I managed to miss last week’s Fresh Air show because… well I somehow failed to realise that the bloody station was back on the air, which is spectacularly dumb. This week I present Toad and Ruth’s Toad and Ruth Show With Toad and a Little Bit Less Ruth Than Usual, or indeed any Ruth at all because the lovely herself can’t make it tonight, so you will be treated to the wonderful pleasure of listening to me burble on to myself about tunes and stuff and stuff and some tunes and then probably some more stuff just to cap it off.

Live on Air 8.30pm-10pm – Listen live here.

01. Langhorne Slim – I Love You, But Goodbye
02. Saint Etienne – Nothing Can Stop Us Now
03. The Left Banke – Evening Gown
04. Bettye Swann – Don’t Look Back
05. Lee Dorsey – My Old Car
06. The Scottish Enlightenment – All Homemade Things
07. Super Adventure Club – Hip Hop Hot Pot Pot Noodle
08. Sam Amidon – Fiddle Mayhem (Toad Session)
09. The Shaggs – What Are Parents
10. Nico Muhly – The Only Tune
11. Phil & the Osophers – Uses of a Man
12. David Tattersall – The Old Family
13. Grandaddy – Fuck the Valley Fudge
14. Elvis Perkins in Dearland – I Heard Your Voice in Dresden
15. Songdog – Obediah’s Waltz

Next week we have the splendid Loch Lomond live in session, and to tide you over until then the videos from Mammoeth’s session on the show are below the jump.  The tracklisting for tonight’s show will appear below live as we go along, and feel free to heckle in the comments.

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A commenter recently suggested that I was making pale, interesting indie chicks something of a theme on this website, so I would like to bring that to a mental finale with post. When Mrs. Toad and I were in Portland were the beneficiaries of the most fantastic hospitality of Matt from Bladen County Records. Amongst all the amazing things he did for me was to pass on a couple of DVDs worth of things he thought I should listen to, including this gem of genuine mentalism.

To cut and paste directly from their Wikipedia entry:

The conceptual beginning of The Shaggs came from Austin Wiggin, Jr.’s mother. During Austin’s youth she had predicted during a palmreading that he would marry a strawberry blonde woman, that he would have two sons after she had died, and that his daughters would form a popular music group.

Given the first couple of predictions came true, apparently in about 1968 he forcibly set about making the last one come true. In fact it sounds perilously close to suggesting that he chained them up in the basement until such time as they wrote enough songs for an album. The results are, erm, well… The results. They’re interesting, that’s for sure. One more quote from Wiki:

Reportedly, during the recording sessions the band would occasionally stop playing, claiming one of them had made a mistake and that they needed to start over, leaving the sound engineers to wonder how the girls could tell when a mistake had been made.

Or, better:

Upon closer examination, The Shaggs seem to have a consistent (but highly idiosyncratic) approach to melody, harmony, and rhythm. The songs use highly irregular verse structures, which are emphasized by the melodic structures, which typically accord one note per syllable: the guitar accompaniment attempts to reproduce this pattern as well. Most of the Shaggs material is made up of eighth- and quarter-notes.

Which is an amazing way of rationalising the fact that they have not the tiniest, most miniscule sliver of musical aptitude whatsoever. You could stamp on a guitar, tie it to an octopus and push it down the stairs and it would have more rhythmic structure than this.

It’s erm… well, just listen. And never mention pale, interesting indie chicks to me again.

The Shaggs – Philosophy of the World
The Shaggs – Sweet Thing
The Shaggs – My Pal Foot Foot
The Shaggs – I’m So Happy When You’re Near

Website | Buy the album (no, seriously)