Song, by Toad

Instead of being at a friend’s stag do in Berlin I am stranded in Edinburgh.  Even more frustrating, this stag do was going to involve going to a football match and indie clubs instead of strip bars and nightclubs, so would almost certainly have been excellent fun.  Given my general terror of stag nights, I was actually rather looking forward to this one.

I actually didn’t bother to have a stag do, largely because I couldn’t be bothered, but also I have never had enough of a predominance of male friends to make it seem anything other than awkward.  Contrary to the suspicions of the feminists I have outraged on these pages, I have always got along very well with women in general.  Presumably this is because I tend to judge people entirely on whether they irritate the shit out of me or not, so despite being an offensive bastard, I’m not all that prejudiced really.  So erm, how do you decide to head off with all your male pals and leave the women behind, especially when, like myself, you would have no intention of doing anything especially blokey in the first place.

My brother had an excellent stag do actually (more of that later), and Mrs. Toad got absolutely wrecked with her family and ended up dancing around the kitchen with her sister-in-law and niece bellowing pop classics into mop-head microphones.  There are pictures and no, no they aren’t good.

The reason I am not in Berlin an hammered off my tits at this precise moment in time is because we are having something of a mental panic at Proper Job, motivated by our most incredible client.  They should give up on medical devices and turn their attention to a perpetual motion machine, because the sheer inexhaustible power of their knee-jerking just never seems to run out.  It’s not even a complicated product, but there you go.  The decision paralysis that descends upon large groups of people is a powerful force indeed.

Ach, so take pity on me and de-lurk.  Last weekend lots of new London people de-lurked at the Meursault shows and said hello, which was rather nice.  And just last night Jesus H. Foxx de-lurked as well, opening their new blog to the public, where they are going to post news on the recording of their new album as well as demos and works in progress from the recording sessions, so I recommend you keep an eye on that one.

1. Ideal stag/hen do.
2. Stag/hen do from hell (anecdotal or imaginary).
3. Most dubious place you’ve ever allowed a partner to go, unsupervised.
4. Marriage: is there really any point (this is not a loaded question; I am married myself, remember, and I still don’t think I have an answer).
5. Proportion of your life you’ve known your current/last partner.

Billy Bragg – The Marriage

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Tom Waits – Better off Without a Wife (Yes, I know I always play this one.)

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Mark Lanegan – Wedding Dress

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Clem Snide – Forever, Now & Then

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Snow Patrol – Make Love to Me Forever

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I recorded this podcast marooned in the middle of France at my parents’ house, with no more musical resources than the compilation CDs I’ve been taking them constantly since I left home. It was quite weird to poke through all the old songs I’ve sent home over the years, actually.

There’s something unavoidably honest about the mixes you make for other people. Look back on the year or the decade yourself and you apply hindsight, selective memory and all sorts, but if you look at the stuff you send to other people then you don’t get the chance to quietly forget the shite because it looks a little unfashionable in hindsight.

Of course, due the benefits of hindsight and making sure I save face I am not playing you any of the shite because my ego is fragile and couldn’t stand the mockery if I told you the absolute and honest truth. So here is a version of the music I used to send to my parents, handily sanitised so I don’t make a total tit out of myself.

Right, happy Christmas, I’m off to watch Back to the Future…

Toadcast #101 – Boxing Day

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01. Sparklehorse – Eyepennies (02.48)
02. Evan Dando – Hard Drive (11.57)
03. Jay Farrar – Fool King’s Crown (14.57)
04. Lucky Jim – You Stole My Heart Away (21.31)
05. Mark Lanegan – Wedding Dress (29.39)
06. Grand National – Boner (32.34)
07. Arizona Amp & Alternator – Baby, it’s Cold Outside (41.29)
08. The Zincs – Finished in This Business (46.50)
09. Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel (54.10)
10. Tom Waits – The Part You Throw Away (61.23)

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.

Toadcast #99 – The Decade

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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)

Hello again, Ruth and I are back on air tonight on Fresh Air, Edinburgh’s student radio station.  As per usual we’ll be having some live session stuff, this time from The Japanese War Effort.  Jamie is a bit of a band-whore actually, and plays in the Occasional Flickers and Conquering Animal Sound as well as ploughing his own solo furrow.  It’s this stuff, however, which is my favourite.  I haven’t much idea what it will sound like, stripped back to the extent that it will need to be in order to be played in the Fresh Air studio, but I am certain that it will be good.

