Mrs. Toad and I do NOT approve of Valentine’s Day, and I have to say the fact that she genuinely seems to hate it (rather than just saying so, but secretly still expecting flowers) is a very liberating thing.  It means I can now finally forget about the whole bloody nonsense once and for all, and never ever have to figure out exactly how much I am expected to spend in order to demonstrate my affection for someone.

There is, after all, very little that can be less romantic than obediently making protestations of love for no other reason than that everyone else is doing so and you are expected to conform.  I actually think it’s just plain fucking insulting, frankly.

‘Hello darling, I thought we might go out for a meal tonight.’
‘Yes dear, what a lovely idea, what made you think of that?’

In what possible world can ‘because the shops told me to, everyone else is doing it, and I feel kind of obliged’ be considered a better answer than, say, ‘because we’ve both been really busy recently and I miss spending time with you’.  And assuming that the latter is obviously the more romantic answer, what the fuck does that have to do with the fourteenth of February?

Direct download: Toadcast #161 – The Slappercast

01. Cracker – Mr. Wrong (00.18)
02. The Dead Kennedys – Your Emotions (08.39)
03. Fear of Pop – In Love (13.25)
04. The Veils – Don’t Let the Same Bee Sting You Twice (22.02)
05. Bill Callahan – Our Anniversary (24.33)
06. The Wedding Present – Nobody’s Twisting Your Arm (36.00)
07. Tom Waits – Frank’s Wild Years (39.40)
08. The Clash – White Riot (46.15)
09. Taxrat – Burn Down Slow (48.32)
10. Josh T. Pearson – Honeymoon is Great, I Wish You Were Her (55.25)

So, after work tonight, what to do… there’s James Yorkston at Pilrig St. Paul’s, or the Panda Su EP launch at Sneaky Pete’s, or Ringo Deathstarr at Cabaret Voltaire.  Then tomorrow it’s either the Conquering Animal Sound album launch or Come on Gang’s final gig (and album launch), also at Pilrig St. Paul’s.  It’s almost like living in Glasgow or London.

I’m also – not that I mean to show my age – rather excited about the number of green shoots in the garden at the moment.  Our approach to gardening is more than a little haphazard, but in October we threw piles and piles of bulbs into the ground, and some of them might even bloom!  My mum and my Granddad on her side are very gardeny people, so you may be disgusted at my pipe and slippers domesticity, but I think they’d be proud, bless ‘em.

Oh, and I’m sorry this week’s five is a little late.  I was distracted by The Oatmeal for about three hours.  Damn you, internet! I’m not really sorry though, because The Oatmeal is fucking awesome.

Remember that the Friday Fives were designed as a de-lurking amnesty, so please do take this opportunity to come out of the closet and make up some silly nonsense on the internet.  It’s Friday afternoon, remember, so it’s not like you were planning on being productive for the rest of the day anyway.  And for those of you who care, Mrs. Toad and I will be recording our annual anti-Valentine’s shitcast this weekend.  Good, unromantic, sweary sweary fun!

1. Will you be observing Valentine’s Day this year?
2. First crush you can remember (this need not be either sensible or entirely true).
3. Favourite webcomic.
4. Work avoidance hangover tactic.
5. Inappropriate wedding song.

Five Valentine’s songs for you.  Well, sort of.

Richard Cheese – Rape Me

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The Wedding Present – Everyone Thinks He Looks Daft

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Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – When I Change Your Mind

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Tom Waits – Better off Without a Wife

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Oh alright, one proper romantic one, if you must.
Billy Bragg & Wilco – Hesitating Beauty

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Snow!  Awesome!  Actually, we haven’t got that much snow here in Edinburgh but I am sufficiently snow-starved that I am pretty excited nevertheless.  Not as excited as the penguins at Edinburgh Zoo will presumably be of course, but excited nevertheless.

