Thu, 27 November 2014
Alright alright, so the name of this might have absolutely hee-haw relation to the actual content of the podcast. It's just that I went to the tip today in Bette, as I usually do, and they spat the dummy and tried to charge me commercial rates to dispose of my rubbish and recycling because the car had fucking 'advertising' on the side of it. As in, daft rally stickers. Does Bette seriously look like a fucking company car to you, you morons? Despite the fact that I emptied it all out on the ground and asked them to point to the commercial waste, of which there was precisely none, the best they could manage was 'well this time it's okay, but next time...' Next time what? Fucking what? Stupid stickers on the side of a car means I can't use the fucking municipal dump? Fucking idiots. Anyhow, pointless and utterly futile outrage aside, here are some excellent tunes for you once again. Next week will be the Virgin of the Birds Toad Session, so keep an eye out for that as well. Ahh. Pub. 01. Malcom Middleton & David Shrigley - A Toast (00.57.) |
Fri, 14 November 2014
I can't really believe I've not done an Edincast before. I mean, I live here, I work here, I run a label here and I go out to gigs here all the time. How has this not happened yet? I've done numerous Scottish ones, label ones, and even Manchester ones although I'm not really from there, but Edinburgh has never happened for some reason. And why has it happened now? Well I was at the Creative Edinburgh Awards last night and had put together an Edinburgh playlist specifically for the purpose, but the organisers (probably very wisely) just asked the DJs to play through, instead of using my stuff, so I never had the chance to annoy people with my deliberately obtuse choices. Actually, most of them weren't all that obtuse really... just one or two. So given the muzzling yesterday I figured I could just put most of these songs on a podcast and, let's face it, play them to a much more receptive audience. I mean, The Leg, The Love Gestures, Passion Pusher... not really suitable for last night's Gathering of the Middle Classes. It was fun, though. There was awesome cake and our pals Olaf (Born to Be Wide) and Tommy Perman and Rob St. John (Water of Life) both won awards. And I had too much gin. So a good night all round, really! 01. The Shop Assistants - I Don't Wanna Be Friends With You (01.40) |
Tue, 4 November 2014
So this is the second Broken Records Toad Session. We actually packed a band with four guitarists and a full drum kit into our living room and decided that, fuck it, of course it would sound fine. And you know what, somewhat magically it does. Alright the drums could have done with more than one mic, and perhaps we didn't have all that much control when we had to use one mic for two guitar amps, but they recordings sound really good if you ask me. The reason we did a second session with Broken Records is because our first was recorded in the dark days of the internet when YouTube footage was published in 640 x 480 format and those videos now look like they were recorded back before steam trains. Ironically, and to my infinite frustration, having decided to do another session in order to upgrade the quality of what we did all those years ago, we actually managed to lose all the video for this one. Yes, all of it. We actually managed to lose an entire camera when we moved house, including the memory card with all my video on it, and Gavin's hard drive, containing all his shots, had a meltdown too, so all that went as well. I cannot express how much hair-pulling has taken place ransacking old drives for backup versions, nor how incredibly sorry I am for the band going to all that effort only for this to happen, but there's nothing for it I'm afraid. It just isn't there. So what you get instead is a series of photos by Nic Rue, the interview podcast and our session recordings. It's all really, really good stuff, but not having the video still makes me smash my head against the fucking desk. 01. Broken Records - Winterless Son (Toad Session) (00.21) |
