Tue, 28 June 2011
This podcast was recorded - not a word of a lie - on a deserted mountaintop in Corsica in the shadow of a ruined castle. Not an especially enormous ruined castle, I'll grant you, but the shadow of a ruined castle nevertheless. 01. Kate & Anna McGarrigle - Come a Long Way (00.09) |
Sun, 19 June 2011
The reason this is called the Nukecast is because I am pretty irritated by the exaggeration of just how horrible it is to be alive in 2011. 2011 is a total piece of piss. It's easy, unthreatening and perfectly comfortable, and the idea that the modern world is in any way topsy-turvy is just plain silly. I am not all that old, but even the eighties, when I was a kid, were far rougher than this. There was actual genuine menace, the world might just have been about to end in a nuclear fireball, and no-one had anything you could honestly call a proper job. So I complain about this for about an hour, while Mrs. Toad calls me an idiot. Welcome to the drunken Toadcasts. Again. 01. Tom Lehrer - Who's Next (00.08) |
Sat, 11 June 2011
This week's podcast is named the Northcast because I was just up in Inverness at GoNorth, which is I suppose the biggest official Scottish music industry chatfest. I am getting better at these, I have to be honest. The music industry is heavily based around status and I do not do well when I suspect people might be looking down their nose at me, consequently my first few were quite a challenge to escape from before I picked a fight with someone I shouldn't, but as my general stature within music, and Scottish music in particular, has slowly grown I am finding these events easier to handle. It also helped that as well as helping Lloyd from Peenko and Jason from the Popcop curate one of the stages, I did some one-to-one mentoring sessions (yes, I know!) and was on two of the panels myself. That in itself gives you a kind of status which means people seem less awkward if it comes time to approach them asking about something they can do for you - I suppose it just feels like you're on a more equitable footing. And in general this makes me less jumpy. None of this stops you drinking far, far too much at these things though. 01. David Thomas Broughton - Nature (00.06) |
Sun, 5 June 2011
Video: Vimeo – YouTube I first got into The Scottish Enlightenment back in 2007 when they releases the Eyes single on Moojuice Records. Then they went silent for a couple of years, to the extent that I thought they might have actually called it a day, but last year they came back stronger than ever before. Two fantastic EPs and an equally excellent album were released on Glasgow's rather awesome Armellodie Records, and in general I think it's fair to say that it was a toss-up between them and Kid Canaveral as to who I thought the Scottish band of 2011 was (*cough cough* Song, by Toad Records bands apart of course) Mrs. Toad operated one of the video cameras this time, and Dylan was on still and video cameras. I recorded and edited this one - the first full band I've recorded since Sparrow and the Workshop back in 2008. As per usual we have the podcast below, the freely downloadable session mp3s underneath that, followed by the videos we made for all the individual songs. The tracklisting for the podcast is at the very bottom of the page. Enjoy!
01. The Scottish Enlightenment - Black Dog (Toad Session) (07.53) |
