Sat, 26 December 2009
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
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)
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Sat, 19 December 2009
Video: Vimeo - YouTube Shenandoah Davis plays the piano, and needless to say, we don't just happen to have one in the house. So given she was on a Summer tour of Europe, and given we'd invited her to Edinburgh to record a Toad Session we needed a Plan B. That Plan B came in the form of Penicuik Town Hall. Our friend Ben comes from Penicuik and his dad was able to secure three hours in the Town Hall for us to rock up in the Toad Van, unpack like some sort of alcoholic SWAT team, record our session, and bugger off before we were chased off. Fortunately it has all worked out extremely well, with the usual videos below to be watched, or alternatively you can find them on the Song, by Toad page at either Vimeo or YouTube. As you probably know, we always make individual videos of the songs and then an overall video of the whole day - sort of like Jools Holland, but with more gin and far less boogie-woogie piano. The excellent photos were taken by Dylan from Blueback Hotrod and Fiona Buckle, and the main set can be found on the Song, by Toad Flickr page, with Dylan's full set available on his own site. As ever the session tracks are all freely downloadable and pass-roundable, and the podcast tracklist can be found at the bottom of the page. Enjoy! Toadcast #100 - Shenandoah Davis Toad Session
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Sat, 12 December 2009
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
01. Eels - A Daisy Through Concrete (04.09) |
Sat, 5 December 2009
I get an awful lot of stuff in my inbox. When I get jaded and fed
up it seems like a bit of a burden, in all honesty, like I owe it to
every band and every publicity monkey who ever gets in touch with me to
give them complete attention and the time to let the music sink in and
all these things which just aren't possible.
Sometimes, though, I get in the right mood and having an inbox full of bits and bobs is an indulgent treat. This week is one of those weeks, where I am enjoying pottering through my inbox and having a listen to this and that and basically, it's just a bit of a treat. So, after weeks of structured and themed stuff, this week I am basically playing whatever the fuck it is I fancy. No theme, no plan no goal and no coherence in particular Toadcast #98 - Randomness
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Sat, 28 November 2009
I'm not sure why the end of the noughties should necessarily lead to
any kind of retrospective of the nineties, but it has. I guess it has
a lot to do with the fact that I just feel it's way too early for me to
figure out what I make of the noughties.
So, given that it must be about time for the nineties revival (actually, probably best give it another year or so) and given that the nineties are now quite a long way away and given that, erm... well I dunno. Given I was poking around at that stuff recently and listening to some Pulp and Gene and Blur and stuff I figured I might as well pop the whole bloody lot into a podcast. Toadcast #97 - The Nineties
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Sat, 21 November 2009
The Excast is so named because I am playing a lot of people's former
bands. There's Shane MacGowan's Nipple Erectors, Phil Chevron's
Radiators, Shilpa Ray's Beat the Devil and Billy Bragg's Riff Raff.
I concentrate so much on new music these days that I often decide whether or not I like a band on the basis of a handful of demos, maybe a single, sometimes a debut EP, stuff like that. And of course, bands don't stumble into the world fully-formed, it takes some of them ages to become brilliant, and a lot of the time the initial forms of a band can be really strange, presumably because the people in question were still casting around a bit for their sound. So there's a bit of that here, but it's not all that rigid a theme, and the playlist is a bit messy but, erm, well never mind. There are some great songs, so enjoy! Toadcast #96 - The Excast
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Sat, 14 November 2009
I think it would be only fair to describe this podcast as a little bit messy. We recorded it immediately after first Craigcast two weeks ago, and so by the end of it we were all fucking hammered.
I promise I have tried to edit out as much of the madness as I could, but it was difficult. The problem with incoherent drunken rambling is there don't tend to be a lot of natural breaks, so it was devilishly hard to cut down. Anyhow, this won't be the first or last time you listen to a load of mental old nonsense on the Toadcasts, so I am going to just have to wish you luck and let you get on with it. Toadcast #95 - The Craigcast Pt.2
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Sat, 7 November 2009
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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Sat, 31 October 2009
I have a friend Craig who works in Waterstones and is an obsessive about old American folk music and, more specifically, blues. He has been making Neil Meursault mix CDs for ages, which I've heard and consistently found myself asking what the hell I was listening to.
I usually hate the tedious collections of old blues music which seem to always adorn Uncut covers when they ask bands to name their formative influences, but some of the really scratchy old recordings Craig put on his CDs were amazing, so erm... this is the podcast I guess.
At last - someone who actually knows what he's talking about!
01. Blind Boy Fuller - Rattlesnakin' Daddy (02.57)
02. Charley Patton - Pea Vine Blues (12.34)
03. Big Joe Williams - Baby Please Don't Go (18.54)
04. Willie Brown - Future Blues (22.16)
05. Skip James - Hardtime Killing Floor Blues (31.32)
06. Robert Johnson - Hellhound on My Trail (39.57)
07. Muddy Waters - I Can't Be Satisfied (50.54)
08. Muddy Waters - Trouble No More (57.16)
09. Howlin' Wolf - Spoonful (59.54)
10. Mississippi Fred McDowell - Fireman Ring the Bell (71.15)
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Sat, 24 October 2009
This podcast is a little bit random, I have to say. There are songs
which follow on from the like folk/hate covers posts which have
appeared over the course of the last week or so on the site, a couple
are related to the fact that Mrs. Toad is once more away in God Bless
America shooting illegal aliens, chewing gum, whistling Dixie, or
whatever the fuck it is they do over there, while most of the first
half is related to the fact that my friend Andrew is coming to visit
this weekend.