Yusuf’s three album launch shows last week were fantastic, but I am pretty pooped and will be taking it quite easy today.  We’ve the Savings and Loan’s album release to work on for Monday, but apart from that the label is now entering a rather quiet Winter – well, apart from our official Song, by Toad Records Christmas Party of course, which will be anything but quiet.

The Christmas parties start here, in fact, with two this week, a couple of very good gigs and the opportunity to help save the Forest Cafe.  Enough for you to be getting on with for one week?  Thought so.  Welcome to the December eat/drink/hangover cycle which leaves us begging for fruit juice and fresh vegetables by January.

Xavier Rudd and Dar Williams are both (separately) at the Queen’s Hall this week, which might interest some of you.  For myself, the following gigs stand out the most:

Tuesday 30th November 2010: The Wedding Present and Ringo Deathstarr at the Liquid Room.

The Wedding Present’s absolutely brilliant, and now ‘classic’ album Bizarro is twenty or twenty-five years old or something like that, so the Weddoes are out on tour, playing the album in its entirety by way of celebration.  Just as interesting from my point of view are support band Ringo Deathstarr who make an excellent amount of fuzzy noise and whose new single is bloody excellent; I await the album with great interest.

The Wedding Present – No

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Tuesday 30th November 2010: Jenny & Johnny at Cabaret Voltaire.

Jenny Lewis is an excellent live performer with more than a little hint of swagger.  Her album, recorded with snuggle bunny Johnathan Rice, has its bland moments to be sure, but some of it is genuinely excellent, dreamy, harmony-drenched Summer pop.

Jenny & Johnny – Little Fly

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Thursday 2nd December 2010: Yahweh, Emily Scott & Union Canal at Sneaky Pete’s.

Three of the more underground bands on the week’s list of musical funz, but between Yahweh’s sweeping cinematics and Emily Scott’s musical prettiness this should be a good ‘un.  Union Canal I know nothing about whatsoever, I have to confess.

Friday 3rd December 2010: Gerry Loves Records Christmas Party at the Banshee Labyrinth.

Four of the most innovative bands in Scotland play what promises to be a very high early watermark for the tide of Christmas parties this year*.  Expect a lot of beeping and looping and stuff – which, for the less knowledgeable, is a technical musical term.  The Banshee Labyrinth is rather small, so I strongly recommend getting your tickets in advance for this one.  There will be a special guest too – one I promise you really is very thpeshul indeed.

The Japanese War Effort – Fake Tanned Out Yr Tits

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Friday 3rd December 2010: Save the Forest gig at Pilrig St. Paul’s.

This gig has been arranged to raise fund to help save the Forest Cafe, an Edinburgh institution under considerable threat after the collapse of the Edinburgh University Settlement.  Finn Andrews of The Veils will be playing, which is amazing.  The Veils are a fucking great band and although I have no idea what a Finn Andrews solo performance will be like, I would be fascinated to find out.

The Veils – Not Yet

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Saturday 4th December 2010: Limbo Christmas Party at the Voodoo Rooms.

Bands such as Toad favourites FOUND and Enfant Bastard, and Toad Records heroes Yusuf Azak and Inspector Tapehead are joined by Night Noise Team and others.  I think there will be some collaborating and some other Christmas jiggery-pokery too, but I am not entirely sure what to expect, honestly.  Apart from the fact that I am going to get very drunk indeed.

FOUND – Let Fidelity Break

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*Apologies if that analogy was just a little too tortured.  I know it was, and I judge myself.

I haven’t, I have to confess, used either Last.fm or Pandora for a while now, but the reason I abandoned them (yes, before Pandora was banned from the UK) in favour of podcasts and the radio is because they ended up being just a bit too good to be interesting.

Most of the radio shows and podcasts I tend to listen to play a fair few songs I think are shite, but I’ve always though this was a very good thing.  I got very bored with Last.fm very quickly because it tended to play me pretty much the right kind of music all the time.  If something shite comes up on Last.fm, or indeed when I hit shuffle on my whole music library, which serves more or less the same function, then I have a bad habit of just skipping it.

