how to find, I spent an inordinate amount of time browsing through copies of Uncut magazine, back before it turned to shit, and buying albums based on how well I liked the songs they chose for their covermount CDs.
There are a couple of other songs on this podcast, but I think the memories of Seend (including my goal in a 3-2 victory, having been 2-0 behind at half time) are still surprisingly strong.
01. Meursault – Bulletproof (La Roux/Radiohead Cover) (02.52)
02.The Czars – Lullaby 6000 (09.19)
03. Hamell on Trial – Choochtown (20.30)
04. Lambchop – Bon Soir, Bon Soir (24.10)
05. The Savings and Loan – The Virgin’s Lullaby (31.09)
06. Phillistine’s Jr. – The Bus Stop Song (36.55)
07. Vado in Messico – Sisma (38.50)
08. Billy Bragg – Take Down the Union Jack (47.12)
09. Kevin Tihista’s Red Terror – Sucker (51.46)
10. Cinerama – Health and Efficiency (58.49)
I do try and avoid shilling for the label on this blog, because no-one wants to read a twice-daily sales pitch, but I reckon it’s okay to have a look forward at what we’ve got planned for the year. That’s what the new year is for, really, isn’t it?
So I’ve got a nice big release schedule drawn up, just like real record labels do, and honestly it scares the shite out of me. I can pretty much plan out my free time for the whole of the next twelve months just looking at it, but there are some great releases in there.
By the end of 2010 we are going to have a back catalogue to be bloody proud of, honestly, especially when you consider that we had only been a record label for about a month at this time last year.
That picture, incidentally, is a somewhat butchered (sorry Annie) version of one of four gorgeous photos on this blog taken of the two new Meursault 7″s.
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01. Trips and Falls – We Were Like Strangers Today (05.30)
02. Maxwell Panther – My Ex-Identity (09.02)
03. Cold Seeds – Leave Me to Lie Alone in the Ground (17.19)
04. Jesus H. Foxx – This is Not a Rental Car (26.43)
05. Animal Magic Tricks – Smallish Hooves (29.35)
06. The Savings and Loan – Virgin’s Lullaby (36.36)
07. Inspector Tapehead – Sugar on Your Sheets (40.02)
08. Loch Lomond – Holiday (48.25)
09. Meursault – What You Don’t Have (Live on Fresh Air Radio) (58.34)
10. Nightjar – Sweet Annie Lee (66.56)
Before you break out into a cold sweat about having to sit through another list of the best albums of the decade, don’t worry, this is not one of those. Although most of these songs would be there or thereabouts if I were actually compiling a favourite songs of the decade list, that’s not why they’re here.
Basically, rather than try and rank anything against anything else, all this is is a meander through the last ten years and me chattering about how my relationship with music has changed and what sort of stuff I was into at what times of my life.
Basically, this is the soundtrack to a perfectly normal, albeit enthusiastic, music fan’s descent into full-on deranged internet mania.
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01. Eels – A Daisy Through Concrete (04.09)
02. Goldfrapp – Pilots (10.04)
03. Grandaddy – The Crystal Lake (14.17)
04. Lift to Experience – To Guard and to Guide You (23.13)
05. Interpol – NYC (30.46)
06. Tom Waits – Kommienezuspadt (34.57)
07. The Decemberists – Red Right Ankle (40.41)
08. The Walkmen – The Rat (44.06)
09. The Mountain Goats – Dilaudid (51.20)
10. Broken Records – Lies (Demo Version) (57.07)
11. The Savings and Loan – Christmastime in the Mountains (64.11)
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