When I say that car journeys aren’t the same when you get big, I quite specifically mean too big to lie down across the back seat and go to sleep.  When we were kids we lived in Vienna, and used to regularly drive back to Manchester, via the Dover ferry, to visit my mum’s family, who are all from there. In one of those turquoise things in the picture.  In the words of Princess Leia: “You came in that thing?  You’re braver than I thought.”

It was roughly a twenty-five to thirty-hour journey, I do believe, and something we never really questioned, as kids.  It was kind of exciting, honestly, although even as a child you know full well that boredom, frustration and irritability would inevitably kick in at some point and that exhasperated “I don’t bloody well CARE who started it!” would be wearily barked from the front seat.

Nevertheless, what interests me about long drives these days – the scenery, the tranquility (no, seriously), the chance to either turn things over in your brain for a while or chatter aimlessly to someone – didn’t figure at all back then.

I am not really sure what made these journeys exciting when we were kids, but there was definitely something mysterious about curling up to sleep on the back seat, when it was pitch black all around, with the hypnotic effects of the street lights and the subtle changes in engine noise depending on the surface we happened to be driving over at the time.

My parents had a couple of musical strategies for us on these journeys.  They copied albums onto C90s and took the chance to listen to stuff borrowed from friends and stuff like that, but when we really needed pacifying then the story tapes would have to go on, including the Kenneth Williams version of The Wind in the Willows which led to me giving this blog its name.

To this day I still really strongly associate Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s Live in Budapest, Alf by Alison Moyet and pretty much anything by Bronski Beat and even Willie Nelson’s Willie and Family Live with sitting in that turquoise tin can up there and slowly chugging our way across Europe.  At that age, even in that daft wee car, there was just something quite thrilling about it.  Even that grey, wan light which awaited us as we left the ferry and is so characteristic of England had a certain mystique.

Beats the shit out of Ryanair anyway.

Alison Moyet – Steal Me Blind

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

 

Willie Nelson – Good Hearted Woman

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – Davey’s on the Road Again

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Hoarse.  Horse.  Hoarse.  Horse.  Geddit geddit, see what I did there?  Yes, another tedious pun, but I know you know to expect no better from me these days.  Anyway, it’s only called the Hoarsecast because I have a bit of a phlegmy flu which, whilst not fun, is hardly very debilitating so there is no need for me to moan really.  Not that this usually stops me, but anyhewww…

It’s a funny old mix, this playlist.  I rearranged the songs time and again, swapped a few in and out here and there and just couldn’t find a way to make them click together for some reason, so for all I like everything that’s on here it is still a little bitty, as a single coherent mix.

Mind you, with me talking pish between all the songs, there’s fuck all chance of these things really flowing in the first place.

Direct download: Toadcast #142 – The Hoarsecast

01. Wilco – I Can’t Stand It (00.17)
02. Hooray for the Riff-raff – Slow Walk (08.32)
03. Interpol – Evil (15.49)
04. Jose Delhart – Broken Hearted Chant (22.17)
05. Flower Orgy – Boneyard (25.12)
06. Willie Nelson – Good-hearted Woman (31.59)
07. Willard Grant Conspiracy – Notes From the Waiting Room (38.07)
08. Dumbo Gets Mad – Eclectic Prawn (40.33)
09. Sexual Objects – Here Come the Rubber Cops (47.56)
10. Grinderman – Star Charmer (57.53)

I will be in Macclesfield at Unconvention, pretending to know what the fuck I am talking about when it comes to new music business models when you come to listen to this.

I do get a shiny new pair of Converse, courtesy of the sponsors, which is cool.  But above all, me, the chance to talk shit… well, it’s just a match made in heaven isn’t it.

My Granddad lives in Manchester too, which is rather convenient, so on Sunday I will go round to his house and say hello.  Who knows, it might even shunt me slowly out of the Bad Son status I have been occupying for all these years.