With radio shows and podcasts I don’t do that, partly because it’s harder than just blindly tapping F9 and carrying on with my work, so whether I like what I hear or not I tend to just let it play out.

This is a good thing though, because I get really sick of just being spoonfed stuff I pretty much know I am going to like already.  It’s dull.  When I first got into Yo La Tengo and The Wedding Present, my long-suffering flatmate had to put up with two years of abuse for playing them before I finally decided they were right up my street.  It’s only by being open to stuff we aren’t sure about that we push our boundaries to begin with.

I know a lot of people are more naturally open than me, but I tend to need to hear new stuff quite a lot to really absorb it, and that’s just with new songs; when it comes to new genres I can be even worse.  Basically I need other people’s ‘bad’ choices to stop my music taste from completely collapsing in on itself – to keep pulling it in other directions.

Sometimes I come around and sometimes I don’t, but if all I did was listen to Last.fm and Pandora I think I’d probably end up with a really boring, narrow, self-referential taste in music.  You might say that’s the case anyway, and I guess I couldn’t really argue, and it’s possible their recommendation algorithms have improved (i.e.: loosened up a little) but in general, unless I am making a specific choice, I am happier listening to more music I am not all than keen on than sticking with recommendations which might be more reliably tailored to my taste.

Having spent the week driving Loch Lomond around the country I figured that some sort of driving-themed nonsense would be in order for this week’s podcast.

Driving music (NOT in the Top Gear sense) tends to stick in your head, probably because when listening to it there is nothing else to do but sit and absorb the whole album.  I know most musicians would probably blanche somewhat at the idea of having their work enjoyed over the thrum of wind noise, tyre noise and a grumbling engine, but a long drive is still probably one of the best places to listen to music.

Oh, and the ‘character’is supplied by all the fuckers outside having fun while I DO FUCKING WORK FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT OF YOU UNGRATEFUL INTERNET BASTARDS.  Erm, sorry.  I’m tired.

Toadcast #123 – The Drivecast

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01. The Twilight Sad – The Wrong Car (01.53)
02. Bear Driver – A Thousand Samurais (09.12)
03. The National – Terrible Love (14.37)
04. Band of Horses – Infinite Arms (19.11)
05. The Wedding Present – Drive (25.07)
06. The French Wives – Me vs Me (28.54)
07. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – Davy’s on the Road Again (Live) (35.01)
08. Foon Yap – Gabriel Moody (41.49)
09. The Goodnight Loving Supper Club – The Pan (50.14)
10. The Men They Couldn’t Hang – A Map of Morocco (54.27)

I am not one of those people who goes on and on about the quality of vinyl and the sound it makes and so on and so on, because I am just not an audiophile, really.  I’m not saying that I can’t hear the difference, just that I have no real objection to listening to badly recorded songs on 92Kbps mp3s or on a shitty old tape recorder or anything like that.  It just doesn’t really colour my enjoyment of a song, particularly, is all I’m saying.

This came up on the Fresh Air Radio show yesterday though, and I thought I might write a post about it: one of the things for which I love vinyl, more than the sound, is the way it changes the actual process of listening to music.  I have no CDs anymore, just digital and vinyl.  Because of the Biblical quantities of new music I listen to and the fact that I am jealous little hoarder, I have gigabytes worth of music on my main hard drive (and yes, before you ask, it is scrupulously backed up).  I don’t know the exact number, but I think you could start my digital music collection playing, walk away from the stereo for two months, and it still wouldn’t have to repeat a single song.

That kind of thing, along with Spotify and naughty downloading really does change how I listen to music.  I can find myself deciding I like something, shunting it into my music library, and then not listening to it again for years because I am so caught up with my inbox.  That a bit sad, really, and it is also where vinyl comes in.