They do sort of relate to one another, the songs, at least. Or there's a bit of overlap anyway. I never keep much track of it, but this is at least the second version of Blues Run the Game we've had on the podcasts, and I have no idea if I've ever actually repeated a song on these things. I wouldn't be surprised if I had, because I'm bloody disorganised when it comes to this kind of thing. Anyhow, no scary metal bastards making your ears bleed this week, just a lot of lovely folky stuff and a couple of scratchy indie bands. Oh, and Jack White. I'd say that he was an egomaniacal dick, but he's massive and would probably kick my arse, so I won't. Recent stuttering aside, though, he's produced some cracking tunes, whatever you think of the guy. Toadcast #92 - The Pantscast
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Sun, 18 October 2009
Well the Funkcast was probably about as gentle a 'tell me about this genre' podcast as you're likely to get. This, on the other hand, is not gentle. I suppose it was never likely to be - there's only so gentle an introduction you can give to this kind of music. Basically, I was becoming increasingly curious about the number of alt-folkies I know who come from heavy metal backgrounds. Loads of my friends here who I know because we all listen to indie rock or alternative folk or all sorts of things inbetween seem to have been really into metal when they were young. This doesn't entirely make sense to me because I see very little connection between the two kinds of music, and for so many people to have made that transition it must be a strong connection. Then,
of course, it turns out that loads of people whose music I listen to -
alt-folk, once again - also grew up listening to metal. The Mountain
Goats' John Darnielle, Phil Elverum of Mount Eerie and, more locally,
Dan from Withered Hand and Neil from Meursault. So, having been round
at the house doing artwork for their single releases I asked the Neil
and Chris from Meursault and Matthew who helps out with the label to
put together a metal podcast. It might not be quite as pleasant to
cook your bacon sandwiches to on Sunday afternoon, but erm, well I
never made any promises with these bloody podcasts anyway - just deal
with it, we'll probably be back to the alt-folk next week. 02. Withered Hand - Takeaway Food (05.03) 03. AC/DC - Whole Lotta Rosie (13.17) 04. Slayer - Jesus Saves (17.25) 05. Mount Eerie - Wind's Dark Poem (24.21) 06. Nirvana - School (35.13) 07. Dinosaur Jr. - On the Way (37.50) 08. Lightning Bolt - Ride the Sky (42.59) 09. Richard Cheese - Rape Me (47.47) 10. Children of Bodom - The Trooper (53.50) 11. Meshuggah - Autonomy Lost (57.05) 12. The Mountain Goats - No Children (62.01) 13. Anal Cunt - You're Old (Fuck You) (73.27) |
Sat, 10 October 2009
We'd already recorded the FOUND Toad Session earlier this same day, and Honeytrap had just recorded their session with Off the Beaten Tracks.
So basically, the sun was baking and we were all absolutely
shit-faced. Consequently, to describe the interview as any sort of
conversation as opposed to some kind of deranged, cataclysmic
cluster-fuck would be to massively flatter it. In all honesty, this is
a complete and completely splendid mess - enjoy!
Again, all the videos can be seen on the Song, by Toad Vimeo or YouTube pages, and the photo galleries can be perused on our Flickr page. Dylan from Blueback Hotrod took all the photos, and the set he has posted has a few more pics than the one on the Toad Flickr page, so go and have a look to view the full set. The whole interview is below, in the podcast file, and after that there are all the session mp3s which you are welcome to pass around as you see fit. Good luck with the interview; it's fucking mental. Toadcast #90 - Honeytrap Toad Session
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Mon, 5 October 2009
This podcast is unconscionably late once more and again I am going
to plead that there is a perfectly good reason for this. Today has
been taken up with constant recording here at Toad Hall, and I myself
have been finishing the video for the Honeytrap Toad Session which
finally, finally will be making an appearance this time next week. My job is virtually finished, and it's messy, but it will be a corker.
This podcast has no real theme, but I did let Neil choose most of the songs, so that gives the podcast something of a character of its own. I did make him be on a podcast with a Noah & the Whale song on it though. Ha haaa! That'll teach the trendy little bastard! Toadcast #89 - The Latecast
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Sat, 26 September 2009
Right, given we've come down to Manchester for the Meursault gig, I
thought I might make a podcast based around the two years I spent
living here. As I mentioned on this week's Friday Five, however, those
were really not very happy times so basically this podcast is just a
great big hour-long whinge about how shit my life was a couple of times
a few years ago.
Nah, not really. I mean, I do describe why life was tough then but it really isn't just a great big moan, I promise. For some reason the music in my life at those times seems to have really stuck in my head and become incredibly strongly associated with the period in question. Partly, I suppose, because the emotional succour you get from music when things are a bit rough is something you're grateful enough for for it to really form an important connection. The other aspect is that on both those occasions I had so little music with me that the stuff I did have got played over and over again, so a really small amount of stuff really dominated my listening habits at that point, and became incredibly strongly intertwined with all of my memories of the time. So, er, yes. Here you go: The Manchester Podcast. Toadcast #88 - The Manchester Podcast 01. Pearl Jam - Dissident (03.16) |
Sat, 19 September 2009
Well this podcast has been recorded from my sick bed, given my
current immobility. Actually, recording the Toadcast from bed was
quite pleasant, once I got over the slightly unusual surroundings.
Imagine me in my pants and scratching my balls whilst talking to you
and you'll pretty much have the ambience down pat.I sort of
intended this to be a selection of poppy little tunes from my inbox,
because all the last podcasts have been so heavily themed, but instead
it's ended up a little bit on the experimental side, through no real
intent of my own. Nevertheless, if you're happy to listen to the growl
of Polvo, the monologues of George Pringle and the peculiar
electro-experimentalism of Mark Linkous and Fennesz all in one podcast
then, fuck it, you're in the right place. Toadcast #86 - The Paincast
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Sat, 12 September 2009
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. 01. Willard Grant Conspiracy - Painter Blue (03.01) |
Sat, 5 September 2009
Hello, welcome to the Ruthcast. Why the Ruthcast? Because my friend Ruth who runs the Bowery with Jane came round to the house last week to thoroughly upstage me on my own podcast. Last yearRuth was a guest on my Fresh Air radio show and completely and utterly upstaged me, and in this podcast we agreed that she would come on every week this year. And that, frankly, sounds like a bloody good idea to me. I mentioned on the Friday Five a couple of weeks ago that Ellie Greenwich had died, and as this is something which upset Ruth rather a lot, so the podcast is absolutely chock-full of Ellie Greenwich songs 01. The Ronettes - Baby I Love You (05.51) |
Sat, 29 August 2009
Playing With the Past is an annual (we hope) event at the Edinburgh
Film Festival where contemporary bands are invited to write new
soundtracks for old films. Last year was the first of these, when the
superb British Sea Power wrote a brilliant score for Man of Aran, a (slightly fake) documentary about the lives of the inhabitants of a remote island off the West Coast of Ireland (extract here).
