Pre-parade

Much apologies for the month-plus without update... what can I say, I'm a bit of an ad-hoc slacker, sometimes I'm slack, sometimes I'm not.. Actually I spose the term is probably something like " multiple personalities disorder where both personalities are more or less the same, but one is me 10 years ago and lazy, and one is me now-busy"
Anyway, to recover from this staleness, I belatedly unveil -

The 2009 Toadie Singles Awareness Day/St Valentines Day Alternative Love Album.
This year's one is titled -
Not your Mother's Valentines Day Album
As a bonus this year, I include legal-length previews in a RAR file for those curious.

So , here comes the Track list-

1) Julianna - Love will light the way
To start the album I've gone with a track from the Haibane Ranmei OST.The track was chosen for not only it's lyrical value, but it's smooth jazz vibe. Ruffled hi-hats and beautiful bass and piano. It's a smooth and classy start to the album

2) Goldfinger - More Today Than Yesterday
A ska cover of a classic love song. It's a great way to ease not only the more senior of us out there into a field of music they'd otherwise shun for being too loud , but to ease the more junior of us into some music history. It's a great track to serenade to as well, so it hits points on all fields.

3) Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine - Are you Gonna be my girl?
Lounge music is so very untrendy and smooth that you can almost hear jet drowning in velour when you play this song... And who of the alternative of us wouldn't mind swooning with your object of affection around a dance hall to the death of Jet?

4) Bonnie Pink - Get in My Hair
Bonnie has this habit of writing, or at the very least performing, in a manner that seems to me to be very close and personal. Rather than singing to a stage or an audience, she feels to sing to herself or to someone right next to her. So really, I could put most any of her songs here and it'd probably feel appropriate.. so here's a good one.

5) Takanashi Yasuharu - (Track 9 from the Seto no Hanayome OST)
Sorry, I can't read moon runes, so that's the best I can give. You know, despite being quite BAD at conveying emotions, Seto no Hanayome (my wife is a Mermaid I think is the official name of the translated version coming to western shores) has some nice music. This particular track is a bit of a romantic interlude that will transition well into....

6) The Aquabats- Monster's Wedding
It's only appropriate that something as gimmicky as Valentines not be taken as fricking sombre important day, and this song is to remind you of this. It's a mix of really campy B-movie horror movie creatures, and love. Remember - this could happen to you .

7) Reel Big Fish - Alternative Baby
Now I know everyone I know doesn't like how much I try to get RBF songs into everything, but I really do think they have songs for every occasion, so I'm including some for Valentines. This song is a real plug of what inspired me to do these albums in the first place. It's a song about some guys at an alternative music concert of some sort, who've fixated their hearts on some girl there. Not wanting to use the cliches or to open themselves full scabbard at her, they're each trying to find a way to convey the point that they are interested in her.

8) Reel Big Fish - Skatanic
Okay okay, getting it out of the way. This song is about another really alternative kind of relationship ,and the confusion that is emotions. Really it is, it's totally not about Obsessive Stalking or anything....

9) Carly Simon - The Spy who loved me
Thank you Broccoli family for ensuring that double entendre was a key point of ALL James Bond flicks at all levels. Sweet Lyrics, and soft piano frame the verses, with some awfully powerful strings during the bridges and choruses, really hammer home a really traditional romantic feel, whilst not being lovey-dovey.

10) Louis Prima & Keely Smith - That Old Black Magic
Why not throw in a classic 50's swing lounge tune to your loved one? This song sorta reflects, in a roundabout way, reflect the way love can throw you off normality completely and absolutely. It's a gripping thing you see, and it'll eat your soul.

11) Wayne Netwon - Danke Schoen
Rather than singing about how love is a constant infinite venture towards some sort of... Mind soul and body singularity for two who are smitten by it's wicked curse, it sings about how sometimes it goes the opposite way, and that isn't necessarily a BAD thing.

12) Round Table featuring Nino - Let me Be with you.
This song is the exact opposite of Danke Schoen. I'd like to emphasise for the point of not wanting to be lynched for hypocrisy, that all loves do not work one single way. Best way to describe this is that it is such a well wrote love song slash into song that I couldn't NOT put it in, and for those couple who are serious Chobits nerds, play this and do that "Chiiiiiiiiiii" thing to one another. You'll either feel very silly, or you'll end up exploding like glass at resonance frequency.

13)UB40 and Chrissie Hyde - I've got you babe
Another cover, but it's got that reggae vibe, which really plays to the benefit of the lyrics. It's a song about how basic love is. Gawd I've gotta stop saying "love", I know... I'll set up a jar and put 50 cents in it every time I use the word. Starting as of top of the list. Crap.

14) The Tea Party - Emerald
Unlike some of the tracks above, The Tea Party really are an alternative band. Headed and Guitared by a man who could give Jim Morison a run for his money, this song is a bit of of a melancholy tale about .. crap *inserts 50c*... with passionate lyrics and performance, it really uses itself as an extra dimension to it's intent. It's like having a well written poem performed with intense passion and perfection.

