Song, by Toad

I know I promised the Notcraigcast last week, but it didn’t happen I’m afraid.  After last week’s amazing Craigcast Neil and I were intending to introduce Craig to all sorts of modern music which we thought continued some of the traditions of the blues music he was describing to us, but circumstances have rather conspired against us unfortunately.  Neil is off on tour with Meursault playing his songs, and Craig is off on tour with his liver, taking it around the watering holes of Edinburgh and giving it a good, hard kicking in each one.

Consequently I’ve sort of cobbled together a podcast from fragments of the Pantscast and the stuff I’d intended to play for Craig.  It’s largely folky, but that wasn’t wholly by design, more to do with the fact that listening to the really early blues stuff Craig played for us sent me back to listening to old Smithsonian Folkways stuff and so there are a couple of songs from there, as well as a couple of modern things which those recordings brought to mind.

Smithsonian Folkways, incidentally, is a non-profit record label run by the Smithsonian Institute to preserve and support a truly epic amount of our musical heritage.  Just go and have a browse through their archives – it’s amazing how much incredible stuff these guys are looking after on everyone else’s behalf.

Toadcast #94 – The Not-Notcraigcast

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1. Micah P. Hinson – She Don’t Own Me (02.57)
2. Hem – The Cuckoo (11.13)
3. Saint Etienne – Like a Motorway (16.52)
4. White Antelope – Silver Dagger (22.15)
5. The Boggs – Plant Me a Rose (28.00)
6. Willard Grant Conspiracy – River in the Pines (31.47)
7. Berzilla Wallin – Conversation With Death (Oh Death) (39.22)
8. Samamidon – O Death (44.26.)
9. Dock Boggs – Sugar Baby (49.21)
10. Alela Diane – White as Diamonds (Daytrotter Session) (54.09)
11. Sandy Denny – By the Time it Gets Dark (59.07)

Jesus fucking Christ.  I think I may actually have a badger living in my mouth.  Or a muskrat.  Or one of those little yappy dog bastard things which always make me want to feed them to our bloody cat.  Gin is raping my brain.  Fucking bastard.

To make matters worse, that insufferable weasel Mrs. Toad is malingering at home, lolling around in bed, watching movies on iTunes and generally just doing bugger all.  I WANT TO GET SICK!  I never get fucking sick.  If I ever have time off work it’s either because my back is crippling me, which doesn’t feeling like being sick at all because it doesn’t give you proper sick voice, or I am skiving.  Now, however, I feel a nap in the disabled loos coming on again.

Actually, writing the word loo in the plural form there makes me think, not all that surprisingly of… Rebecca Loos!  The disabled Loos!  I think her pig-wanking episode was the pinnacle of reality TV – the ultimate in self-parody by a medium already happily digesting its own sphincter.
For those who missed it, there was a reality TV programme over here a good few years back called On the Farm or something like that, where the same old cast of desperate E-Listers moved into a farm for a bit and spent their days doing ordinary, everyday farm jobs.  No-one, however, seemed to think through the implications of showing one particular everyday farm job live on television: that of inseminating livestock.

So a woman, who was effectively famous for no other reason than the wielding of her vagina, ended up masturbating a pig live on television, and with that particular act removed from the utilitarian farm environment and brought into the realm of entertainment (particularly the realm of ’salacious entertainment for the means of getting ahead despite being devoid of any observable skills besides the possession of an enormous pair of breasts’, which is Miss Loos’ specialist genre) it turned from tedious chore into bestiality.  Which was brilliant.

Why was it brilliant?  Well apart from the ‘Christ has anyone thought about what she’s actually doing?‘ factor, which was pretty good in itself, it was such an amazingly clear illustration of what is actually going on in reality TV.  These people, basically, are humiliating themselves in order to become famous.  They are sufficiently desperate for fame – and fame in and of itself as opposed to fame as a by-product of having a particular talent – that they consider having the entire nation point and laugh at them on live television to be a suitable price to pay for that fame.  How much humiliation will they collectively be prepared to tolerate?  How desperate are they to be in the public eye?  Well Rebecca gave us our answer – desperate enough to wank off pigs on the telly.