This was such a success that the band have been performing it all over the place ever since. This year David Drummond, who put the event together, decided to invite three different bands to work with roughly half an hour or so of footage each, and he started off by inviting eagleowl, who suggested a number of other bands, from which David chose FOUND and Meursault. We decided not to include more than a few excerpts of the music in this because the bands were a little uncomfortable about listening to too much of their stuff in the absence of the film to which it belongs. So a big thank you to Tommy, Bart and Neil for coming in to talk about their music, and to David and Theresa from the Filmhouse who came by to chip in at the beginning, before having to rush off. It may not be the catchiest of podcasts in a musical sense this week, but I think this is easily one of the best podcasts we've done - one of the most interesting, certainly. Also, although I haven't tracked down all these films on the internet, I have got some bits and pieces for you to give you an idea of what was going on. Confusingly, they all have the original scores on these clips, but erm... well, hopefully you'll find them instructive. The Films: Toadcast #84 - The Playing With the Pastcast
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Sat, 22 August 2009
Would you believe that this podcast is finished and ready and done and I am ready to go to bed by 10pm. This is a fucking scarily strange occurrence. I've only had about four beers too, which is also a little unsual. The only organisational task at which I have abjectly failed is keeping the length of this podcast down to an hour. Basically, having different people co-present is really nice, and I think it makes the podcasts miles better, but I am still coming to terms with the discipline of keeping the talky talky down to a manageable level and sticking to that hour which has made these weekly swear-morsels so digestible in the last few months. At the Wickerman Festival
Callum from Meursault made the highly contentious statement that not
all funk music was buttock-clenchingly awful and, whilst I mocked him,
I decided that someone with that kind of crazy recklessness must be
brave enough to bring a Toadcast full of funky classics to an audience
of sulky, morose indie kids with art school fringes. So good luck to
Callum - I am going to be listening to this with the same curiosity as
the rest of the audience I would think. It's hard to get a handle on
what a podcast sounds like as you record it, so I guess if I am going
to absorb the lesson of the funk then I will have to have a cup of
coffee, put my feet up on the couch and listen to it the same as
everyone else. 01. Parliament - Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker) (06.23) |
Mon, 17 August 2009
The most enormous difficulty with recording this podcast was that it was monumentally, wonderfully, amazingly sunny and hot outside. So there we were, stuck in our house, trying to play songs and conduct an interview while we were all secretly (and not so secretly) longing to just be out in the back garden. Mrs. Toad was making burgers, you know. Gaaaaah! I remember when FOUND recorded a show with Marc Riley recently and I got plenty of emails saying that they really weren’t very talkative. Which is odd really, because I didn’t entirely get that kind of impression as we recorded this session or about them in general, but then I listen back to it again and the first few interviewy segments really do take a while to get going. I guess it took a while for Ziggy (who I’d never met before) and myself to figure out exactly how to talk to one another and whether or not we really got on. So that whole dynamic makes for a really good podcast, which gets more and more interesting, from my point of view anyway, as the thing progresses. As usual, all the videos are embedded below and can be seen at the Song, by Toad Vimeo on YouTube pages, along with a portfolio of photos by Dylan from Blueback Hotrod, and Fee on Flickr here. The session tracks can all be downloaded below, and the main interview podcast itself is immediately below. Have fun Toadlings. I am going to sleep like a freshly-slaughtered corpse. Toadcast #83 – FOUND Toad Session FOUND – Mullokian (Toad Session) FOUND – You’re No Vincent Gallo (Toad Session) FOUND – Medley (Toad Session) FOUND – Anti-Climb Paint (Toad Session) FOUND – Gifted (Toad Session) Now we’ve got the main session video below, followed by the videos we made for the individual songs (Vimeo are being fucking useless at the moment, but eventually that main video and Gifted won’t be on YouTube). 01. FOUND – Mullokian (Toad Session) (05.11) |
Sat, 8 August 2009
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 mention 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. 01. Withered Hand - No Cigarettes (06.56) |
Sat, 1 August 2009
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. 01. Tom Waits - Jockey Full of Bourbon (02.05) |
Sun, 26 July 2009
This is our first attempt at a stunt podcast, live from a festival. We go to festivals and I am trying to figure out how much work I can make for myself without taking the fun out of the festival for myself, or just generally trying too hard. I didn't really set up any interviews this time around - no, not even Billy Bragg - but I did manage to grab Mark from emerging Glasgow band The Seventeenth Century for a chat. The audio is terrible, I'm afraid, but it should be just about audible. If I'd been able to locate the keys for the Toad van at that point we'd have gone in there, just for a respite from the wind noises on the recording and the colossal amount of bleed from the main stage. In any case, it should be entertaining enough, I hope, and with a bit of luck subsequent attempts at the same thing will be a lot better. Toadcast #79 - The Wickerman 01. The Cave Singers - Beach House (04.04) |
Sat, 18 July 2009
Uncut Magazine and I had a pretty amazing relationship between the turn of the millennium and about 2004 or 2005. Basically, I would buy it every month and turn straight to the reviews section and the cover mount CD of what they considered to be the best of new music released that month, and devour both simultaneously, taking notes about what I wanted to spend that monthÃs meagre wages on. Those cover mount CDs were amazing, at the time, and almost invariably related to that monthÃs new releases, but in the last few years they have become way, way more concepty, and I have started to enjoy them less and less. For some reason, UncutÃs relationship with contemporary music seems to have come adrift even faster than my own, even as I approach my mid-thirties. Even if I am exaggerating that particular claim - maybe blogging is keeping my tastes young(ish), you never know - it seems a shame that I have drifted away from what was one of my major sources of new music for years, so this podcast is something of a retrospective and also a salute to all the stuff I picked up from Uncut and in particular their amazing cover mount CDs over the years. 01. The Magnetic Fields - I DonÃt Want to Get Over You (03.36) |