This playlist is largely composed of new stuff which has appeared in my inbox recently, and a couple of bizarre wild cards – two covers,

Toadcast #121 – The Votecast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. Yusuf Azak – Turn on the Long Wire (06.23)
02. Micah P. Hinson – 2s and 3s (12.50)
03. Nina Nastasia – Cry, Cry, Baby (17.58)
04. Emit Bloch – Milkshake vs. Passenger (Kelis & Iggy Pop) (23.50)
05. Run on Sentence – Out in the Woods (30.16)
06. eagleowl – Morpheus (33.43)
07. David Tattersall – The Old Family (39.15)
08. Los Hombres – Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) (41.36)
09. Male Bonding – Year’s Not Long (46.12)
10. Willie Nelson – Smells Like Teen Spirit (49.22)
11. Super Adventure Club – Pick Up Sticks (57.03)

Tomorr… yesterday I flew out to Paris to see Mrs. Toad, who has been stuck in God Bless America for the last two weeks because of Iceland’s seismic indiscipline.  We are going to have dinner and walk together and hold hands and generally act like a couple of idiots.  More or less like we always do.  For a couple of curmudgeonly old fuckers who spend their entire lives swearing at one another, we are a pretty sentimental pair, really.

This podcast is mostly based around my Dad and his music.  For my early years I was well into my Mum’s stuff, but as I got older I got more into my Dad’s kind of stuff – Tom Waits, Dylan, Neil Young and all that.  When I really, really got into music it was never into contemporary, modern or trendy stuff, it was always the old shite my parents were into.

I repay them the favour nowadays, or at least, I try to, but I never really picked up on music from my peers, it was always from my folks.  Hence this podcast.

Toadcast #119 – The Popcast

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. Bruce Springsteen – Thunder Road (05.16)
02. The Band – The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (13.27)
03. Willie Nelson – Mommas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys (16.53)
04. Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Walking Song (24.12)
05. Tom Waits & Thelonious Monster – Adios Lounge (32.54)
06. Elton John – Ballad of a Well Known Gun (41.21)
07. Bob Dylan – Days of 49 (46.07)
08. Elvis Perkins in Dearland – I Heard Your Voice in Dresden (53.49)
09. The Builders & the Butchers – Barcelona (57.51)
10. Jackson Browne – Fountain of Sorrow (66.15)

Well, I’ve had a couple of goes at it now and I think the general conclusion to be drawn is that, bar one or two very specialist nights, I am not going to make a particularly good DJ.  I’ve had a fine old time both times I’ve done it, and thanks loads to Tallah and Solen for inviting me, but in the long run this is going to be a sporadic relationship at best, I think.

The reason?  Well, although at Electric Circus I did get plenty of people dancing, it was at the expense of playing a lot of my favourite music.  No Tom Waits, no Nick Cave, no Honeytrap – know what I mean?  Basically, the stuff I like the best is simply too sad or too slow to dance to, and the idea of standing in a club whilst I shuffle through the Morose Hits of a Life Spent Mostly in One’s Room Sulking doesn’t strike me as one which will appeal to most people.

Equally, there are reasonable portions of my record collection which are acutally quite danceable, but it tends to be the cheesy hits, not least because I don’t have a lot of modern music on vinyl and taking the laptop along seems like cheating – I might as well email in a playlist and ask them to click on ‘crossfade’.

I could make the blog quite popular as well, if I wanted.  I have plenty of MGMT and Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver and all the sort of stuff which would make for a much more hit-friendly indie music blog, just as I have plenty of Bowie and Pet Shop Boys and Springsteen for people to dance to in discos, and it’s all music I really like.

It’s just, it’s not music which actually interests me as much.  So whilst I could happily filter my pile of vinyl for dancefloor-friendly pop tunes I don’t think I am going to do much more DJing unless its at places who don’t mind me fairly frequently playing music to which you absolutely, definitely cannot dance at all.

Look, it’s not the really obvious one by the Smiths!
Willie Nelson – Mr. Record Man (Live)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Apparently you can still read a sentence quite easily if the letters in the words are completely jumbled up, as long as the first and last letters in each word remain where they belong. Isn’t that nice.

I am nearly at the end of the unspeakable ordeal that is generating the Toad Records blog spam list. This entails going to the Hype Machine’s blog list, looking at what every single blog is posting and if they post stuff I like, emailing them with links to the Toad Records releases with a nice note saying something along the lines of ‘I hope you enjoy these and it would be lovely if you were interested in reviewing them’. The problem is that there are fucking thousands of blogs and going through this list is so tedious it’s untrue. Still, I’m as far as ‘t’ now, and it needs to be finished by this weekend because everything is officially released on Monday. Fuck I’m tired. I’ve been up until 3am every night this week working on this, with the exception of the Snow Patrol Frightened Rabbit gig on Tuesday (thanks Euan).