1. Most dignity-free celebrity moment on reality TV.
2. Invent a new reality TV programme.
3. Most pointless celebrity.
4. Favourite trashy celebrity (being even slightly worthy disqualifies anyone from this, so choose carefully please).
5. Biggest surprise celebrity attention-whore who turned up on reality TV despite you previously thinking they had some dignity.

This week’s five songs are taken from a compilation I made about seven years ago, comprised of stuff I ended up selling on because I had no room left on my CD shelves.  Looking back at what’s on it though, I do wonder what the fuck I was thinking.

Lift to Experience – Waiting to Hit

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Willard Grant Conspiracy – St. John Street

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Dan Bern – New American Language

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Solomon Burke – Diamond in Your Mind

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Pete Yorn – Strange Condition

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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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*

[After his highly successful stint Toadsitting while we were away on holiday, Euan returns to write what is going to become a monthly column in our new Sunday Supplement section.  You can find more of his stuff on his blog, at his gigs or with his band, so please go and have a sniff.]

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”

This quote is taken from the film Almost Famous about a young music fan who, by accident, ends up on the road with a rock band, documenting their every move for Rolling Stone magazine and living out his wildest dreams. It’s still one of my favourite films, if for nothing else, the legendary Tiny Dancer moment, possibly more to do with Kate Hudson though. Anyways, the quote above is at a point in the movie when Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character Lester Bangs is giving advice to a naïve and young William Miller about music, musicians, journalism and ultimately life. It became quite an important statement in my life, firstly because I am highly uncool. And secondly because sharing music and wanting to involve everyone in the music I love has, over the years, become the currency in which I deal most. Mix tapes for the ladies that I had a fancy for. Mix CDs for friends, force-feeding them the music they didn’t know, or love, but in my head should. Sharing a love of music. It was important when I was 15 and is as important today as it was back then. Fuck, lets be honest, we’re all using this site ultimately because we share a love of music and not for the witty remarks of the likes of Matthew and Dylan! It’s one of the best feelings when you share music and people get it. It’s what makes it great being a musician and also writing about music which you love.

Recently Mr Toad (another highly uncool individual I should add) reviewed a gig by Willard Grant Conspiracy. I made a comment on his site that I had never heard anything by this artist, though I knew of them and felt that he was an artist which I would love and should know more about. As a result, Matthew made me a cd of what he considers to the finest moments of Willard Grant Conspiracy or, if you prefer, an introduction the music of the artist. Whilst I was babysitting songbytoad during Matthew’s holiday to Italy I did an “introducing” piece on Elliott Smith as Mr Toad had little knowledge of the man. I guess the Willard Grant Conspiracy cd was his way of returning the favour. And I’m glad he did. There’s a bit of Richmond Fontaine in there, a large chunk of Nick Cave and a nice little touch of Sparklehorse. All mixed together to produce Willard Grant Conspiracy.

But ultimately, this is not a review of Willard Grant Conspiracy or the mix cd Matthew made me. No, this is more about the brilliance that is sharing music. Sharing musicians you love. Just sharing. So, I’m going to encourage you all to write a piece about your favourite artists. How you came to love them. What it is that makes them so special to you. Anything you want, about anyone you want. And I’m going to ask you to send them to me at trampolinemusic@gmail.com Whilst I don’t write full time for Matthew, I do have my own blog over at The Steinberg Principle and I would like to publish the pieces sent to me as a series of “Introducing” pieces. So yeah, if you find a spare 5 or 10 minutes in your day, if you’re bored at work, or if you actually just like this idea, send me your thoughts and I will post them on my site from time to time.

This is an oddly tricky review to write, because I am so familiar with all of these songs already.  This album sees Robert Fisher and a bare-bones band revisit their back catalogue and rework an album’s worth of material in more low-fi style that than in which it was (generally) first released.

This recording was done with a small group of musicians who formed the core of the band in the early days and, according to the website, is intended to capture the “living room nature” of their early performances.