15) The Darkness - I believe in a thing called love
As the name suggests , it's about a guy who's now lost his head over a girl. I'd try justifying this from some sort of artistic perspective, but the lyrics speak for themselves. Also, let's be honest, it's a great song regardless.

16)David Holmes - Tess
From the Ocean's 11. It wafts opulent admiration, but gives very little warmth. Let's face it, we all know someone who is like this, and know someone after this person. The unachievable dream. Sigh, one can at least pretend.

17 ) Van Morrison - Brown Eyed Girl
Ahh nostalgia. It makes everything in the past awesome. It also makes heartbreak harder. Poor Morrison lost a person very close to him, who had brown eyes. He reflects on what was once, and now no longer can be.

18) Dave Dobbyn & Herbs - Slice of Heaven
Dave from New Zealand here ,sings about not how this girl is pretty, or how she smiles or whatever small physical thing binds his heart to her, but how her mere presence and happiness makes him want to stick around her. If it sounds a bit wet, it is, but wet isn't always a bad thing. And Let's face it, this touches on the less physical aspects of .... oh cock *50 c*. If you found someone who everyday was exciting and interesting, wouldn't YOU do everything to keep him/her around? I swear, if I ever find someone who'd maybe one day consider not hating my failures as a human being long enough to sit around and just hold a conversation for a few days with me, I'd find a band, and I'd bloody sing a ska cover of THIS to her.

19) Imogen Heap - Closing In
Imogen sings about a great many things. her first album, i-megaphone, was a scary stare into the void without using the phrase "Death Metal". Speak for Yourself however, seems to be an album from the heart though, and this song in particular is about dissolving the gap between two people. Yesssss, made it without saying that word.

20) Oomph! - Answer Me
For a bit of a change of pace, here's some metal. It's a bit of a cautious stay-or-go tale, whether or not some woman has the nosh to say yes to someone as frighteningly intense as the lead singer from oomph!

21) Gene Pitney - Only love can break a heart
True story, nuff said. Laughter sure as hell doesn't do that much damage.. unless it's coupled with it.

22) Dr Hook - When you're in Love with a beautiful woman
Oh crap, I've added another mainstream oldies song. Rats.

23) The Delgados - Make Your Move
The Delgados is all about a the less optimistic form of romance. That is , the one that got half done and then abandoned. It's about trying to recoup the losses and get the whole thing back together. Then again, the song could be about anything, the delgados are great at being poetically ambiguous.

24) Basement Jaxx - Hot'n'Cold
Another song about mixed signals. I'll be honest, I see alot of THIS particular thing going on, which is a shame. You great pillocks out there sitting on the fence - dive in or get the fuck out.

25) The Delgados - The Weaker Argument Defeats the Stronger
This song is about the lazy heart - the heart the is self-concerned. As indeed the song says - What will our friends say?

26) Electric Light Orchestra - Strange Magic
ELO is always appropriate, no exceptions. Let's be honest, if ... shit *50c*... love was a magic, it sure has some ODD properties.

27) The Doors- Hello, I love You
Ah the doors, they're upfront and honest about their feelings,even if they don't know the target of their affection.

28) Toto - Africa
A song that's quite ambiguous on direct lyrics about.. that thing... but it's quite a good one to serenade to, and on the day of days, serenading is quite important to not letting that romance tank. It is a song about that strong emotion ,but it's quite coy about calling it directly.

29) BoA - Duvet
Duvet is about is a bit of a sad song about love gone unrewarded... cock that's another *50c*.... and how the fallout from the failed attempt at the relationship has left the singer drowning.

30) Imogen Heap - Sweet Religeon
So if religeon is belief and love in a deity, what does a lateral mortal love mean to it?

31) Linda Ronstadt & Aaron Neville - I Don't Know Much
Probably one of the most soppy love songs ever. Included for those of you who don't have a girl that could appreciate.. say.. Streetlight Manifesto

32) Tripod- Throw your arms around me
A Cover of a song about getting rid of all the baggage of life and enveloping each other in love, shit *50c*, sung by a bunch of clever idiots. Seems to get rid of that pretentiousness about the song, which is good ,because the song was horrid with it.

33) Reel Big Fish feat Rachel Minton (from Zolof the Rock and Roll Destroyer) - Ask
A cover of a song by The Smiths, it's a song about how the feeling is pretty much second only to friendship.

34) Smashing Pumpkins - Zero
This really is for the alternative heads out there, it's about how when you're in a relationship you yourself matter the least and the other person is EVERYTHING that you need to matter.

35) Streetlight Manifesto - Kristina she don't know I exist
This song's a bit of song about how not putting yourself out there can end up with you getting nothing and your affectioned getting something anyway.

26) The Aquabats - Hot Summer Nights (Won't last forever)
Unlike most of the other songs is about how affection can sometimes leave you blinded to the obvious fact she's not wanting you. fitting way to end a valentines album eh?

And now for a link to the preview file-

for-hire.half-lifecreations.com/Not your Mother's Valentines Day Album (Toadie's compilation 09).rar
Copy paste that into your address bar to recieve 30 megs of 30 sec clips.


Coming VERY soon, I return to review stuff, including something I've been holding for it to finish airing and now it's over.