The tracklisting will be filled out below live as we go along, and it would be nice if you would use the comment thread to chip and have your say during the show.  Believe me, it’s a hell of a lot easier than me trying to man Facebook, Twitter and bloody emails all at the same time as working the desk in the studio and the camera to record the session.  Still, Ruth’s back this week and so I should be a little calmer this time than last!

On air 7pm-8.30pm GMT – Listen live here.

Tonight’s playlist:
1. Tom Waits – The Part You Throw Away (Live in Edinburgh, July 2008)
2. The Cave Singers – Belmar
3. The Japanese War Effort- Winning Eleven (Live in Session)
4. Dan Mangan – Robots
5. The Silver Columns – Brow Beaten
6. The Japanese War Effort – Lanark (Live in Session)
7. Yusuf Azak – The Key Underground
8. Rob St John – December & Whisky (Live at the Retreat Festival)
9. Doveman – Angel’s Share
10. Hudson Mohawke – Fuse
11.. Helen Love – Debbie Loves Joey
12. Tune Yards – Hap-B
13. The Japanese War Effort – Face Like A Lemon – Ivor Cutler Cover (Live in Session)
14. Bruce Springsteen – Born in the U.S.A (Nebraska Sessions Version)
15. Japanese War Effort – Punk’s Not Dead (Live in Session)
16. Leonard Cohen – Lover Lover Lover

Here is the podcast of last week’s session with the excellent Candythief, along with the session tracks and video of the performances, after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s disaster theme came from a conversation I had with Blueback Birthday Boy Dylan last night, but for the life of me I can’t remember how we got onto the subject of total cock-ups.  I was DJing later though, so maybe that had something to do with it.

Actually, I know I’ve had an uneasy relationship with DJing in the past, but last night’s effort was brilliant fun.  It’s all rather dependent on the occasion with me – too much of a dancefloor and it doesn’t suit the general miserablism I’m into, whereas if it’s supposed to be background music then my stuff can be a bit weird at times as well.  Last night was spot on though.

The event was a Oxfam night at Born to Be Wide in the Speakeasy at the Voodoo Rooms.  The basic premise was that the DJs (myself, Jane from the Bowery and Jamie from the Oxfam music shop in Stockbridge) would go into Oxfam, pick out a pile of vinyl, and then if people liked what they heard they could buy it on the spot.  We did really well, too, I think – certainly I saw about twenty or thirty records get sold, which is good going if you ask me.

The benefit of that kind of charity shop DJing is straightforward: your choice is really restricted.  So I went through the old jazz stuff and picked out a load of that, from the really early stuff to the likes of Piaf and Billie Holiday through to big band swing.  I did look for some blues actually, after Craig’s sterling efforts on last week’s podcast, but there was absolutely none.  Really, none at all, not even nasty eighties blues, which was sort of odd.  Presumably people don’t find their old blues records as disposable as their old jazz ones.

Anyway, I went from a couple of swing versions of Crazy ‘Bout My Baby (classic!) and I Want to Be Like You into Goldfinger by Shirley Bassey, then some Johnny Cash.  That brought on a bit of a country spell, with Willie Nelson and something of a childhood classic of mine: Me and Bobby McGee by Kris Kristofferson.  My dad would have been so proud.

Anyway, then it was Michelle Shocked, Cat Stevens, Bennie & the Jets by Elton John and then into the likes of Squeeze, The Jam and Ian Dury.  I finished it off with Modern Love by Bowie and a spin of A Few Kind Words by Meursault, at which point some hammered fellow came staggering over saying ‘Oh this is brilliant, I’m having this, I love this one, it’s..  it’s…   ah, it’s by I don’t know.. it’s…  but it’s fucking brilliant.’  Weird.  But fun.

I like that kind of DJing because you’re so restricted that the eclecticism becomes a real positive, you can play whatever the hell you like, and it just makes it better; you can play swing, Willie Nelson, Elton and Half Man Half Biscuit as part of the same set without anyone batting an eyelid.  And Jane, it has to be said, was just as bad: the theme to Flash Gordon, Laurie Anderson, Jerry Lee Lewis, moog versions of pop hits, Donna Summer.  All in all a splendid night – good work Olaf!

1. Worst DIY disaster.
2. Stupidest thing you’ve said on a first date.
3. Total cooking failure.
4. Stupidest thing you’ve said to your boss.
5. Comedy falling down moment.

Jacques Brel – L’age Idiot

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Grandaddy – Broken Household Appliance National Forest

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Frank Sinatra – Somethin’ Stupid (With Nancy Sinatra)

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Andrew Bird – Natural Disaster

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Tom Waits – Falling Down

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Mrs. Toad and I went out for dinner last night and I mentioned the fact that I have now been in Edinburgh for over four years – the longest I’ve lived anywhere since I left Vienna in 1987 after six years.  That’s weird, really, because I kind of moved here by accident.  Certainly I didn’t have it even in the back of my mind to move here back in 2003 when we first started seeing each other (we met in 1991, but that’s a different story).