Sat, 11 July 2009
Sorry, I know this is going up late, but I have been working on the promotional material for the Jesus H. Foxx EP release. There's a fair bit still to be done, but for the time being I am cautiously optimistic that it is going to look fucking brilliant. There will be a lot of painting to be done though, so putting the final touches on the thing is going to take bloody ages, but I think it is going to be easily worth it. In other news, this week's podcast is a prolonged chat with Euan (of Kays Lavelle, Trampoline, Steinberg Principle and Woodenbox fame) as a way of rounding up the excellent fortnight he spent feeding and changing Song, by Toad whilst Mrs. Toad and I were off gallivanting. So, rather than make his usual grouchy, joyless comments on posts I thought I might invite him to make his grouchy joyless comments on a podcast. So he came round and complained and complained and generally sulked his way through the whole thing, which was nice. Oh alright, of course he didn't. But it just wouldn't be fun for me if I didn't make fun of Euan for being grouchy long past the time anyone else has ceased to find it funny. Oh stop sulking. You're turning into him. All of you. Shame on you, people, shame on you. Cheer the fuck up for God's sake. 01. Wilco - Bull Black Nova (06.39) |
Sat, 4 July 2009
I recently did an interview with Billy from The Scotsman's Under the Radar blog (amongst other venerable organs) which took the form of an interesting chat about the current tension between bloggers and professional journalists. He has played off my opinions against those of his friend Mike Diver, who is currently the online editor for (the excellent) Clash magazine. The whole thing can be found here, along with plenty of comments from Ally and Milo, professional writers from around these parts, and myself and Tart, on the side of the bloggers. The comments on that thread It's an interesting debate, frankly, and one which, as a blogger with aspirations, as opposed to someone who is happy to simply chat for the sake of it, I have applied a fair deal of thought to. Ultimately, though, I think it is something of a false dichotomy: some of the best reporters keep blogs as ways of expressing themselves outwith the constraints of the editorial policy of whatever rag pays their wages and a lot of the best bloggers end up parlaying their writing skills into professional careers in journalism. And of either side there is a vast amount of detritus, professional and amateur. So, yes, the Toad once again holds forth passionately on subjects he knows far too little about and may in general be making a fool of himself once more. The, erm, songs are good though. 01. Billy Bragg - Which Side Are You On? (03.17) |
Sat, 27 June 2009
Well, we are nearing the end of our time in Puglia. We're spending a couple of days in or near Napoli before we fly back on Sunday, presumably troughing like total pigs, rather than paying all that much attention to culture and all that bobbins. Mrs. Toad is doing Sudoku and complaining about the 'wrong sort of paper'. I kid you not, it's just like British fucking Rail and their 'wrong type of snow', but she insists it's just for that reason that she can't solve them, not because they're too hard. Personally I find myself wondering if 'evil' is used to describe the comments one's spouse will inevitably make when you fail to complete it, rather than the actual difficulty of the Sudoku puzzle itself. So yes, we have done the lazing about and there are now a few days of actually doing shit in between us and a return to the damp splendour of the British Isles. I suppose this is what you're supposed to do on holiday - pay attention to the country you're in and return, eventually - but honestly, another week of doing bollocks-all wouldn't hurt anyone would it? Toadcast #75 - The Bone Idlecast 01. Snow Patrol - An Olive Grove Facing the Sea (04.14) |
Sat, 20 June 2009
Mrs. Toad and I might be gallivanting about the Italian countryside, but we are still thinking of you, our loyal Toadlings. We may be relaxing by the pool, but we understand that life might not be quite so easy for those of you at home. Actually, fuck it, life is never this easy for us either. This is like some bizarre anomaly for us - time, peace, reading books… it’s all so fucking restful I’ve almost forgotten to swear at the locals.
The place we’re staying is just plain ridiculous. We are living in what amounts to the tiniest of little comedy garden sheds imaginable, but the outside space is some great big gigantic plaza. It’s just ridiculous.
Fortunately, there is something to lower the tone. Nature is basically a great big urinal, as we all know, and I have been doing my best to maintain a time-honoured male principle of ‘no place being too sacred or picturesque for having a sly piss’. So when the bladder beckons, so does the wall, and there I go to water the olive groves of Puglia. It feels like a public service, really it does.
Thanks again to Euan and the lads for keeping things going while we're away. The connection here is so damn slow I really haven't been able to read it all, but Mrs. Toad periodically checks up on things on her Blackberry (the woman's insane) and lets me know how things are going. This news I generally treat with an indifferent grunt, before returning to the pondering of precisely which sort of cheese I most fancy for lunch, but I appreciate her efforts.
Toadcast #74 - The Poolcast
01. The Shaky Hands - Summer’s Life (03.26)
02. Lemonjelly - Spacewalk (12.45)
03. Grandaddy - Ghost of 1672 (19.44)
04. Billie Holiday - Good Morning Heartache (24.36)
05. Animal Magic Tricks (with Neil from Meursault & Pete from The Leg) (34.42)
06. Edith Piaf - C’etait Une Histoire D’amour (38.11)
07. The Flaming Lips - Can’t Get You Out of My Head (48.12)
08. Wilco - Jolly Banker (52.17)
09. The Laurel Collective - No Pirates Left (63.04)
10. Yoshimi! - Philosophy For Fangirls (69.12)
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Sat, 13 June 2009
This is not so much the holiday podcast as the pre-holiday podcast, because for all we are away now, I recorded this on Thursday night before going away, as we prepare ourselves for the unspeakable burden of doing absolutely fuck all for two weeks. I am taking a pile of books and a pile of new music and we are going to do pretty much nothing at all. My parents used to do really adventurous travelling when we were young, but honestly I don't have the energy. I am so incredibly fucking exhausted from constant Toadery that actually, despite having a holiday inferiority complex, pretty much all I can cope with at the moment is a couple of weeks of fuck all. Even
last year when we went to Portland for a couple of weeks, we took all
the technology and recorded interviews and all sorts at Pickathon. It
was relaxing and nice, but I still got a hell of a lot of work done.