Collecting vinyl is an expensive and painstaking process.  Between online purchases from small indie labels across the world (well, the US, Canada and here, let’s be honest), browsing through second-hand shops, the odd new thing purchased in actual record shops (remember them?) and occasionally going mental on eBay whilst plastered, it takes time and effort to accumulate vinyl.  It’s also bulky and expensive, so you just can’t buy that much of it.  I know some people might challenge that, but they are mental people, like Ed from 17 Seconds, who has a whole room of the stuff.  Compared to digital though, it’s just impossible to own that much music on record simply for practical reasons.  This restriction means that your collection tends to stay manageable, and also tends to cluster around the things you really, really love, with a few random second hand purchases thrown in to mix things up.

Secondly, of course, playing the stuff is a very high-maintenance undertaking.  Records need to be sifted, selected, piled up and, most importantly, turned over at least once every forty-five minutes or so.  This makes the act of listening to vinyl so much more deliberate and selective than sticking your stereo on random and letting it play what amounts to a relatively closely selected personal radio station from your collection of digital files.  You have to actively choose what you play, and you tend to listen to it more because you can’t just walk away and let it look after itself.

For myself I find it tends to slow me right down, and take the haste out of listening to music.  A little like the Slow Food Movement, by its very slowness it’s not that it forces me to concentrate exactly, more that it prevents me really concentrating on anything else all that much, so I tend to just absorb the music more.  It stops me treating listening to music like a job, stops me thinking about too many other things, forces me to concentrate on a much narrower selection of music and in doing so allows me to form a better relationship with it.

So never mind the audiophile sound issues, what I think I like most about vinyl is its very inconvenience.  It is a demanding and awkward format, by today’s standards, and this forces you to listen to music in a certain way, a more deliberate and receptive way, and that is what I love the most about the stuff.

The Magnetic Fields – Time Enough For Rocking When We’re Old

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The Wedding Present – Spangle

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This is called the Slowcast because there are so many songs and, more commonly, whole albums out there which I took ages and ages to get into, and for no really obvious reason.

There are several reasons, I guess: how familiar a sound is, your emotional state at the time, what your mates are listening to, how popular something is and stuff like that.  I know I’ve admitted plenty of times in the past that I have a habit of refusing to like things if they get too popular.  That sounds ludicrous, but it’s not exactly a conscious decision, more an instinctive recoiling.  I never have liked much popular stuff, although I do certainly go through phases.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons that, with the label, I am not looking to sign or work with the modern equivalent of a Top 40 band – I have never much liked Top 40 music.

Anyway, that’s not really the point of the podcast.  This is dedicated to those albums which for some reason you have to hear about a million times before you eventually, out of nowhere, realise that you love them.

Toadcast #72 – The Slowcast

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01. Billy Bragg – Honey I’m a Big Boy Now (04.36)
02. Tom Waits – Goin’ Out West (08.37)
03. Radiohead – My Iron Lung (14.14)
04. The Mutton Birds – Envy of Angels (23.42)
05. Mancino – Definition of an Accident (32.26)
06. The Mabuses – I’m the Greatest (36.09)
07. Interpol – Obstacle #1 (43.31)
08. My Latest Novel – Wolves (49.30)
09. The Wedding Present – 2, 3, Go! (55.29)
10. Yo La Tengo – Big Day Coming (59.56)

Christ, I get back from a long (and, frankly, really rather interesting) meeting and find the website suffering somewhat from the last post being just a little serious. Stop it, people, there will be no meaningful discussions on Friday, particularly not after lunch, it’s just not right.

On the radio show last night I played a song by a band called National Beekeepers Society, and it occurred to me afterwards that they have a sound very reminiscent of a lot of 90s indie rock.  In fact, there’s been a fair amount of that kind of stuff surfacing recently, even down to the likes of the excellent Sholi who I reviewed a day or so ago on this very site.  It’s about time for the 90s revival, I suppose, given that we’re about a decade away from them now, and I suppose these are the first green shoots of that very re-evaluation.  I can’t personally imagine what the 90s revival will be like really, having been a bit too involved with the real thing to guess what it will look like when viewed through uber-ironic teenage eyes.