At that point I had just divested myself of a particularly tenacious ex-girlfriend and was working at a pretty shite company in London and really had no ties at all.  Basically, if I hadn’t accidentally got hammered and ended up in bed pawing enthusiastically at a tolerantly indifferent yet-to-become-Mrs. Toad, the chances are very good that I would have ended up somewhere foreign, quite probably in East Asia somewhere.

I am an industrial designer by trade, and judging by some of the unutterable guff coming out of China I could actually have had an extremely healthy and well-paid career out there by this point.  Actually, fuck it, my career over here is actually pretty respectable anyway, it’s only because I am so focussed on music at the moment and because Mrs. Toad makes so much more than I do that I sometimes forget that fact.

I went to gigs down South, and I’d started writing about music online, but not to anything like this extent.  I was a designer who fannied about with web stuff occasionally, not a musical muppet whose day job required monumental amounts of patience to tolerate his extra-curricular distractions.

So yes, it turns out that never mind her tolerance for all the work I put into this nonsense and her funding for my errant ideas, just meeting Mrs. Toad had a massive influence on the very existence of this website.  Primarily I suppose because the dull, domesticated, middle class existence into which I was lured required me to find something to go a bit mental about because the other option was a mortal dose of cabin fever.  Pick your madness.

1. Go back five or ten years, make some particular decision differently, and what would you be?
2. Which apparently trivial change has made the most difference to the rest of your life?
3. Where was the shortest time you actually lived anywhere properly?
4. Say you’re the Time Bandits*.  Where would you choose to interfere?
5. You have regression therapy… who were you in your previous life?

Tom Waits – Anywhere I Lay My Head

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Burl Ives – Wayfaring Stranger

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Willard Grant Conspiracy – The Trials of Harrison Hayes

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The Flatlanders – Going Away

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Supergrass – Moving

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*

Late last week Dylan was trying to be a smart arse by once again reminding everyone of a joke he found extremely funny about nine months ago but which everyone else forgot more or less within half an hour.  That joke?  Bringing some ASDA Smart Price Gin to our Christmas party (first Saturday in December, for those of you planning that far ahead).  Because I like gin, you see.  Nice gin.  Like Tanqueray.  And this was cheap and rough.  Ha ha.  See?  Get it?  Yes, that’s what I thought too.  Hilarious.

What he ended up doing though, in looking for a picture of this foul fluid, was stumbling across a blog called Gin and Crumpets which is fucking brilliant.  It’s about gin and food and restaurants and gin and cakes and gin, so you can see the obvious appeal.  And, having crashed her party with our Christmas-party-shitty-gin-related shenanigans it then, in a magnificent coincidence, turns out that Ms. Gin & Crumpets herself is actually a fan of the Edinburgh DIY music scene.  Which is weird.  But great.  And weird.

Anyhow, pop along and read the blog.  I am handily linking to the gin section, but there’s a lot more to it than that: the turn of phrase is brilliant, the photos are oddly artless and still somehow gorgeous.  And in general it is just a nice place.  There are other reasons for mentioning it of course, and those reasons are in the title of the blog itself: gin, and of course crumpets.

Firstly, I feel like I owe gin an apology.  Neil and I drank a bottle of Caol Ila and a bottle of Ardbeg between us on Sunday night and, apart from the brain-crushing hangover, I felt rather grubby the next day: like I’d cheated on a lover who had nurtured me through years of heartache.  Do not worry, my juniper mistress, I may have dallied for an evening, but you are still my true love.  Fear not, for you have not been abandoned.

Secondly, there are the crumpets.  I fucking love crumpets.  Growing up in Austria you simply do not get crumpets, so when we came to England to visit my English grandparents (the others are Dutch-Canadian) I remember watching cricket, Wimbledon, Neighbours and eating crumpets.  I still rarely ever eat crumpets now, but for some reason they seem like the ultimate treat: toasted to the point of becoming slightly crispy on the top, but still soft in the middle, and drenched in so much butter it could stop your heart from across the room.  There were a few oddly nostalgic things about visiting England in those days, stuff like digestive biscuits with cheddar and apples or beans on toast – things we just couldn’t get at home – but crumpets were then and remain one of my favourites.

And that, is pretty much that.  Don’t know what brought that aimless ramble on, but there you go.  It can’t be insightful, cutting edge cultural commentary every day, you know.

The Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club – Ban the Gin

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Tom Waits – Gin Soaked Boy

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Helloooo people.  This morning the Toadcast comes to you from Leith.  There were beers and there was a fuckload of incoherent rambling, and it ran way over time but, erm, who really cares?

This week I went to visit my crippled friend Steven (v? ph?) Kearney in Leith and we recorded a podcast in his house prattling on about all the usual nonsense.  He got all jumpy about sound quality, omitting to notice the fact that the Toadcasts are the most incredibly badly recorded show on the interwaves.  Honestly, why would this week be the one single week it suddenly didn’t sound like shit?

Still, Steven has recently started his own podcast, leading on from his Fresh Air show Dylan and the Mule.  It’s only one episode down, but it sounds very promising indeed, so with a bit of luck there could be very good things coming from that part of the world this year.  Me, I just desperately need a sleep.  Night night Toadlings.

I will probably be gawping at the wonderful Cybraphon by the time you read this.  With a hangover.

Toadcast #81 – The Mulecast

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01. Withered Hand – No Cigarettes (06.56)
02. Buster Fantastic – Mess of Me (17.57)
03. Mountain Goats – Genesis 3-23 (19.47)
04. Kill It Kid – Send Me an Angel Down (29.07)
05. Joe Cocker – Dear Landlord (33.51)
06. Loch Lomond – Blood Bank (44.52)
07. Micah P. Hinson – Don’t You Forget (Parts 1 & 2) (59.24)
08. The Palace Flophouse – Until My Lungs Hurt (64.52)
09. Tom Waits – A Little Rain (78.17)

When we were out in Italy on our holidays Mrs. Toad and I had very few CDs with us but one of them was an Uncut compilation of prison blues and murder ballads which, amazingly, given the very promising subject matter, really wasn’t very good.  In fact, it was rotten, so I’ve made a podcast based on the self same concept, but with what I personally think are vastly better songs.

Most  obviously, to my mind, there were very few contemporary songs in there, and I thought that was a little weird.  Now, I actually think that the level of political commentary in popular music is just a little weak at the moment, but there are nevertheless some amazingly good prison and criminal justice-related songs to be had, and certainly some exceptional murder ballads, although I must confess that the most recent bit of genuine social commentary here pre-dates the 1990s by a couple of years.  There was probably more recent material I could have used, it just didn’t spring to mind at the time I’m afraid.

So here we have the Jailcast, complete with some largely incoherent ranting about politics and my own stupid fucking jail story which Mr.s Toad takes such delight in sniggering about at every available opportunity, the bitch.  It’s not that exciting, really it isn’t.

Toadcast #80 – The Jailcast

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01. Tom Waits – Jockey Full of Bourbon (02.05)
02. Willard Grant Conspiracy – Drunkard’s Prayer (08.37)
03. Pulp – Down by the River (16.14)
04. Bob Dylan & the Rolling Thunder Revue – The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll (Live, 1975) (19.42)
05. The Pogues – Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six (31.36)
06. Bruce Springsteen – Vigilante Man (Woody Guthrie Cover) (39.33)
07. The Radiators – Prison Bars (43.34)
08. Enfant Bastard – Compilation Tapes (50.10)
09. Nightjar – The Hanging Tree (55.30)
10. Pete Wylie – Stay Free (Clash Cover) (60.49)

Ever since we moved into our house – almost three years ago now – we have only had one properly working bathroom: upstairs.  When I say ‘properly working’ though, I do exaggerate somewhat.  Not much, but a little.

You see, the shower thermostat had been set badly by our incompetent buffoon of a plumber and the range of available temperatures was somewhat narrow: from uncomfortably hot to scaldingly hot.  Seeing as we are magnificently lazy people, that was just about good enough that we haven’t had it sorted for nearly three years – instead resorting to that most British of complaints: death by a thousand weary sighs.  In the Summer or when I’d come back from football or when we were going out and I didn’t want to put on clean clothes with just a slight sweat on was when it was at its worst.  It was never bad, just vaguely uncomfortable and slightly irritating every single fucking day.

Until yesterday.

Now it’s fixed, it’s finally fucking fixed and this morning I had a LUKEWARM SHOWER for the first time in three fucking years!  It may seem like nothing to you, but it’s like relief from Chinese Water Torture for me, honestly (ha – see what I did there).  You’ve no idea what a massive difference something so trivial made to my morning.

So much so that I’ve now wasted six minutes of your life telling you about it.  Six minutes that, no matter what you do, you will never get back.

And I’m not sorry.

Tom Waits – Cold Water

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