Dammit, Edinburgh can be frustrating.  Because we’re coastal, warm weather tends to draw a chilling mist off the sea called the haar, which can fuck up the most promising of warm days.  Yesterday, just as things were getting nice, the fucking haar came down, and it’s still bloody well here.

Anyhow, just a little reminder that next weekend (Saturday 30th April) we will be doing the lifeboats collection here in Stockbridge, and would hugely appreciate any volunteers who fancied helping us shake a tin for an hour or two.  We make it worth your while, in that there will be booze and food, and once we’re finished we’ll settle down to a nice big roast dinner and get shitfaced, and it’s generally a really fun day.

The RNLI is staffed by volunteers, and is actually a charitable organisation, rather than being funded by the government, which is mind-bogglingly nuts.  We inherited the Stockbridge collection from our mental-but-lovely next door neighbour when he moved, and it’s nice to make a little bit of a contribution over and above just handing over some spare change once in a while, so if anyone can make it down to our house next Saturday and help out it would be hugely appreciated – just let us know if you’re coming.

And in the meantime, we should really be celebrating the most important chapter in the Bible – the one about the chocolate bunny rabbits which lay eggs and suchlike.  Ah well, I guess it’s about as plausible as the rest of it.

1. Favourite Easter treat (this applies irrespective of religion – an atheist can still enjoy chocolate bunnies and a couple of days off).
2. Chocolate preference.
3. Who really killed Jesus?
4. Closest you’ve been to a boat-related mishap.
5. Things that will never be said in a church (mosque, synagogue, whatever) sermon but ought to.

The Magnetic Fields – Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits

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Broken Records – And They All Fell Into the Sea (Toad Session)

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Blur – Bank Holiday

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Bob Dylan – Green Eggs and Ham

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The Veils – Jesus for the Jugular

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The Crapcast is so named because I am in one of the dingiest hotel rooms I have ever been in.  In isn’t even entertainingly bad, which would be something, just like being dressed in clothes from Marks and Spencer and being trapped inside a grey cardboard box listening to Keane’s greatest hits.

Anyhow, the shower was really good, and I can forgive almost any other atrocity in a hotel room, as long as the shower is hot and the pressure is good.

Anyhow, I am abandoning the Hotel of Beige for a friend’s house tonight, and then tootling back up to Edinburgh tomorrow evening to see my nice lady again.  It makes a bit of change for me to be away on business instead of her, so I can go back and gloat about being a mover and a shaker… until she puts me firmly back in my place my reminding me that when she goes away it is to China and New York and Australia, not just a long weekend in London.

And yes, I do refer to a bit of ‘verbal writing’ in this.  Don’t judge me too harshly.  I was wrecked.

Direct download: Toadcast #160 – The Crapcast

01. Billy Bragg – The Saturday Boy (00.56)
02. Pet Ghost Project – Glitch Shake (10.09)
03. We Are Losers – Cheerleaders (18.27)
04. Yuck – Rubber (21.15)
05. King James – A Big Black Dog (30.41)
06. Eef Barzelay – Ballad of Bitter Honey (37.13)
07. Elbow – Station Approach (41.04)
08. David Dondero – Don’t Cry No Tears (47.37)
09. The Veils – Bloom (52.00)
10. Micachu & the Shapes – Everything (58.19)

I am stumbling towards the Christmas break like a punch drunk boxer dreaming of the bell.  I made up my to-do list for the rest of the year and it’s pretty fucking terrifying.  Still, time spent in France with my Mum fussing like a bloody mother hen and being determined for Christmas to be just so and me ruining it by being rude and too busy to be festive.

There tend to be some musical disagreements in our house around Christmas time.  Mum likes her festive shit, even if it is bordering on being a parody of itself at times.  I like what I consider to be relaxing music – that downbeat, morose stuff which is both warm and comforting.  Stuff like The Willard Grant Conspiracy, Micah P. Hinson, Leonard Cohen, that kind of stuff – The Boatman’s Call by Nick Cave is a favourite, for example.  Not for Mum, though, it seems.

So we both have pretty definite ideas of what kind of music should be played around Christmas time, but it just happens to be in total opposition to the other’s.  The difference being, of course, that I am right and she is not.