On the subject of green shoots, I am gazing out the window into the sunshine, desperately hoping that tomorrow is at least vaguely like today.  Our garden has been neglected pretty much entirely since October, and there is something absolutely fucking amazingly wonderful about sitting out in the garden with a cup of tea.  Or a fucking great big gin and tonic.  It actually feels like spring is here – this has been a very pleasant week indeed, long may it continue.

1. Thing you are most looking forward to in the 90s revival.
2. Thing you are least looking forward to in the 90s revival.
3. Most embarrassing thing you allowed yourself to revive during the 80s revival.
4. Has Spring hit where you live yet?
5. Do you grow things or have plants or a garden or something? (What a well-constructed sentence that is.)

National Beekeepers Society – Lazy

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The Ramones – The Garden of Serenity

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The Lemonheads – Confetti

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The Wedding Present – Gazebo

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Echobelly – Natural Animal

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First things first: business, I’m afraid.  We are trying to organise a UK tour for Meursault.  Given I have never organised a tour before, I thought I might enlist the help of my Toady friends, because you know about the place where you live far better than I do.

Basically, if there is a venue or a promoter in your neck of the woods who you think I should get in touch with, please let me know.  We’re just looking for someone who puts on vaguely Toad-friendly lineups in half-decent places and is likely to draw a reasonable crowd.  Not massive, of course, but they don’t want to be playing in front of five neds in the local Slug & Lettuce if we can avoid it.  The venues don’t have to be massive – 50 would do the trick, as long as it is likely to be quite busy.  Basically, you know the kind of gigs myself and my Edinburgh pals go to around here, so if you think you can hook us up with one of those please let me know – no matter if it’s Dundee, Dubai or Droylsden.  Well actually, not Dubai, because we can’t afford the air fare.  So there we go, if you want to see Meursault appear in a town near you in May, just point me in the right direction and I’ll do the rest.

Now, back to the more serious business of disrupting everyone’s Friday productivity, which I don’t believe for a second was up to much to begin with.  Are you all looking forward to our Valentine’s podcast tomorrow?  It won’t be pretty, I can promise you that.  We will get home, heat up some fine scran, pour a couple of whopping gins and burble our way through an hour of misanthropy and cynicism for your listening pleasure.  Fantastic.  Then, in the evening, I will leave Mrs. Toad by herself in the house and bugger off out to a gig by myself.  Romantic as fuck, aren’t we?

Now, I’ve seen your conversations on Facebook walls, there is no privacy in the 21st Century, so I know there are lurkers out there who can’t quite be arsed to join in.   Well fuck you, get off your lazy backsides and play along!  Haven’t you heard of the ancient Chinese proverb which states that ‘Those who do not play nicely with the other Toadlings will not get their hole on Valentine’s Day’.  So unless you want to be chasing the witless, pig-ugly, incoherently drunken dregs of humanity around the dancefloor at a quarter to three on Sunday morning peruse our five questions below, mull it over intelligently for a while, and then jump and say something inappropriate and make a tit of yourself.  Makes a change from me doing it all the time.

1. Most evil elbow you have given.
2. Most evil elbow you have had.
3. Best Valentines present.
4. Most failed attempt at an exotic sexual practice (chocolate smearing etc).
5. Best single sad sack Valentine’s day.

The Wedding Present – Don’t Take Me Home Until I’m Drunk

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Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash – Girl From the North Country

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Girl at the Bottom of My Glass

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No Age – My Life’s Alright Without You

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And one for my girl, because she fucking loves this song, and always reaches for this one first when we start playing vinyl in the evening:
Stiff Little Fingers – Alternative Ulster

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Christ on a bike, after nothing at all last week, all of a sudden things are going bananas this week.  You could pretty much be at a good show every night if you wanted. I’m not going to write much in this intro because, frankly, there are so many gigs to bloody write about that the post would run on far too long otherwise.