This time I will take along some tunes which I have been meaning to
catch up with, perhaps record a podcast or two, and basically spend the
rest of the time lying in the sun by the pool. My folks might not be
all that impressed, but the recharging of the batteries is the sole
purpose of this trip and I think we might manage just that. Toadcast #73 - The Holiday Podcast 02. Midnight Oil - Bushfire (10.06) 03. Headless Heroes - Hey, Who Really Cares? (Jon Hopkins Remix) (16.56) 04. Alela Diane - Pieces of String (21.05) 05. Inspector Tapehead - A Fillet of Bozo (25.42) 06. Maxwell Panther - Shiver on a Twist of Fate (33.19) 07. Jack Richold - Lady of the Calico (37.00) 08. Grant-Lee Phillips - Calamity Jane (41.16) 09. Billy Bragg - Bread & Circuses (50.20) 10. The Divine Comedy - Les Jours Tristes (57.45) |
Sat, 6 June 2009
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. 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) |
Sat, 30 May 2009
Oh dear god almighty I have a hangover. Fucking bastard music people. Last night there was gigging and drinking and wandering the streets of a most balmy and pleasant Edinburgh with an assortment of miscreants and other ne'er-do-wells. We saw Honeytrap and Meursault play at Sneaky Pete's - I was recording this podcast, hence late for X-Lion Tamer, sorry to both Ed and Tony - and it was fucking amazing. And after that there was drinking. Fuck me there was lots of drinking. And then I came home and went into the local all night shop and purchased a couple of steaks for late-night snacking purposes, and was harassed by a bunch of young lads when I came out. Not harassed in a bad way, but I think I was asked to buy them some fags or something like that. Anyhow, the conversation... erm, well I'm not really sure how the conversation went, because I was fucking hammered, but at some point the van came up, which was parked just along the road. So, ah, for some slightly bizarre reason I ended up with five high school lads and me sat in the van with the stereo up fucking loud - so loud apparently that you could hear it all the way down the street. Or, at least, so Mrs. Toad tells me. Because at some point she came home from wherever it was she was out drinking and hopped in as well. So,
after a little van-based rocking out, they came back into the house for
a bit and Mrs. Toad played them Motorhead and The Sex Pistols and The
Wedding Present so fucking loud the windows shook. Funnily enough,
these nice, polite lads kept insisting throughout that we should just
let them know when we were bored and we would like them to go. Such
nice, polite boys! I think one of them even did the dishes. I didn't
want to have to try and explain what a couple of total fucking bozos
they were dealing with, but erm, yeah, that was our Friday night.
Weird, huh? I think we went to bed at about five, eventually. And now
to record a couple of Toad Sessions, at least one with a very, very
hung over band. Toadcast #71 - The Tough Lovecast 01. Belle & Sebastian - Take Your Carriage Clock & Shove It (03.46) |
Sat, 23 May 2009
This week I am piling on the music snobbery. Oh, okay, I'm not really - if anything I'm undermining it with some truly guilty pleasures. There's not much modern fluffy pop music which I happen to enjoy despite my snobbery because... well, because I just don't think there's anything I can think of which fits that bill at the moment. I know nostalgic guilty pleasures and truly embracing low-brow music
purely for the enjoyment of it aren't quite the same thing but I think
I've budged about as far as I am going to go on this one. Girls Aloud
are unlikely to ever make an appearance on this podcast, but there's a
spot of memory-tickling being indulged in with picks from Kylie and
Guns 'n' Roses. You can tell Mrs. Toad has been involvedin choosing a playlist when it contains Guns and fucking Roses, but she was sacked from co-presenting
duties due to excessive drunkenness, so her imprint on this particular
episode is in selections only, and not in the presence of her dulcet
tones on the interwaves. 02. Popup - Lucy, What Are You Trying to Say (07.04) 03. Art Fag - Nakhla Dog (15.48) 04. Kylie Minogue - Confide In Me (23.27) 05. Motorhead - Ace of Spades (28.50) 06. The Seventeenth Century - Mid October (36.16) 07. Alan Pownall - The Others (43.56) 08. Haggard the Listener Group - Blackette (47.29) 09. Soft Cell - Tainted Love (51.22) 10. Guns 'n' Roses - Sweet Child o' Mine (58.12) |
Sat, 16 May 2009
My Homegame review is pretty brief, but it is here, and there is a wee video thingy as well for you to enjoy. This is of course the accompanying podcast, with songs either from the bands I saw there, or from EPs and bits and pieces I acquired at the merch table up in Fife. I should really have included some interviews and shit
in this podcast, shouldn't I, but then I wasn't actually as well
prepared or as organised as I should have been, really. Inasmuch as I
kind of think I would prefermy video to have turned out a bit more like Milo's, I would also have preferred my podcast to turn out a little more like DC's Homegame show over at the Waiting Room. I'm not saying that I dislike the stuff that
I've done this year, just that to my eyes it lacks a little bit of fizz
and personality, unfortunately. Oh well, it's all a learning process,
and by the time Wickermancomes around I reckon I should be able to produce something a lot better. 01. The Phantom Band - Island (03.00) |
Sat, 9 May 2009
Me and the missus are rambling away together on this one. It's largely new music, bookended by a couple of more well-known things. We Invent a new term - a weird combination of food and sex called culiniungus. We offend the Irish and the Scots. In fact, we are as offensively and predictably us as you could imagine. We were out and totally smashed at the Broken Records gig at the Bowery yesterday, followed by some hot Sneaky Pete's action. There are some disastrously embarrassing pictures here, if you want to point and laugh. The gig was amazing. I knew a group like Broken Records would be amazing in a small space like that, and so it proved. I had to do some very pointed Standing Up though, which was fucking annoying. What the fuck is it with people, sitting down at fucking gigs? If the room's empty that's one thing, but the room was full, people were on tiptoes up the back, and this shower of cunts insisted on sitting on their fucking arses down the front, protecting a meter and a half of empty floor space between them and the band. So, as Mr. Discreetandtactful, I went and stood in front of them. Fuckwits. The band did get everyone on their feet after a song, which was a fucking relief, but honestly... it's rock 'n' roll bitches, get up off your fucking hippy folk arseholes and stop acting like the Chipping Sodbury Chapter of the National Union of Knitting Champions. It's not, to paraphrase a friend of mine, the fucking Teddy Bears' Picnic. This delightful little anecdote does have a darker side, however. Some lass tugged on my sleeve to ask me to sit down during the first song, and I attempted to politely but firmly say no thank you. Unfortunately I may have succeeded more at the latter than the former, and ended up just being rude to the woman. Who was very pregnant. Well done me. Picking fights with pregnant women isn't really all that clever, is it. So, er, sorry pregnant lady, I didn't mean to be quite so terse, nor did I mean to imply that you should just stop moaning about your baby and stand up. But then, you can't really expect to sit two metres back from the stage and object to anyone standing in front of you either, because that's just silly. Oh, and we met Peej, a reader from New York, who was in town for the week and said hello. He was a really nice chap, so why he reads this fucking site is a mystery, to be honest, but it was brilliant of him to say hello, and then to put up with our drunken stumbling later on as well. Sometimes I love teh internetz. Not times like this of course, but sometimes. 1. Joy Zipper - Dosed & Became Invisible (01.40) |
Sat, 2 May 2009
This podcast is sort of like the Clustercast should have been. I haven't actually listened to it yet, so I don't know if it's any good, but it sort of felt better, somehow. It isn't anything like that incoherent and garbled anyway, which is a relief. We spent the day collecting for the lifeboats, along with some excellent help from our pals Dylan from Blueback Hotrod, Neil from Meursault, Ed from 17 Seconds, Dave, Michael and the Stormettes from The Stormy Seas and Morgan from, erm, Glasgow. I have to point out how important their help was as well. It's easy to talk a good game and then to pussy out at the last minute, but despite the fact that both Neil and Ed had other things on today, everyone made the time to come down and help out, which is bloody good of them. We collected a fair chunk of cash - Mrs. Toad's pretty blonde colleague collected the most, rather predictably. Maybe we need fewer beardy alt-folkies and more hot babes next year. Enjoy the podcast, then; we've got a lot of nautically-themed songs
this week and could have had even more. There are loads of songs, and
we had far more on the list before trimming. It's a bit out of
control, this podcast, but actually I think it's quite good. Dylan's
roving reporter slots are just... well, they're just. They're just.
