This week there will be fuck all happening in Edinburgh, or at least there better be, because I will be participating in none of it.  Apparently there’s some pagan bollocks going on at the end of the week related to a fat man and some reindeer, but I wouldn’t bother paying that too much attention if I were you.

Actually, there is the Christmas Songwriters’ Club down in Leith on Thursday which looks rather excellent.  I have been trying to buy tickets, but am finding WeGotTickets to be an unspeakable shitfest of password requirements and expired logins and all this other shite.  If you can manage that though, tickets are to be found here and I’d recommend it, because the lineup looks splendid.

Last week, however, was fucking spectacular.

The Song, by Toad Christmas Party was fucking excellent, if a little bit hectic (for us anyway, there was no evidence the audience really noticed).  Everyone came round straight after work, so we had no more than an hour and a half to set up two PAs and soundcheck six bands.  This, as many of you will know, is simply not possible.  Nevertheless, we seemed to get away with it entirely.

The Queen Charlotte Rooms was decked out to the nines in tinsel and fairy lights, and the whole affair was a ludicrous, brilliant shambles.  I was working a bit too much to properly let my hair down (one pint all night, one fucking pint!) but everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, and in general I can’t imagine a better way to close out what has been a rather dizzyingly dramatic year for all of us.

A massive thank you to everyone who came, and everyone who played. The Scotsman wrote us a five star review the very next day, and the Herald tried to, but apparently there was a mistake somewhere and we were robbed of two stars, dammit.  They are sorting this as we speak, I believe. Thanks to David Pollock and Nicola Meighan for the writeups.

Eagleowl’s Stars in Your Eyes was the following night at Pilrig St. Paul’s and, although I wasn’t there myself due to parental commitments, apparently I (and any of you who also rather foolishly neglected to attend) missed Neil from Meursault as Tranny Lennox, Jesus H. Foxx as Johnathan Richman, eagleowl as Talking Heads, and Broken Records as REM.  I dearly wish I had been able to go, but I am going to have to content myself with watching Milo’s video above, stolen from this post here, and sighing wistfully to myself.

By Saturday, Kid Canaveral’s Christmas Baubles was the final nail in my liver’s coffin.  I was DJing inbetween bands and, for all my combination of naff eighties hits, indie obscurata, and the odd inclusion of I Feel Pretty from West Side Story and Nothing Like a Dame from South Pacific, I have to confess I rather doubt that my contribution was at all significant.  I did, however, save everyone from a constant repeat of Now That’s What I Call Christmas 64 or whatever else they had on the stereo when I got there, so let’s not underplay it either.

In any case, it was a bloody brilliant night, and by the time I staggered home I think it is fair to say that the weekend had been officially seized.

Due to a hectic Saturday driving from Anstruther to Edinburgh to Glasgow and then back to Edinburgh and out again to Anstruther this is the last of the Haarfest video diaries.

I woke up with a proper fucking head on me, and went to sleep plastered at four or something after being ambushed by late night at the Smugglers on the way home.

Due to collecting Mrs. Toad from the station we ended up missing most of Meursault, although we did get there in time for a gorgeous version of Martin Kippenberger, helped greatly by Malcolm from eagleowl.  The Oates Field were good, and Withered Hand (new songs – NEW SONGS!) and FOUND (ditto!) were absolutely immense. And that beer they were serving all weekend, well…!

This is my video diary from the third day of the Fence Collective’s Haarfest 2010.

The power was so doubtful in morning that the people repairing it managed to shut down even more houses, so it wasn’t until about five or six that we were confident that the whole evening wouldn’t have to take place under steam or pedal power, but come back on it did, eventually, and things were able to proceed as normal.

The lineup switched around a bit, with eagleowl having to go on a little early because of babysitting commitments back in Edinburgh (yeah, rock ‘n’ roll, bitches!), so eventually Inspector Tapehead ended up headlining their own unofficial album launch at long last.

And it was a fucking beauuuutiful evening in Anstruther.

So, yes, in about five hours I will be officially unemployed – dosser or entrepreneur, whichever you prefer.  This is the last time I can skive off and write a post when I should actually be doing something else, because in future the writing of posts will actually be legitimate business.

I take the piss out of Proper Job, but contrary to what you might expect from someone changing careers entirely, I have always really enjoyed what I do.  I have always needed variety in my life, and as a kid I was never able to entirely abandon either my technical or my artistic interests, so product design engineering was a pretty perfect mix.  I’ve been doing this for ten years now, and it’s always been varied, engaging and enjoyable.  Those who know me a little better will know that I quite simply could not have forced myself to do anything for this long if I didn’t enjoy it.

