The Floydcast is named after that furry fuckwit in the picture: the Song, by Toad house cat and Mrs. Toad’s imbecilic companion of the last seven years. Last night we had him killed. I know you’re supposed to say ‘put to sleep’ or whatever, but when the poor wee fucker is looking plaintively at you because you’re the only person at the vet’s that he actually trusts it really does feel like execution.
We think he had lung cancer of some form or other. His lungs had clouded up, the vet had tried more or less every trick they could, and he was still battling for every breath. In the end we had him put down because his poor wee lungs were so fucked that even in the off chance we could have found what was wrong and put it right, he would still have been limping his way through what remained of his life on half a gulp of breath.
Anyhow, as much as a nuisance as I found the wee bastard I really will miss his idiotic presence, capering about the house like an arse and getting in the way whenever you try and do anything. He would come and sit in my lap when I was trying to write this and try and lick my fingers as I typed, and that’s the least of it. Fucking pain in the arse, he was. And I really, really will miss the wee fucker.
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.
It’s a busy week this week, and actually I am quite happy with this fact. Sometimes busy weeks of gigs feel like a forest of looming obligations, but I don’t think there’s anything I feel any real guilty pressure to attend this time around, so this week may for once be assigned to fun and fun alone.
Having delivered a shitty Summer, Edinburgh is doing its usual trick of starting Autumn brilliantly. It is cold now, but the sun has been dazzling, leaving me wondering why I didn’t spend more time in the garden this Summer. The answer, of course, is because it was constantly pishing rain.
I am actually going to miss anything, however interesting, taking place at the end of the week because I am off to Eigg (an island, for you non-Scots) for the Fence Collective’s rather brilliant-sounding Away Game. I won’t tease you too much about that though, as tickets have long since sold out.
I am as keen to hear Rob St. John’s new stuff as I am to hear Diane Cluck for the first time, I have to confess. Either way though, it’s a win-win situation for me. I just have to be careful not to let the Wee Red Bar’s primary school time constraints catch me by surprise as I have done in the past.
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Wave Pictures and Herman Dune pal Darren Hayman is touring, I think, in support of his latest album with the Secondary Modern, Essex. Both Gordon and Dan are friendly, charismatic performers and this comes across particularly strongly in a solo acoustic setting, so I would imagine this will be one of the most ‘lovely cup of tea’ gigs you’ll see in a while.
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The Scottish Enlightenment are launching their new EP this evening (title track below, for all you naughty downloaders of pirate material from the internet – shame on you!), all of which is a painstakingly crafted strategic buildup to their album release later in the year, and subsequent unstoppable ascent to world domination. This is not as accessible as their previous Pascal EP, at least not immediately anyway, but after a few more listens I think it might be every bit as good.
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I think this is actually Zoobizaretta’s album launch, but I don’t really know them at all and so, no disrespect intended, I kinda think of this as the first chance to catch Loch Awe. Yep, their first ever gig. Now, they sent me through their debut EP (which you can download from their Bandcamp link above) and although I am not sure if it’s quite ready for wider consumption yet (most of the Edinburgh bands I love were going for a good few years before I bumped into them and fell in love with their stuff, so this is a pretty normal thing, I think), there are still some great moments on it. Darling, Your Lover in particular is one of those songs which brought me back in from the next room to listen to. I am not sure what it is about it, but it’s a song I definitely find compelling for some reason, and that’s the magic ingredient I suppose.
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Firstly, the flurry of posts yesterday, from my rather tardy podcast to radio show post, meant that my brother’s Sunday Supplement – a rant about classical music – was buried rather too fast, so please do go back and check it out if you have a little time to waste this afternoon.
Secondly, the Edge Festival goes bloody nuts this week, and if I listed all the gigs then I’d be here all day, and there really is no need for that, so you can have it in paragraph form instead: on Monday 23rd we have Field Music at Sneaky Pete’s and Bear in Heaven at Electric Circus (late). Tuesday sees The Phantom Band at the Electric Circus, Wednesday Eels at the Picturehouse and Thursday Mark Lanegan at the Liquid Room (who have finally got a website worthy of the name). Friday is quiet, and then on the weekend we have Harlem at Sneaky Pete’s on Saturday and Modest Mouse at the Picturehouse on Sunday. All these things you can Google yourselves if you are interested, and there is more info on the Edge site, here.
When it comes to more homegrown things, however, there is still plenty on this week, a good deal at the reassuringly active Bristo Hall – a really nice space which doesn’t get used as often as it might.