Last week we had the top five songs vote, probably just shaded by something by Withered Hand, but I’ll do all the proper counting before the new year and make some grandiose declaration of electoral triumph.  Which leaves this week for us to vote for our favourite album of 2009.  So that’s all the Friday Fives are this week – just list your favourite five albums released this year.  And for anyone wondering, voting for The Low Anthem is just fine, if that’s one of your favourites primarily because I can’t be arsed splitting hairs about self-releases, re-releases and all that other shit.  So please de-lurk and say hello and have a vote – these things are always more fun when more people join in.

Meursault – Salt Pt.2 2008

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Grinderman – No Pussy Blues 2007

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The Veils – Not Yet 2006

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The Decemberists – We Both Go Down Together 2005

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Cannibal’s Hymn 2004

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This may be the limpest of all excuses I’ve ever had for naming a podcast.  You know why it’s called the Jeffcast?  Because I kinda mention Jeffrey Lewis a couple of times.  Oooh, yes, that makes sense.  Still, sorry, I couldn’t think of anything else really, off the top of my head.

I suppose I am off to see Jeffrey Lewis directly after recording this, so I guess it sort of counts.  He is playing a secret gig at Henry’s Cellar Bar after sneaking out of the Beggars Banquet Christmas Party at the Picture House over the road.  It’s one of the things I love about the anti-folk crowd: you genuinely get the impression that they’d rather be playing to an appreciative crowd of their mates, rather than a bigger crowd of anonymous punters who may stand there and demand entertainment.

So there you go, that’s the deal for tonight.  For the rest of the weekend we’re putting together Meursault albums, ready for the official (re)launch of their record next Friday at the Song, by Toad Christmas Party.  So, after folding and screen-printing a thousand of the bastards we’ll all be well ready for Gimme Shelter in the Caves on Saturday and a spot of Candythief action in the Jazz Bar on Sunday.  Enjoy the 48th Toadcast.

Toadcast #48 – The Jeffcast

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01. Yo La Tengo – Double Dare (04.12)
02. Wolf Parade – Call it a Ritual (07.29)
03. Modey Lemon – Loch Ness Monster (11.25)
04. Sly & the Family Stone – Life (17.09)
05. The Velcro Quartet – The Love Song of Little Cosmo Nostradamus (20.03)
06. The Pernice Brothers – The Ballad of Bjorn Borg (25.57)
07. Caramel Jack – The Lincoln Jackson Incident (34.37)
08. The Magnetic Fields – All the Umbrellas in London (38.29)
09. Sparklehorse – Happy Man (Memphis Version) (44.46)
10. The Veils – Birthday Present (49.44)
11. Grandaddy – Miner at the Dial-A-View (54.24)

Yes, another one. Mwah hah haaa. Lock up the kids, Campfires & Battlefields, because the Song, by Toad musical cuss-o-rama is back on air for more blethering, swearing, slurring and first class tunery.

Actually, I don’t think this one is anything like as good as the first, if I’m honest. It’s a bit over-long at fifteen songs so I think in future I’m going to limit myself to ten or twelve at the most, not least because my shitbox of a computer starts having a panic once I’ve stuffed that many audio files into a single project. So, fifteen songs then, with a bit of an emphasis on late 80s jangly indie guitar and containing one of the most brilliant ever drunken fuck-ups about three-quarters of the way through. Beware the horrors of letting your children turn into indie kids, people! So a bit too long, and occasionally too much inconsequential chatter, but we live and learn and the next one will be better, I promise.

Toadcast #2, the 80s English Indie One

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1. My Teenage Stride – Terror Bends (01.00)
2. Honeytrap – Let’s Do Naked Dancing (03.37)
3. The Mutton Birds – The Queen’s English (09.38)
4. The Veils – The Wild Son (17.38)
5. The 63 Crayons – Devils (21.40)
6. The Smiths – I Started Something (26.05)
7. Honeytrap – Death Before the Silver Screen (31.03)
8. Lloyd Cole & the Commotions – Morning is Broken (36.14)
9. The Indelicates – New Art For the People (41.57)
10. The Indelicates – Stars (45.51)
11. MJ Hibbett & the Validators – The Lesson of The Smiths (50.32)
12. The Specials – Guns of Navarone (55.02)
13. Echo & the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon (57.20)
14. Honeytrap – Mussolini’s Son (66.06)
15. Frank Turner – Heartless Bastard Motherfucker (73.25)