Those of us who have seen the band live a couple of times won’t be all that surprised by this project, because the band seems to work this way most of the time anyway: they can be as grand or as minimal as you like, and no song seems to have a particular need to sound a certain way – Fisher and the band simply adapt the songs to the arrangements available at the time.  Even in my limited (four gigs) experience, I have heard a lot of these songs played several times, and sound very different each time.  Consequently it’s little surprise that they might want to commit some of these other incarnations to record – in a way it’s a little silly for a band who can sound so different from one gig to another to have only one recorded version of each song available.

As it is the new versions, even when I like them less than the originals, which inevitably happens a couple of times, are wonderful to listen to.  The scratchy renditions of the likes of Ghost of the Girl in the Well actually bring a little more unpleasantness to the song which enhances the rather nasty nature of the original lyrics, similarly with Mary of the Angels. Skeleton is completely different, without the full band drive of the version on Let it Roll, and whilst I prefer the originals of the likes of Fare the Well and Painter Blue, these recordings certainly more than do the songs justice.

Which brings me to why I find this a difficult album to review.  I am a big fan of this band, so I am fascinated by all of these songs, but I genuinely can’t imagine what they would sound like to someone new to the music.  You lose something by the low-fi approach, but you gain something as well, and I know what that brings to someone who knows the music, but if this is the first time you’ve encountered this band then you’re own your own.

In many ways this is entirely representative of their work, and in many ways it really isn’t.  It’s just the sound of a band who like to play with their music exploring what the songs can sound like and giving them a whole new character.  In many ways I am actually just surprised that more groups don’t do this kind of thing.

Willard Grant Conspiracy – Ghost of the Girl in the Well

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Willard Grant Conspiracy – Mary of the Angels

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DO NOT WORRY!  This is not a podcast stuffed full of tedious moralising and empty pontificating and generally depressing garbage about a subject far too weighty and philosophical for this sort of half-arsed internet enterprise.  In fact, towards the end it really gets quite chipper.

Basically, there are so many extraordinarily good murder ballads that that particular aspect could so easily have entirely overtaken a podcast ostensibly about prison, crime and criminal justice.

This week, however, I have still managed to marginalise the role of the murder ballad, because the concept of death incorporates so many disparate emotions and aspects that simply doing a whole podcast about murderous folk tales and their musical counterparts seemed unnecessarily narrow.  So you get this.  Which starts out a little heavy but becomes positively gleeful by the end, I promise you.

Toadcast #86 – The Deathcast

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01. Willard Grant Conspiracy – Painter Blue (03.01)
02. Samamidon – O Death (12.33)
03. Eels – Going to Your Funeral (22.31)
04. Melanie Rivaud & Strange Weather – The Fall of Troy (Tom Waits Cover) (25.05)
05. Bob Frank & John Murry – Jesse Washington 1916 (31.53)
06. Bruce Springsteen – Dead Man Walking (37.02)
07. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Up Jumped the Devil (41.15)
08. The Men They Couldn’t Hang – The Green Fields of France (48.26)
09. Elvis Costello & the Attractions – Tramp the Dirt Down (57.02)
10. Chumbawamba – Passenger List for Doomed Flight 1471 (66.35)

It’s funny to note when you part ways with your gig-going peers. I went along to see X Lion Tamer and the Pineapple Chunks at the Electric Circus on Tuesday, perfectly confident that I would bump into people I knew at the gig. I rarely ever think twice about going to gigs by myself for two main reasons: partly because I am quite happy to be at a show by myself in the first place, because that means not having to apologise if it’s shit; and partly because I am pretty confident that at most shows I am going to bump into someone I know anyway.

That’s not always the case, however. I recently went to see Barry Adamson and was surrounded by a very different crowd than usual, and last night at Sneaky Pete’s the same thing happened: an older crowd, not one of whom I recognised.

That’s no real issue, of course, because that really isn’t why I go to gigs. In this case, I have seen the Willard Grant Conspiracy three times before, and all three times have been drastically different gigs, which sort of makes the songs feel like old friends. You’ve seen them in their garage rock phase, their vulnerable acoustic phase and their grandiose orchestral phase and I really think that helps you get to know a song a lot more intimately than you might otherwise.