This might well be a late one (11pm-3am) so check it out before you go or you’ll be totally fucking wasted by the time the first band comes on. I haven’t heard much from the Chunks for a while, as I believe they’ve been recording, so it would be rather cool if there were some new material here to be enjoyed. There’s quite some distance covered from Sara & the Snakes’ swampy, bluesy garage stuff, the Chunks’ ramshackle whateverthefuckitistheyplay, and the Leg, who are so good they makes themselves sick down themselves (or so I hear anyway, because I have yet to see them live, for shame).
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This is a big lineup selected by Foxgang for their Festival Special. Given the reluctance of local promoters to do anything at all during the festival (and I have every sympathy – I do the same) it is good to see these guys putting on their own showcase. Highlights for me would be the indie-pop of Sebastian Dangerfield, and Glaswegian indie pair Washington Irving and French Wives, from Instinctive Raccoon.
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These are two of the original Song, by Toad bands, in a certain sense. Both now have labels and albums and careers, dammit, and it’s weird. With debut albums fairly well in the rearview mirror I would imagine that there will be a fair amount of new material on show here, although I know Broken Records don’t want to ruin the surprise for when their second album comes out later in the year. Their new stuff sounds a lot more layered and guitary and a lot less folky than their earliest material, and I am deeply curious about the new record.
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A free download sampler featuring a large number of the bands playing can be downloaded from here, if you’d like a bit of a preview. Other than that, take it from me, this is going to be the highlight of the Edinburgh gig calendar, no exceptions – full details here, and I reckon you should probably buy tickets in advance (weekend – Saturday – Sunday) too as I doubt there will be too many left on the door.
Recorded for you from the sunny, blazing hot mountains of Andalucia, this one is a little late being uploaded because we only just got back to Scotland and I decided I might as well wait until we got home before uploading it rather than charge all around Spain trying to find somewhere to upload from and then sitting around for ages waiting for the damn thing to… well, you get the picture.
I actually spent much of the week editing Toad Session videos, which seems just a tiny little bit pathetic, even to me. Still, editing video whilst sat on the terrace with a beer, overlooking spectacular valley scenery isn’t exactly a hardship, but nevertheless, a holiday should be a bit more holiday-y than that I suppose.
I also think I may have happened to accidentally teach Mrs. Toad’s oldest friend’s kids some truly fucking appalling language too. Honestly, who lets a retard like me anywhere near kids?
01. The Japanese War Effort – Summer Sun Skateboard (02:20)
02. Benni Hemm Hemm – Shipcracks (06:15)
03. Hobart Smith & Texas Gladden – Down in the Willow Garden (13.39)
04. Blind Willie Johnson – I’m Gonna Run to the City of Refuge (16.24)
05. The Beach Boys – Sloop John B (21.02)
06. Sebastian Dangerfield – The Sycamore Tree (24.49)
07. Animal Magic Tricks – Heavenly Bodies (30.57)
08. Keaton Henson – Oliver Dalston Browning (36.27)
09. Fists – Ace is the Way (40.23)
10. Honeytrap – Little Johnny Winter (45.02)
Sometimes pretend people (ie you, because you’re on the internet) can be so much better than real ones. I can explain to my parents that the reason I have neglected them for the last little while is because I have spent most of the last week gazing at the white lines on a motorway, driving Loch Lomond around the UK for their first UK mini-tour, but deep down they’ll probably still be miffed that I haven’t called, written, emailed, or anything at all for about two weeks.
You, on the other hand, have such a rich and varied internets to entertain you that you probably barely even noticed, you heartless fucking bastards. Honestly, internet fuckers can be so cruel sometimes.
Fortunately, not much seems to be happening until later on in the week this week, leaving me a couple of days to re-gird my thoroughly dis-girded loins before it all kicks off again. My brain, honestly, is melting.
This is a crazily good lineup, with Instinctive Raccooners Washington Irving releasing their new EP with support from Sebastian Dangerfield, who are probably the band in Edinburgh I am most interested in considering I have yet to actually see them play. They do nothing more clever than wistful indie-pop songs, but from what I have heard they do them very well indeed. Added to these two is a pair of bands from Toronto, one of whom – Octoberman – I have been following for quite some time and am really rather surprised to see them turn up here. Very pleasantly surprised of course, but surprised nonetheless!
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I have not been to a single Versus gig yet, and I am not going to make this one either. Dave and Ted would be forgiven for thinking I hate their night but nothing, honestly, could be further from the truth – just look at the Cold Seeds album. With a couple of Toad favourites on the bill in Yusuf Azak and The Japanese War Effort, this one promises to be an unusual addition to a fine tradition.