Suffice to say that Friday’s party was, from my perspective, a massive success.  The open mic bit at the beginning was not an idea many people were overly convinced by, but I think pretty much everyone enjoyed it in the end.  I certainly did.

Tuesday 9th December 2008: Frightened Rabbit at the Liquid Room.
Despitely having rather disappointingly turned into Snow Patrol on their last album, there’s no doubt Frightened Rabbit, when they’re good, can be absolutely brilliant.  In terms of one last big gig to attend before the Hogmanay chaos, this archetypal Scottish indie would be an excellent choice.
Frightened Rabbit – Music Now

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Tuesday 9th December 2008: Louis Barrabas at the Forest Cafe.
Mr. Barrabas is described as ‘vaudeville folk’ in some quarters and listening to his MySpace page it’s difficult to fault that impression.  Frankly it sounds like two things to me: firstly, the kind of gig you’d be much more likely to see during the Festival; and secondly, like it really will be absolutely brilliantly entertaining.  I don’t think (although I’m not sure) that he will be bringing a band, so the theatrical musical chaos might be slightly lacking when compared to his MySpace recordings, but that doesn’t sound like it will matter much.  Excellent stuff.
Louis Barrabas – Love Struck Me Down

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Wednesday 10th December 2008: Benni Hemm Hemm at the Bowery.
I don’t know Benni’s music, but I have met him and he is a truly lovely guy.  Listening to his MySpace page, he seems less moody than the stereotypical Icelandic band, perhaps more in the style of a broader Scandinavian indie-pop, although with a lot less bubblegum.  That’s not very informative at all is it, sorry.
Benni Hemm Hemm – Veildiljod

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Thursday 11th December 2008: Jack Richold & Faith Nicholson at the Bowery.
Jack plays beautifully hushed folk songs, and Faith has a truly gorgeous voice.  Are they any good?  Well Jack wrote half the songs for the Nightjar album, and both sings and plays violin on The Moth Trap, on Song, by Toad Records.  So have a listen to this alternative version he and Faith recorded of Lady of the Calico from that album and decide for yourselves.  Bloody gorgeous.
Jack Richold – Lady of the Calico

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Thursday 11th December 2008: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart & The Foundling Wheel at Sneaky Pete’s.
Before supporting the Weddoes the following evening at the Liquid Room, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart bring their old-fashioned indie sound to Sneaky Pete’s, alongside Edinburgh racket-merchant The Foundling Wheel.  The Pains &c. might easily have been around in the mid-eighties when the Wedding Present formed, if you were to only judge by their sound, but I reckon The Foundling Wheel might shake things up a bit.
The Pains of Being Pure of Heart – Everything With You

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Friday 12th December 2008: The Wedding Present at the Liquid Room.
Okay, so the Gedgerator’s music may be slipping into the ordinary these past few releases, but the Wedding Present play a furiously brilliant live show, and they have more quality in their back catalogue is so far ahead of almost any other band out there that there’s no way you can lose at a gig like this.  Break out the guitars, boys.
The Wedding Present – Step Into Christmas

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Friday 12th December 2008: This is Music, with Jesus H. Foxx & Mitchell Museum at Sneaky Pete’s.
Jesus H. Foxx are spiky indie-poppers, well known on the Edinburgh circuit, but I’ve not really heard of Mitchell Museum before.  A quick listen on MySpace leaves the impression of mid-era Britpop, well executed and definitely interesting.  A few more songs, however, bring you into a much more eccentric realm.
Mitchell Museum – Exciting But Drunk

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Saturday 13th December 2008: Will Cookson, Rob St. John & Withered Hand at the Wee Red Bar.
Mr. Cookson has the best set of influences of any band in history – ever!  Just have a look.  The man must be a genius.  Apart from that, two of Edinburgh’s finest alt-folkers (sorry Rob) tread the Trampoline boards (trampolines don’t really have boards, do they) so although I can’t be there myself, this might be my most confidently recommended show of the week.
Withered Hand – I Am Nothing

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