The performance at Sneaky Pete’s was happily intimate for a venue which I’d tend to describe as a grungy indie club. The stage lights were out of commission so the only light available was a still image from the projector, which happened to really suit the atmosphere. The band and some of the audience were seated, which further added to the relaxed ambience, and Robert Fisher’s relaxed, friendly way with an audience brought a feeling of calm and contentment to everyone. No-one talked through the performance, either. I liked that.

Given the shifting membership of the Willard Grant Conspiracy you rarely get the same gig twice, and the songs don’t seem to exist in any pre-defined sense, more as a collection of ideas which drift around loosely in one another’s company until they are pulled out out of the ether by a performance, coalescing around whatever arrangement of musicians happens to draw them out at the time.

This setup was based around fiddle, a second guitar and a female backing singer, a couple of whom were drawn from support band The Doghouse Roses, who I unfortunately arrived too late to see. It was a simple arrangement, and one which presented Fisher’s warm, enveloping songs with a satisfying lack of artifice. The band embellished enough to bring depth to the sound, and the fiddle was gorgeous, but at its core this was a very stripped back acoustic performance.

The set was something of a greatest hits collection, closely related to the recent release of Paper Covers Stone, an album of minimalistically re-worked versions of existing WGC tunes, suggesting that there are songs amongst his canon for which Fisher himself has a notable preference. His voice shifts gear dramatically from thunderous to intimate and sitting close up in a small venue it has amazing impact. You can never tell if he is furiously angry with the world, or trying to sympathetically console it for its woes, but the emotion is powerful and unavoidable in a Willard Grant Conspiracy set, whatever the setup.

Between that and the unexpectedly cosy atmosphere in Sneaky Pete’s I found myself split between wishing that some of my other music friends had been there to see it, and quietly pleased to have such a wonderful gig to enjoy by myself.

Willard Grant Conspiracy – Notes From the Waiting Room

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Willard Grant Conspiracy – Fare Thee Well

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You could drink yourself into a coma going to every interesting gig in Edinburgh this week.  I think I might need a few orange juice gigs, if just to vaguely preserve both liver and waistline.  Although it may be too late for both, I have to admit.  I think I am going to start driving to gigs (tonight is by necessity, but we’ll see how it goes) just as a way of forcing myself to stick to fizzy water or some such beverage.

Maybe Skinny Water, perhaps (thank you Cogstar), a drink so monumentally stupid that I have stared at that ridiculous primary school website for hours trying to figure out if the damn thing is a hoax or not.  It’s so ridiculous I keep thinking that it really must be a piss-take, but it really does appear to be water laced with imaginary weight-reducing ingredients.

As their website claimed*, the water “has been enhanced with a unique combination of ingredients to help you lose weight… suppress appetite, block carbohydrates from converting into fat and increase fat burning”.

This website, on the other hand, claims that this is most ludicrous pile of horse manure to hit the public domain in ages.  Although, thinking about it, this product is so transparently idiotic that I find it hard to blame the manufacturers, or the designers of that comedy website.  Honestly, if you are so fucking stupid as to fall for this sort of infantile idiocy then you deserve to be ripped off and, honestly, you deserve the continuing cycle of desperate, futile hope followed by the despair of inevitable failure and decimated self-esteem that this sort of obsessive weight mania will certainly bring you.  Jesus fucking Christ, if you’re too fat (which I am) then either just accept it and enjoy your life, or get some fucking exercise.

Monday 7th September 2009: The Bowery Re-Opening Party with Dan Costello & Wounded Knee.

I have missed the Bowery over the Festival.  Somewhere sane to go would have been appreciated in amongst all the carnage, but Jane and Ruth are back now and celebrate that fact tonight.

Tuesday 8th September 2009: The Pineapple Chunks & X Lion Tamer at Electric Circus.

How these two rather mental bands are going to complement one another on a bill is anyone’s guess, but I really like both and am definitely looking forward to this – unhinged guitar indie and dancey electro stuff.  And incidentally, X Lion Tamer has a new EP out, called Neon Hearts, which is available in Avalanche Records on Cockburn Street as of right about now.

The Pineapple Chunks – Art Storage

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Wednesday 9th September 2009: Willard Grant Conspiracy & Doghouse Roses at Sneaky Pete’s.