The actual company I’m at now has been amazing, too.  I may not actually be Scottish, but there is a no-bullshit attitude here that I’ve found really refreshing.  No internal politics, no fannying about, no nonsense.  And for some inexplicable reason, considering how much work I’ve had to put into Toad things over the last few years, I’ve made it this far without actually being fired. So thanks guys, it genuinely has been fun.

So, yes, here we are and, quite legitimately, the question of ‘what next’ rears its head.  Well as I have had to point out to Mrs. Toad, who occasionally talks like she’s expecting to gain a housewife, I already have a full-time job to do, it’s just that now I get to do it during office hours instead of at four in the morning all the fucking time. So actually you might not notice much change from the outside.

The label, for example, is already at capacity.  The bands we are already working with are releasing enough material that we can’t really take anything else on.  Never mind my personal workload, we don’t have the budget for it, and I am a little worried that our press friends might start to tune out if we send them too much more stuff than we are at the moment.  There are a couple of things I want to do better, and I am going to have to learn to book tours, so that a couple of our new bands can start to play a little bit more far and wide, but in general not much is going to change.

Song, by Toad, on the other hand, needs work.  The podcasts and video have been doing incredibly well recently, but if I am being honest I would have to admit that the actual blog itself has been treading water for the last year, and that is a bad thing.  I never thought the label or the blog were anything like as interesting in isolation as they are together, but recently the label has very much dominated, and I would like to redress that balance if I can.

I want more interviews, more sessions, more video and more proper posts.  And by proper, I just mean things that take a little time and thought.  These things may not be the glamorous, hit-garnering work, but I think they are crucial if I want to be more than just a guy sitting in his pants firing any old nonsense out into the internets.  And let’s face it, I do.  I am not aiming to be big or famous, because this is always going to be niche, but I think there are opportunities out there at the moment and it would be nice to give things a bit of a push while they seem to be on the up.

The other thing which gets forgotten in all of this of course, is Mrs. Toad.  She has put up with this increasingly demanding project for several years now, and has not complained when I use all my holiday going to festivals, when I spend all my money on gettings CDs made, when I sit up every night until the small hours sending off promos, or when I invite people into her house constantly, either to plot or just to get plastered.  So we are hopefully going to get our evenings back, which I am really looking forward to.  As she said to me recently: ‘What was it like when you had free time – what did we actually do?’ And the truth is, I don’t remember.

So it’s not just that she is shouldering the financial risk for this, for reasons best known only to herself, but also that she has for the last few years tolerated a level of deranged commitment and intrusion that no-one else I can imagine would ever have put up with.  Simply, without her, there would be no Song, by Toad.

So in terms of what you guys see, though, things won’t change fast.  It’s going to take me at least a month just to get on top of the admin, frankly, and even then I am not looking to make any radical changes.  I just want to do more things better, more rigorously, and at a normal time of day.  But for now I am off to Glastonbury to get absolutely fucking wasted!

The Members – Goodbye to the Job

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Dead Kennedys – Take This Job and Shove It

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Yes, it’s that soon.  And it will be bloody good.  The Bowery is closing over the Festival to be taken over by the usual commerical shitfest which swamps any semblance of culture in this city during August, and next Saturday will be its last night until the Autumn so help us celebrate the amazing work they’ve put in this year in some style.

As it’s the Summer and is allegedly (stop sniggering in the cheap seats) going to be a good one for a fucking change I thought we could all dress in flowers to celebrate.  In fact, I thought it would be such a good idea that I am going to buy a shitload of weird flowery things from charity shops and make you wear them if you turn up without anything floral on your person at all.  So you’d better make an effort, if just to deprive me of the opportunity to embarrass you.

For the open mic bit at the beginning – strictly 7pm-8pm – we have some splendid treats lined up, including a couple of Meursault songs played entirely on the omnichord and a couple of other special musical treats I am currently still working on.  As per usual, if you want to take part in the open mic bit email me on the address shown on the contact page.

For the main bit we have the truly outstanding Yusuf Azak coming through from Glasgow.  I am trying to prize him away from a sexier and more glamorous record label and persuade him to release on Toad so you shower of bastards had better be nice to him.  And headlining, we are going to have Tommy and Ziggy from Found reprising their Toad Session set which they recorded a few weeks ago for us because it was bloody brilliant and I think lots of people should hear it if they possibly can.

So there you go, a finer evening’s entertainment you couldn’t possibly wish for, so get yer jacksies down to the Bowery next Saturday and watch me make a tit of myself because of too much gin once again.  You know it’s bound to happen.

Yusuf Azak – The Key Underground

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Haggard the Listener Group – Anti-Climb Paint

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