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Not sure why I listed this one actually, because I am hardly a massive fan of the Damned. Still, there are a good few songs of theirs which I like and, honestly, it just looks like it might be good fun.
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The Go Away birds are part Zoey Van Goey, and partly the lass who sang the lead on that Stuart Murdoch (Belle & Sebastian) project God Help the Girl a year or so ago. This stuff is very pretty indeed.
I am writing this week’s post from a dining room in Ealing, where I have come to visit my parents, and also to pretend to be a proper record label for a couple of days – courting publishers and getting European releases and tours sorted out and that sort of thing. Â It’s kind of fun, and sort of weird in a sense. Â It’s also strange explaining to my folks that this is actually what I do in my spare time, too.
Anyway, due to the incomparable glories of the internet age that should be no impediment to me shamelessly insisting that you do what I tell you this week, when it comes to entertainment.
Oh, and my friend Billy has written an article for The Line of Best Fit about the Scottish music scene. Â In it he tells us what I tell every band we work with – that it’s all well and good to play comfortable venues back home surrounded by people who you already know like your music, but if you want to make any kind of breakthrough you’ve got to get out.
Of course, I have no objection to working with bands who don’t want to do this, but I always tell them that if that’s the case they’ll have to accept that this will make it very challenging indeed to make any kind of impact on a wider audience, but if they can accept that then so can I.
Chew Lips are awfully fashionable and have haircuts and everything, but of course that doesn’t always have to mean that a band aren’t good. Â In this case, I’ll confess to being a little ambivalent, but curious. Â I was tipped off about the band a little over a year ago, but I didn’t end up writing about them because for all I kind of liked it, I wasn’t all that convinced.
They’ve gone from strength to strength however, and their album looks very upmarket, and frankly I’m curious to see what they’re up to these days and whether or not I might like them any better than I did before. Â And it’s very good to see My Tiny Robots back playing again.
This one actually looks like being really good. Â I don’t know much about Andrew Vincent, but his MySpace page sounds rather promising, and after months of prevaricating I finally put Sebastian Dangerfield on a podcast just this week. Â So this is one of those ‘curious’ sorts of gigs – the bands sound good, but I know very little about them, and so this lineup sounds rather intriguing.
Lots of very Toad-friendly bands (Foxxes, Broken Records, etc..) are peforming at this one, but it’s not going to be a gig per se. Â Actually, I’ve not much idea what it’s going to be like, but the publicity material describes something like an multi-disciplinary art exhibition, with the stated goal of being “more party than gallery”, where visual artists, musicians and so on all interact and try and do something a bit different. Â Sounds brilliant to me, frankly.
Charities seem to put on some of the best gigs in this city, and Sick Kids Sunday is no exception. Â Held at the GRV (who are thankfully, finally getting their pretty enough but practically useless website updated) this one has all sorts of good stuff in the lineup, from Meursault to James Yorkston and Adrian Crowley performing the songs of Daniel Johnston.
This podcast is slightly kinda somewhat about about the myopia of the London media, in particular as to how it pertains to Scotland and Scottish music, and slightly about the Glasgow media. There are a number of different triggers for this, starting with this article in the Scotsman’s Under the Radar blog last year about the rejection by the editor of a London glossy of an article on four up-and-coming Scottish bands, made even more offensive by the fact that said editor had requested the damn article in the first place.
Of course, anyone who reads the London glossies knows they don’t half cover an awful lot of shite themselves, so they really are in no position to pass judgment, but these things are about personal taste at the end of the day and you really can’t force anyone to like stuff.
Then of course there was a wee bit of chatter about the Glasgow focus of the media in Scotland – like an endless set of Russian dolls, this kind of thing really can go on forever – particularly focussed on the remarkable Glasgow-centrism of The List’s Hot 100 list and then some stupid woman on BBC radio sneering at the Edinburgh music scene despite knowing no more of Glasgow than Mogwai or Franz Ferdinand.
So yes, there’s a bit of that going on as well, but for the most part it’s surprisingly non-confrontational given the level of annoyance I felt with both the BBC lady and the List list at the time.
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01. James Yorkston – A Man of My Skills (04.26)
02. Frightened Rabbit – The Greys (10.22)
03. Orange Juice – Blue Boy (16.02)
04. The Pogues – Rake at the Gates of Hell (18.53)
05. Fang Island – Life Coach (27.56)
06. Her Name is Calla – Long Grass (30.51)
07. Fire Engines – Get Up and Use Me (37.59)
08. Last Battle – Ward 119 (47.44)
09. Sebastian Dangerfield – Morris (49.53)
10. Sigur Ros – Gong (58.05)
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