The Willard Grant Conspiracy are one of my favourite bands ever.  Robert Fisher’s voice is deep and rich, and his songs go from the desperate ballad to lovely alt-country to grinding tension, often in the same album.  There is no chance I am missing this gig.

Willard Grant Conspiracy – Evening Mass

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Thursday 10th September 2009: Meursault vs Dead Boy Robotics vs Foundling Wheel at the Voodoo Rooms.

Versus gigs are a bit risky in some senses – how to keep the pace up without garbling things, how to get enough interplay between the bands to stop it simply being a standard gig with a shuffled playlist, all sorts of things – but I love the idea in general.  The styles on show this evening are pretty varied too, which I think is a good thing.

Friday 11th September 2009: Neko Case at the Voodoo Rooms.

Neko Case has, simply, one of the most gorgeous voices around.  I’ve seen her live before and she is lovely – charismatic, charming and a superb performer.  There’s a lot on this Friday, so I don’t know if I’m likely to be able to make it, but I really want to go to this.

Neko Case – Tightly

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Friday 11th September 2009: Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Come On Gang & Dupec play This is Music at Sneaky Pete’s.

Totally Enormous what? Fucking hell, you really should go for the name alone.  This is Music nights are brilliant fun, and this is just that kind of carefree, enjoyable lineup which makes them good.

Saturday 12th September 2009: The Jesus H. Foxx EP Launch at the Bowery, with Some Young Pedro & Golden Ghost.

YES, the offical Song, by Toad Records release of Matter, by Jesus H. Foxx!  I don’t know why I ever even wanted to be a record label, but one of the reasons was to be involved with, and make a contribution to, music which I bloody love.  I am absolutely thrilled to have this EP on the label and really looking forward to the launch night.  I’ve never seen either Some Young Pedro or Golden Ghost before either, so even more room to be excited.

Jesus H. Foxx – Trying to Be Good

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*Until people pointed out that it was total bollocks and they decided to change it.

Yes, I know it’s early for you, but it’s late for me and a massive greasy great kebab is calling to me like the siren song of a thousand virgins who just might be persuadable that hours spent in one’s bedroom listening to sincere young men complain about how unfulfilling their tediously middle class life is constitutes some sort of social protest.

I remember living in Cambridge and having a kebab at the sterling Gardenia.  Crikey that was good stuff.  In Manchester Abduls was always the place, although admittedly that was something like fifteen years ago, and things have probably changed since then.  In general though, this Friday Five is going to be more cheese related than kebab related.  Although I am admittedly a massive music snob, there were times before the global internetosphere made all my fashion choices for me, and so I thought it might be time to celebrate those times.  Were you a stupid sappy cunt once?  Yes, me too.

Since pretty much everyone reading this was a bit of a pillock at some point in their past I think that the idea of commenting for the first time should probably pale into insignificance.  Generally speaking this site can be more than a little cliquey, but on Fridays absolutely everyone, from Kim Jong Il to Kim Basinger is encouraged to chip in have their say.  What, after all, is the point of a website if people don’t come along and tell me what a tit I am on the comments page.

So to encourage you, I have come up with the silliest moments in my life, set them to music, and asked you to do the same.  Enjoy, Toadlings.

1. Cheesiest song you’ve ever bawled your eyes out to because of some lost lover.
2. You’re at a disco, the songs are shit, the crowd is shit, and suddenly some contemptibly populist nonsense comes on the stereo and you find yourself boogying away like a muppet anyway.  What’s the song?
3. Yes it’s shit, but which song gets you fist-pumping like Song 2 by Blur?
4. I’m alone, I’m miserable, but I’M GONNA BE OKAY dammit!
5. Let’s get pished!

Bruce Hornsby & the Range – The Road not Taken (I was a very sensitive child.  Stop laughing – very sensitive.)

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Erasure – Sometimes (I know, I know, I know, but it’s just so… catchy, I guess.  Oh, the shame.)

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Bon Jovi – You Give Love a Bad Name

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Willard Grant Conspiracy – Fare Thee Well

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The Walkmen – The Rat

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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)