That's what they are. Experience them for yourself. Good luck. 02. Sad Day For Puppets - Big Waves (09.07) 03. Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (17.44) 04. James Yorkston - Sir Patrick Spens (26.22) 05. The Second Hand Marching Band - Not Yet (38.40) 06. The Stormy Seas - The Sea Wind (42.40) 07. Ute Lemper - Little Water Song (50.31) 08. Frightened Rabbit - Floating in the Forth (57.25) 09. Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians - The Wreck of the Arthur Lee (64.53) 10. American Music Club - The Song of the Rats Leaving the Sinking Ship (75.43) |
Sat, 25 April 2009
Today I am angry at Capitalism. Partly, funnily enough, I am angry at Capitalism because in many ways I myself am a Capitalist. The problem I have with Capitalism is not really the theory, but the practise. So many people and companies who chant the free market mantra simply are not free marketeers. They want isolationism and protectionism as much as the most paranoid Marxist when it will protect their interests, but they won't for a second entertain the economic theory behind that sort of behaviour - gosh no! So there is plenty of paranoid ranting in this week's podcast, railing against people who talk all Capitalist whilst not actually being Capitalist, people who are moral and honorable in their personal lives but who turn into voracious whores as soon as they put on a suit and, erm, well generally there's lots of pish to be talked, sorry. Still, at least it's marginally better than last week. 01. Pet Shop Boys - Opportunities (03.27) |
Sat, 18 April 2009
As you might expect from the title, this is one ungodly clusterfuck of a podcast. It was recorded well into the early hours of the morning with Dylan, Neil and DC who were all in the house by virtue of Homegame being imminent (happening already by the time you hear this) and the Meursault EP being in the final stages of completion. DC stopped by the house on his way to Fife, Neil was around to put CDs into card envelopes and Dylan, er, just likes beer I think. There's was also some heinous Norweigan anus cheese being eaten as well. Toffee-flavoured cheese. Fucking toffee-flavoured fucking cheese. Honestly, it is the most disgusting substance known to man and looks just a little bit like brown plasticine. Anyway, please don't expect anything coherent
or, frankly, even anything listenable. Four of us sat around and
bellowed incoherently into a microphone for a couple of hours, and
frankly that's exactly what it sounds like. There are some good songs,
though, and somereally good new music but, erm, honestly you might want to skip the talky bits.
Actually, you know the first time anyone talks any sense whatsoever
on this podcast? The last link. Really. We get drunker and drunker
and more incoherent, and then right at the end there's an utterly
shocking outbreak of common sense. Toadcast #65 - The Clustercast 01. Eels - Fresh Blood (02.27) |
Sat, 11 April 2009
It's been a longish week, but believe me this weekend is going to be worse. I am offering up my poor old Volvo for sale, which breaks my embittered little alcoholic heart, so it does. I am going to miss that car, we've had some wonderful times pottering about in her and I am going to miss the silly old girl, really I am. This is a joint podcast, seeing as how I was in the pub with Dylan and the poor whelp seemed to have nowhere else to go, I invited him back to the house to add his own particular brand of incoherent nonsense to this week's podcast. Because lazy racial stereotyping is something of a stock in trade around here, I find myself making several lame attempts to bring up Welshness and national identity and all that pish, but ultimately this is just two drunk people chattering about music. More or less the usual, then. 01. Billy Bragg & Kirsty MacColl - A New England (05.12) |
Sat, 4 April 2009
Spring makes a fucking colossal difference, doesn't it. People have been tripping around Edinburgh with a spring in their step for the last week, when the sun has come out and the air, whilst it may still be a little chilly, is notably warmer. It's gentler, I suppose, is the main difference. There's something of a release about Spring, as if all the uncomfortable restraint of Winter no longer has to be acknowledged. Does anyone remember that episode of Northern Exposure when the ice melted? Everyone went nuts, and the relieved exhalation we all express on the coming of the sunshine does remind me in many ways of a tame version of the exact same mania depicted in that episode of, erm, a serialised drama from the, er, mid ah nineties... anyone still reading? Never mind. In any case, this is a purposeless but
musically excellent podcast which is something of a lazy one, if I'm
honest. Frankly though, I think I deserve it after the effort put into
the Pictish Session, so fuck you if you have an issue with that. Tee
hee. There's a lot of new release stuff on here, a couple of bands
reviewed recently on the site, and a couple who are going to be
reviewed later this week. Next week I'll think of a theme. Promise. Toadcast #63 - Sprrring is Here! 01. The Soft Pack - Right & Wrong (01.33) |
Sat, 28 March 2009
This Toad Session has been a wee while coming, but frankly I think
it's fucking superb. The videos have turned out wonderfully, Neil and
Gav have done an amazing job with the sound, Fee and Dylan have taken
some great photos. I'm happy as a pig in shit, quite frankly. Johnny
Lynch (Mr. Pictish Trail) had plenty of time to kill, so we drank some
beer, took our time and talked a monumental amount of shite. The
podcast is really strong this time around, I think. We talk a lot but
I think it's pretty decent stuff for the most part, not random blather,
so I really think it should be an enjoyable listen. Hopefully, anyway.