In other news, we just invested in a really, really nice vocal microphone for the Toad Sessions. When I say nice, I do mean nice as well, not just ‘slightly nice’. It’s supposed to be a bloody grand’s worth, but we got it for under half that, so roll on the next Toad Session.

If you want to suggest the next Friday Favourites, just get in touch and let me know. This week the Five Friday Favourites come from our own dearest Tart, who left the following comment: “how about a Friday Five on what actually did help you all get sex: music, dialogue, scent, substance etc?”

1. Best pulling music.
2. Worst pulling approach that actually worked.
3. Apart from rohipnol, what should you give someone (food, drink or drug) to get into their underpants?
4. Best bit of chatting up you ever managed.
5. Coolest first date successfully executed.

Willie Nelson & Family – Good Hearted Woman

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Tom Waits – Burma Shave

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Men The Couldn’t Hang – Dacing on the Pier

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Lemonheads – Into Your Arms[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/TheLemonheads-IntoYourArms.mp3]
Alabama 3 – Bourgeoisie Blues

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

John McCain, is fucking idiot, there are no two ways about it. Anyone who repeatedly refers to a nation called Czechoslovakia is a bozo and it is a masterpiece of the sheer catatonic passivity of the American press, as well as a nod to the audacity of Republican Party dialogue hijacking, that Obama is the one being doubted because of some imaginary relative weakness in areas of foreign policy.

In terms of being a weapons grade global irony whirlwind, on the other hand, the video below deliverys a valedictory masterclass from McCain. I haven’t seen many politicians manage to say anything so jaw-droppingly bald-faced and get away with it before. Perhaps the man is presidential material after all…!

[Video removed, presumably due to hilariously embarrassing content.]

“In the 21st Century, nations do not invade other nations”? You cannot be serious! I am forever being drawn back to Tom Lehrer’s comment about satire being obsolete when I hear things like this. How the fuck is it possible to mock something as dismissively vacant a statement as that. He cannot, cannot surely, be so stupid as to fail to understand the irony of what he just said, and yet he still came out with it.

It amazes me that American politics has become so incredibly partisan that this kind of thing isn’t roundly and widely mocked amongst Republicans as well as Democrats, and all this foreign policy bollocks just laughed out of the room, but it doesn’t seem to be. Just amazing, truly, truly amazing.

I think this is finally reason enough to post this song – finally we have found something ironic enough. Alanis Morrisette – Ironic[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/Ironic.mp3]
I guess these two songs will be all over blog posts discussing this particular situation, but they are so approriate I just can’t stop myself:
Willie Nelson – Georgia on My Mind
The Beatles – Back in the USSR

Ah the weekend finally, finally approaches. It’s been another hectic week here at Toad Hall, but I will be glad to put my feet up and have a nice big fat glass of gin tonight. And while we’re on the subject, here is a song that I discovered recently that could pretty well be the theme song to this website:

Derek Meins – The Gin Song

The folks are visiting this weekend as well, and we’re recording the next Toad Session with Meursault on Saturday, and there will be the Great Toad Tom Waits Expedition on Sunday – I’ll confer with some chaps and appoint an official pub for this gathering in the next day or so: say meet at 5pm?.

Oh the excitement, and oh the hectic schedule. Still, Mrs. Toad and I are then away on holiday for a couple of weeks in Portland, and going to the Pickathon music festival. There will be a few interviews conducted, some chatter and maybe even some videos, but basically it is a doing bugger-all sort of holiday. We’ve rented a boat for most of it and will be sitting peacefully afloat and doing pretty much sweet fuck all. I will be posting occasionally, but I haven’t made proper arrangements for C&B to do his usual and very kind job of blog-sitting in my absence, so we may all just have to muddle through as best we can. Don’t worry though, it won’t go silent.

In the meantime, it’s the weekend, and I haven’t had an antiseptically large gin and tonic for fucking ages, and it is very much time to put that right.

Willie Nelson – I Gotta Get Drunk

Oh, and one last thing. Thank you all for taking the time to make some really thoughtful comments on the site this week. Rod Stewart aside, I am a little short of quality new music at the moment, and I had some unbearably pompous verbiage broiling away inside that I kind of had to get off my chest, so thanks for chipping in and making for some really good threads. It really is appreciated when people take part, you know.

