The Toadcast - The Weekly Podcast From Song, By Toad

Mrs. Toad has been away in China for the last week or so and, frankly, I am jealous.  I am wedded to Edinburgh now, for fairly obvious reasons, but I have always been something of a gypsy, as have my parents, and as such China has held a pretty significant fascination for several years now. I spent three years in Singapore between the ages of eleven and fourteen and I absolutely loved the place.  Not just Singapore, but all the travelling we did in South East Asia - I was absolutely captivated.  Honestly, if it were not for you musical muppets I would be pestering Mrs. Toad for us to move to China already. Toadcast #106 - The Sinocast 01. T'Pau - China in Your Hand (5.12) 02. I Am Oak - Ohayo (10.49) 03. Django Django - Love's Dart (13.27) 04. Django Reinhart - China Boy (22.49) 05. Clem Snide - Wal-Mart Parking Lot (31.22) 06. Frightened Rabbit - Fun Stuff (33.51) 07. The Shop Assistants - Somewhere in China (41.07) 08. David Bowie - China Girl (46.26) 09. Lincoln - Great Wall of China (51.47) 10. Snapline -

This podcast is slightly kinda somewhat about about the myopia of the London media, in particular as to how it pertains to Scotland and Scottish music, and slightly about the Glasgow media.  There are a number of different triggers for this, starting with this article in the Scotsman's Under the Radar blog last year about the rejection by the editor of a London glossy of an article on four up-and-coming Scottish bands, made even more offensive by the fact that said editor had requested the damn article in the first place.Of course, anyone who reads the London glossies knows they don't half cover an awful lot of shite themselves, so they really are in no position to pass judgment, but these things are about personal taste at the end of the day and you really can't force anyone to like stuff.  Then of course there was a wee bit of chatter about the Glasgow focus of the media in Scotland - like and endless set of Russian dolls - particularly focussed on the remarkable Glasgow-centrism of The List's Hot 100 list

This is all about my beepy-bloopy tendencies and how I got into the stuff in the first place. I better point out, right at the beginning, that I don't see there being any difference between indie and electronica exactly.  Or at least, the dividing line is so blurred and there is so much crossover that the distinction is completely pointless, really. I think the only reason I really make a distinction myself is because I became a music obsessive by listening to the likes of Dylan and Tom Waits and so on, and then moved onto the like of The Pogues and the Waterboys - not a beep in sight, basically. Consequently, when I heard bands like Saint Etienne, although I loved lots of it I didn't explore much further because I just wasn't to electronic noises.  In actual fact, by the end of the podcast I think I come to the conclusion that it was actually an electronic beat which I really wasn't used to, mostly, but in any case, I found it quite hard to get into anything vaguely electro for ages.  Given that I could ba

It's freezing outside and (just slightly) covered in snow (about half an inch) so naturally the entire nation has ceased to function.  Erm, okay, it really isn't that cold and the snow really isn't that big a deal in all honesty but of course given the worst weather conditions we usually have to deal with are constant and life-sapping drizzle it seems that it's all come as a bit of a shock to the nation as a whole.We live in a city by the sea of course, which means that we never get the sunshine which is promised and sadly, during the winter, we never get the snow or the cold either.  In the countryside it may occasionally be dangerous, but in the city it's never much more than a stunningly picturesque inconvenience, and the bastard stuff will all have melted by next week anyway, so we might as well enjoy it while we still can. This week the podcast is not themed at all, it's just new and interesting stuff from my inbox.  I tend not to just slap up promo tracks emailed to me by PR chappies on the blog because

 I do try and avoid shilling for the label on this blog, because no-one wants to read a twice-daily sales pitch, but I reckon it's okay to have a look forward at what we've got planned for the year.  That's what the new year is for, really, isn't it?So I've got a nice big release schedule drawn up, just like real record labels do, and honestly it scares the shite out of me.  I can pretty much plan out my free time for the whole of the next twelve months just looking at it, but there are some great releases in there. By the end of 2010 we are going to have a back catalogue to be bloody proud of, honestly, especially when you consider that we had only been a record label for about a month at this time last year. Toadcast #102 - Song, by Toad Records 01. Trips and Falls - We Were Like Strangers Today (05.30) 02. Maxwell Panther - My Ex-Identity (09.02) 03. Cold Seeds - Leave Me to Lie Alone in the Ground (17.19) 04. Jesus H. Foxx - This is Not a Rental Car (26.43) 05. Animal Magic Tricks - Smallish Hooves (2

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 Futur

Video: Vimeo - YouTube Photos: Flickr - Blueback Hotrod Audio: below 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 Blu

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) 02. Goldfrapp - Pilots (10.04) 03. Grandaddy - The Crystal Lake (14.17) 04. Lift to Experience - To Guard and to Guide You (23.13) 05. Interpol - NYC (30.46) 06. Tom Waits - Kommienezuspadt (34.57) 07. The Decemberists - Red Right Ankle (40.41) 08. The Walkmen

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 01. Stanley Brinks - The End of the World (01.42) 02. Tune Yards - Hap-B (08.09) 03. eagleowl - Laughter (17.00) 04. Stringjammer - Long Road Home (19.45) 05. Eels - Little Bird (26.09) 06. Fang Island - Daisy (31.32) 07. Candy Cl

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 01. Pearl Jam - Even Flow (Unplugged) (4.16) 02. The Stone Roses - (Song For My) Sugar Spun Sister (12.23) 03. Belly - Untitled & Unsung (18.37) 04. Echobelly - Insomniac (22.13) 05. Blur - Yuko & Hiro (29.00) 06. Gene - Wasteland (36.14) 07. Ben Folds Five - Underground (38.49) 08. Blur - Country Sad Ballad Man (44.56) 09. REM - Parakeet (52.03) 10.

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 01. Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers - Beating St. Louis (04.07) 02. Beat the Devil - Plea Bargain (11.09) 03. Bright Eyes - Neely O'Hara (19.56) 04. Richard Hawl

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 1. Mississippi Fred McDowell - Good Morning Little Schoolgirl (04.31) 2. RL Burnside - Fireman Ring the Bell (12.22) 3. RL Burnside - Don't Let My Baby Ride (22.08) 4. Junior Kimbrough - Stay All Night (24.59) 5. Charles Caldwell - Old Buck (34.31) 6. Robert Lucas - Miss Being High (40.35) 7. Steve James - Grain Alcohol (45.22) 8. Kelly Joe Phelps - House Carpenter (57.06) 9. Nort

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 Folkway

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.

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. 

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 Meur

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 Honeytrap -

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 01. Sunset Rubdown - I'll Believe in Anything You'll Believe in Anything (02.09) 02. King Creosote - Homeboy (09.14) 03. Rob St. John - Domino (Live) (18.13) 04. Noah & the Whale - The First Days of Spring (23.05) 05. Melanie - What Have They Done to My Song, Ma (31.35) 06. The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir -

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 list

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 01. Langhorne Slim - I Love You But Goodbye (03.11) 02. Cast Spells - Glamorous Glowing (07.39) 03. The Pineapple Chunks - Art Storage (13.02) 04. The Leg - A Rat's Health (17.04) 05. Polvo - Fractured (Like Chand