Bugger me it's a busy week in gigs this week, starting this very evening, which is annoying in a sense as I'd rather hoped to have a relaxing week. Fat chance, it seems. Sorry for the lack of chat, but there's a fuck of a lot to list here and I have to get this done before the end of my lunch break. Consequently these previews are going to be the shortest I've ever written. It might seem slightly insulting to the bands involved, but huge apologies if it is, but I am really, really rushed this morning. [...]
This week I will finish the live videos for Ten Tracks and eagleowl, to go with the Rob St. John ones here: In other news, the lineup for the Fence Collective's annual liver-bothering get together has been announced , and it's fucking superb: * KING CREOSOTE * MALCOLM MIDDLETON * EAGLEOWL * ROB ST JOHN * SLOW CLUB * BURNS UNIT * THE PICTISH TRAIL * THINGS IN HERDS * CANDYTHIEF * EMMA POLLOCK * JAMES YORKSTON * DAVID THOMAS BROUGHTON * MEURSAULT * DE ROSA * [...]
If you're going to everything that's on this week, you might wish to consider drinking cups of tea at gigs or you'll have a liver like a fucking cricket ball by the end of all this. You could literally drink your way through the week, the finest of music dancing in your ears, and a great big beer-hoover emptying your wallet. My absolute definites are Withered Hand, Sparrow & the Workshop, Trembling Bells, Findo Gask and, erm, Jesus H. Foxx. Christ. I am going to have to make sure I have a couple of orange juice gigs in [...]
Christ, it's going to be like Fred Karno's bloody Circus in Edinburgh this week (did your Grandma use that phrase all the time too?) Particulary towards the tail end of the week there are all sorts of good gigs, of which I will be attending... precisely none, unfortunately. We're away in London this weekend, and I am in Glasgow on both Wednesday and Thursday nights, would you believe. Incredibly frustrating. We are nearly finished work on the Samamidon Toad Session, and a bloody good thing too, because Johnny Lynch, aka the Pictish Trail, will be coming [...]
Part 4: 37-50. The next installment of late year list-o-rama brings us up to date with the first half of the Toad Festive Fifty. Slightly more, in fact, because I'm gearing up for a top ten, so I've cheated slightly on numbers here are there. For those of you who want to make your own lists, see this post for the rules, and get stuck in. The more who take part the better. One of the things that struck me with this part of the list is the inclusion [...]
Part 1: 1-10 Part 2: 11-23 Part 3: 24-36 Part 4: 37-50 The next installment of late year list-o-rama brings us up to date with the first half of the Toad Festive Fifty. Slightly more, in fact, because I'm gearing up for a top ten, so I've cheated slightly on numbers here are there. For those of you who want to make your own lists, see this post for the rules, and get stuck in. The more who take part [...]
Here are my 50 favourite songs of 2008: the ones I really, really, really, really like. I decided not to include any artist twice, nor any songs from albums I heard last year. I made similar lists in 2005 , 2006 and 2007 . The best way to browse this list is to click the little arrow beside each song and then listen as you read. The things you like you can then download by right- or ctrl-clicking with your mouse. Please buy albums, singles and [...]
Christ on a bike, after nothing at all last week, all of a sudden things are going bananas this week. You could pretty much be at a good show every night if you wanted. I'm not going to write much in this intro because, frankly, there are so many gigs to bloody write about that the post would run on far too long otherwise. Suffice to say that Friday's party was, from my perspective, a massive success. The open mic bit at the beginning was not an idea many people were overly convinced by, but I think pretty [...]
You can't fucking move in Edinburgh this week but for accidentally walking in on a quality gig. Honestly, you could end up with a liver like a cricket ball if you went to all of the bastards, so there may be a few orange juice gigs (yes, I know, boom-tish and all that) for me this week, or I'll have to spend all of December sobering up. Given what Christmas is generally like anyway, I suspect that's what January is likely to be for but, as with Christmas itself, it seems that the party season is starting earlier [...]
Having been neatly scolded for my snobbery after mocking neds last week, with no mention of their prejudice for threatening to chib me for sounding a bit posh and somewhat English, I am going to steer clear of sweeping generalisations this time around for fear of being stabbed by the weasels on one side and berated as I bleed to death by the tut-tutters on the other. Wee Half China does make some very good points in that post actually, and whilst it is easy enough to point out that mocking neds for being shitey little [...]
Firstly, well done to Elbow for winning the Mercury Prize . I tend to slag off the Mercury Prize a little bit, largely due to the appearance of tokenism (one for black people, one for intellectuals, one obscure one to make us look clever) but also because I often just don't like many of the bands very much. The accusation of tokenism is neatly refuted by one of the judges in this nice little article in the Guardian , and an award dominated by my narrow taste would be dull as shit for everyone, so I [...]
Well, we'll be back by the end of this week, back into a maelstrom of gigs. What the fuck am I going to do on Saturday? Go to see Johnny Flynn at Cabaret Voltaire? Sparrow & the Workshop at the Liquid Room? Or Eagleowl at the Scottish Scullery. I am going to be spread thinner than the veneer of desperately forced joy on a vegetarian's malnourished visage. I think I may even be doing a show for Fresh Air Radio that day, but I have no idea what about, as yet. So, what's happening on the busiest week of [...]
I bumped into Bart of Eagleowl and Kays Lavelle fame the other day. We were both hanging out in one of the achingly cool vintage vinyl record stores where you tend to find hip cats like us... Okay, it was Tesco's... but anyway, I promised I'd post a reminder about the fabulous Retreat festival Bart's involved in that's coming up this week. The Retreat festival has everything going for it: All the shows take place over a series of nights throughout August, and in one centrally-located venue; St. John's Church hall on the corner [...]
Somehow the EP name 'Withered Hand - Religious Songs' makes a sort of skewed sense when you realise that Dan is singing about masturbation and such like. It seems like withering might be the sort of inventive punishment our splendiferous lord gawwd almighty might visit upon the unclean and the self-appreciative. Especially singing choruses like [...]
Constantines - "Time Can Be Overcome" . Somewhere on the 33rd floor of a 51-storey apartment bloc in South Korea there is a man called Yes. He has dwelled on the 33rd floor for the past fourteen years, since he left his parents' home and went to work at the software company. Every day he has the Korean equivalent of a tuna sandwich for lunch, the Korean equivalent of chicken soup for dinner. Every night he looks out over the entire city, a city turned the colour of oyster-shell, and imagines how one day it will be nothing but dust. [...]
Song, by Toad
Said the Gramophone
Neutral Milk Hotel- Aeroplane Over the Sea
Bison - Quill
American Idol Finalists: where are they now?
SABRINA JOHNSTON + TIEFSCHWARTZ