Rod Stewart – Baby Jane
Rod Stewart – You Wear it Well

I’ve come across an awful lot of stuff of late that laments the demise of the small independent record shop. Well, whilst I agree that this is a crap thing – let’s face it, small local businesses crumbling in the face of the onslaught of massive conglomerates is pretty depressing in any industry – I am not sure if the local record shop is a victim of nasty wicked globalisation trends or if they simply aren’t viable businesses anymore.

Between online purchasing and bubblegum pop available in supermarkets, even the major retailers are not relying entirely on music and are instead moving towards a more general ‘entertainment retailer’ model, pushing DVD to the fore. Between digital on-demand movies, Amazon, Tesco’s and Oink (bad, bad online file sharing) what does the future really hold for HMV, for example? But that’s not really point of this post, which is to ask what the little guys can do.

Well, one of the most consistently successful smaller record shops on these shores – in fact the only one I know of – is Fopp. In fact, they’re so successful that you can’t really talk about them as a small business anymore, but how did they manage to go from a market stall in Glasgow 25 years ago, to five shops in 2000 to 30 just recently? And that’s before adding the 67 it has just acquired by buying out MusicZone.

I used to go into Fopp on Byres Road in Glasgow all the time and I can promise you, they had their target market absolutely nailed. Despite being a very small shop, it was hugely rare for them not to have what I came in for, although my taste back then included less truly obscure stuff than it does now. They have, however, successfully cemented a relationship with the ‘mainstream alternative’ type. They do sell a lot of chart stuff, but the stuff they display is generally much more alternative than any other shop. They do excellent deals on rarities and classics and have consistently low prices for new release stuff. And they let you return things you don’t like.

So far so obvious, to an extent, although perhaps this wouldn’t be quite as obvious as we think without Fopp there to serve as an example. Ultimately though, indie chart CDs are cheaper on the internet or just free if, like so many, you have no scruples about using naughty file-sharing sites. Worse, to have the kind of obscurities back catalogue to compete with the likes of Amazon, iTunes, or even just anyone with access to Google, would require a phenomenal warehouse.

Now, for Fopp, this is increasingly less of an issue as they grow – they can afford this kind of stock volume – but most can’t even come close. Fopp are also making forays into both mail order services and online digital downloads but how, if the point of your business is an actual shop, do you generate genuine footfall? Well Fopp generally have very well-designed shops – light, friendly and full of nice natural materials that differentiate them from the shiny media behemoths like Virgin and HMV. Most small record shops simply do not have this kind of attention to decor.

So, apart from the actual choice and number of records, how do they differentiate their store as an actual physical destination. Some have experimented with cafes and bars, although I have yet to see much evidence of this working so far. Some, like Andrew Tully of Avalanche Records in Edinburgh get involved in the local music community quite heavily, doing DJ sets and working with local record labels. Others, perhaps most famously Beggars Banquet, got into the record themselves.

Ultimately, this may be the way forward. Individual personalities are driving so much these days that maybe just being a shop is no longer enough. Maybe you need to become a ‘curator’ of music instead (fuck me, I hate that word) and organise small gigs, host club nights, have your personal taste strongly in evidence in the shop, write blogs, form connections with local radio stations and record labels. As long as you’re not dogmatic or perverse about it, your shop could become a visit to your personal world of music.

This sounds like a massive amount of work and energy doesn’t it, when I write it down like that. And who really knows if it would work? I mean, become too specialised and you’re buggered – too populist and you’ve lost your character. And in terms of sheer energy, could any one person really spread themselves that thinly? But at the end of the day I think there’s a very real possibility the small independent record shop might be no more than another doomed anachronism: you can get more, cheaper online, including access to knowledgeable chat and interaction; and unless you provide a friendly physical environment to come and poke around, with accompanying depth of back catalogue, you can easily lose the browsers too. So where does that leave you? Well I’m not sure, but maybe a plan like the one I mentioned might work. Maybe.

Willie Nelson – Mr Record Man
The Squirrel Nut Zippers – Bad Businessman
The Zincs – Finished in This Business
Yo La Tengo – Something to Do
Sid Vicious – My Way