Johnny picked really nice songs, too. He's recorded a couple of unreleased ones, and a Lone Pigeon cover, as well as his Top of the Pops hit single Winter Home Disco. It makes for a really nice mix. As per usual the songs are all available for downloading, hotlinking and sharing around, the videos can be watched below, on our YouTube (yeuch) page or our Vimeo page, and the photos are all to be seen as a slideshow here or on the general Song, by Toad Flickr page here. Go to Blueback Hotrod for more of Dylan's live music photography. And enjoy the podcast - it can be played below, and the tracklisting is at the bottom of the page. I'm really proud of this, people, so I hope you enjoy it. Toadcast #62 - The Pictish Trail Toad Session The Pictish Trail - Winter Home Disco (Toad Session) The Pictish Trail - I Will Pour it Down (Toad Session) The Pictish Trail - You Covered the Earth With Your Thumb (Toad Session) The Pictish Trail - Won't You Take Me Back (Lone Pigeon Cover) (Toad Session) And now the videos, starting with the overall session video, and then the ones we made for the individual songs:
01. The Pictish Trail - Winter Home Disco (06.04) Thanks folks, hope you enjoyed that. |
Sun, 22 March 2009
Well, as DC pointed out on Five Friday Fatwas,
the 90s revival is not quite upon us yet. It's both totally inevitable
and somewhat due, so it will be here sooner rather than later, but for
the time being it has yet to entirely arrive.
So in anticipation of the inevitable, I thought I might just make a podcast which partly tried to anticipate the revisionism and partly talked just a little about what I myself might remember when the 90s revival hits full swing in a couple of years. I wouldn't describe myself as a child of
the 90s, but I think that I might be wrong in neglecting to do so.
When they started I was 15, just moved from Singapore back to Vienna
and very much a kid. By the time they ended I had finished my Master's
degree and spent a long time pouring pints waiting for a proper job,
which in some ways I suppose might just make you an adult. It was an interesting era for me personally and when the revival arrives
, as it inevitably will, I am downright fascinated to know what the
younger generation will make of the music with which I grew up. 01. Pearl Jam - Go (03.47)
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Sat, 14 March 2009
This week I welcome you to the absolutely 100% guaranteed non-controversial podcast. Nothing to see here. Move along. Although, it might be slightly controversial, just possibly, around two thirds of the way through if you are excessively religious or perhaps if you have some objection to pointing and laughing as Jade Goody dies of cancer or Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse slowly expire in the full and relentless gaze of the public eye. Has anyone seen the film Deathwatch? It's set in Glasgow in the 1980s and almost entirely obscure, despite an amazing cast: Romy Schneider, Harvey Keitel and Max von Sydow. What it amounts to is that a woman discovers that she is going to die, and then a TV company ask to buy the rights to film her last weeks. It's a bit over the top at times, but a pretty visionary movie nevertheless. It's always disconcerting where something like that makes a prediction which proves to be so uncannily true. I think the scariest thing about 1984 is how utterly determined the species seems to be to make sure that it comes true. If you can find a copy, I'd recommend that you watch it. It's pretty hard to track down though - we had to get ours from Amazon France for some bizarre reason, so good luck to you. 1. Belle & Sebastian - Women's Realm (04.41) |
Fri, 27 February 2009
Live recordings - in fact, specifically, live albums - came up in a recent post on Song, by Toad and the idea of doing a podcast composed entirely of live recordings really appealed to me because there are so many great ones. That said, on the post in question there arose a debate, one voice expressing my deepest hatreds of the genre, and another being perhaps over-generous in the other direction. Frankly, I despise the vast majority of live albums. Mostly they are shit recordings of songs we already know, released for the sole reason of fleecing fans whose devotion has already been established, and whose wallets can clearly be plundered for a few more empty sheckles. Despite that, of
course, there are some truly stunning live recordings. In fact, I'd
argue that some of the most memorable, legendary recordings of all
time are in fact live ones. Bob Dylan live at the Free Trade Hall in
Manchester in 1966. Bruce Springsteen pretty much any time in the
seventies. Basically, for all live recordings are mostly rip-off
bollocks, there are some truly phenomenal live albums, ones which open
your eyes to the artist, ones which fill in that artist's musical
upbringing, and some which are just genuinely amazingly wonderful
recordings in their own right. Therefore we bring to you the
Livecast. Enjoy, Toadlings... Toadcast #57 - Production Values 02. Andrew Bird - Why (11.47) 03. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Papa Won't Leave You Henry (16.22) 04. The Moulettes - Country Joy Song (25.29) 05. Colin Meloy - Blues Run the Game (32.49) 06. Quasar Wut-Wut - The Partisan (35.45) 07. Jeff Mangum - Two Headed Boy (43.04) 08. Tom Waits - Diamonds on My Windshield (54.37) 09. Billy Bragg - Days Like These (DC Remix) (56.46) 10. Ben Folds Five - Satan is My Master (60.15) 11. Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone (64.16) Song, by Toad |
Sat, 21 February 2009
After a week spent debating it, how about a podcast embodying the discussions we've been having about production values I thought a podcast which sort of pulls all the disagreements and moans and whingeing and so on into one big mp3 of joy would be a good idea. So we've got some Big Production, some demo scratchy stuff and a few bands who have dabbled with both. I fart on about production values as if I have the faintest idea what I'm talking about, which of course I don't. I'm not sure how well it works as a playlist - it might be a bit disjointed - but in general I like it. I like the debate in general, I like the thought process we've all gone through together this week, and in general, by association, I like this podcast. Toadcast #57 - Production Values 01. Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA (Original Nebraska Sessions Demo Version) (04.31) |
Sat, 14 February 2009
We both hate Valentine's day and have no desire to take part in its consumerist pantomime. It seems to have created its own little rituals in our house though: we have an annual Valentine's hate-fest, which lasts a couple of days, where we pour scorn on both the event itself and anyone who takes part in it. The problem is, in doing so, we have sort of made ourselves part of what gets on our own nerves. Fucking people and their fucking stupid valentine's traditions like, er... this one. This is probably only the second in what will probably
become an annual Valentine's Scorn-o-rama, but it already feels like a
time-honoured tradition. So if you're single, generally antagonistic,
miserable, lonely or just plain indifferent then this is the podcast for you. We even have an odd conversation where we wonder what the point of marriage is - a slightly bizarre thing for a married couple to start wondering about. But that's the Toadcasts for you. Toadcast #56 - Valentine's Schmalentine's 01. Nirvana - Rape Me (00.57)
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Sat, 7 February 2009
The day after his amazing live set at the Bowery, Sam Amidon came round to the house to record a Toad Session. He didn't have all that much time, and I don't think he quite knew what he'd let himself in for either, so this one is pretty brief. Still, between this and the footage from the live show I think we have a really nice portrait of the guy, who is so different in person from his recordings. Whilst the latter may be beautiful, and whilst All Is Well is an amazingly lovely album, his personality dominates his live show so much it gives you such a different perspective on his music. As per usual, we have the session podcast below, and after that the Toad Session mp3 files, which you are free to pass around as you please. The videos are posted below that, and can all be found on the Song, by Toad Vimeo page (recommended) as well as the YouTube page (shit, but popular, so I have to put them there too). There's also a series of photos from the session, which can be found on our Flickr page. The tracklisting for the podcast is at the bottom of this post - enjoy! Toadcast #55 - Samamidon Toad Session And the downloadable, shareable, huggable mp3s from the session: Samamidon - 1842 (Toad Session) Samamidon - Pretty Fair Damsel (Toad Session) Samamidon - Fiddle Mayhem (Toad Session) And the videos:
And the playlist for Toadcast #55 - Samamidon Toad Session: 01. Samamidon - 1842 (Toad Session) (05.23) |
Sun, 25 January 2009
The Spacecast is yet another podcast dreamed up in the pub, this time between myself and Dylan, the official Song, by Toad photographer. And again it's one of those podcast which could have gone on for over two hours quite easily, but we don't do that anymore, not around here, we're disciplined these days goddammit. So I've missed off about a million other suggestions and come up with a combination of songs genuinely about space, and few that use space as some sort of metaphor and then a few which just stick a few spacey words in the title. And of course, it starts with something rather splendid... but you'll have to listen to find out what it is. Alright, it's not that special. Just mildly amusing. 01. Me First & the Gimme Gimmes - Rocket Man (03.52) |
Sat, 17 January 2009
This is just an overspilling of all the shiny new things I have in my inbox this week. It's so fabulously up to the minute that there are songs in here which only landed in my inbox yesterday. There's a slightly sneaky legend making an appearance as well, in the shape of Jason Lytle. Jason was the lead singer of Grandaddy, a legendary group who disbanded back in about, erm, 2006 or so, leading to Jason moving to a house out in Montana and apparently giving up on the idea of making a living out of music altogether. The thing is, music is an art form, and no-one makes a fucking living out of making art. The only exceptions are deplorable cunts like Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and fucking Bono, so please can we dispel the idea that art is a profession. It's not a job, nor a career, it's a fucking calling; an obsession. Of course, the good news for us fans is that, because it's a calling rather than a job, Mr. Lytle was never likely to stay away forever. If you care about something it's almost impossible to stop yourself doing it. Believe me, I know - I feel the same way about masturbation (sorry, not that funny, I know). Oooh, by the way, I was very macho this evening. I got home and I opened the gate to find some random chump sitting on our steps drinking beer. So I bellowed with rage, grabbed him by the lapels and flung him out into the street, shouting angry man things like 'get the fuck out of my fucking house you cunt or I'll fucking batter you fucking senseless' and other well known aristotelian arguments. Unfortunately, as is often the case with fighting, one proved vastly less capable than the other, and he apologised and asked for the rest of his beer back and acknowledged that was in the wrong. Christ that made me feel like a prick and a bully. So I ended up pointing out that my wife was small and that if she came home and found someone sitting on our steps drinking beer she's have been scared, and that I was sorry for being so violent and please just bugger off etc etc. He agreed and apologised and basically took all the fun out of being an alpha male, the bastard. Christ, I might have to wait ten years to be that macho again, why did he have to ruin it for me? 01. Orouni - A Greased & Golden Palm (05.47) |
Sat, 10 January 2009
Well here we go. The new year is yet to quite take hold or take off, but I promise you that things will kick back into gear this weekend. There are some fine love shows appearing on the calendar, slowly but surely, and eventually 2009 will get going. No rush though. This Toadcast is a bit of a mix. I've got some of this year's favourites, I look back at some of last year's favourites, and I also poke away at a couple of the bands I hope will make their mark in 2009. In that sense, examining last year's favourites makes a lot of sense. I'm always curious about how well our fads and fancies bear up to the passage of time.
I've not been too fickle in recent years, which is sort of nice, so I
don't mind looking back like this. There aren't too many
embarrassments to be had, so it's kind of nice to take the chance to
look backwards, look forwards a little and generally just take the
opportunity to pause for breath and enjoy the new year. As should you,
toadlings, as should you. Happy new year, folks. 02. Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta - The Ragged Garden of Your Eye (08.57) 03. Aidan John Moffat - The Boy That You Love (12.19) 04. Mitchell Museum - Extra Lives (18.11) 05. The Savings & Loan - The Virgin's Lullaby (24.36) 06. The Builders & the Butchers - When it Rains (28.06) 07. Elvis Perkins - It's Only Me (34.30) 08. Mother & the Addicts - Are Others (38.21) 09. The Pictish Trail - Winter Home Disco (46.27) 10. The Low Lows - Dear Flys, Love Spider (54.49) |
