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IS MY TOASTER

SENTIENT?

IS MY TOASTER SENTIENT? (demo) 2003

DAKINI (instrumental) 1999

IS MY TOASTER SENTIENT? (album version) 2003

IS MY TOASTER SENTIENT? (live band version) The Albany, Great Portland St, 2005

IS MY TOASTER SENTIENT? (Out To Lunch) BBC Radio 2, 2006

GENERAL INFO The fifth song on Gary’s first album Polaroid Suitcase and the corresponding show of the same name. Probably his most popular song, certainly the most requested, and therefore the closest thing he ever had to a ‘hit’. RECORDING VENUES & DATES Dakini (instrumental): Knotts Green Road, Leyton, February 1999 Demo: Maude Terrace, Walthamstow, April 2003 Album version: Maude Terrace, Walthamstow, April - June 2003 Band version: The Albany, Great Portland St, London, May 12, 2005 OTL Version: Players Theatre, Villiers Street, London WC2, April 20, 2006 INSPIRATIONS Gary Numan: especially Are ‘Friends’ Electric? and various other songs from Replicas and The Pleasure Principle. But the spark that really set it going was hearing the Sugababes’ version of Freak Like Me. WHAT IT’S ABOUT In his live introductions, Gary always said it was about “the growing power of artificial intelligence.” WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT This song was one of the last additions to Polaroid Suitcase, but one of the earliest ideas I’d had. In its original form, it was supposed to be a modern remix of an old hit, in the vein of The Sugababes and Richard X’s version of Freak Like Me. Some of my earliest notes for a potential Gary Le Strange show refer to a pair of backing singers called The Dummigurlz who would have sung lead vocals on a song called ‘Freak Me Backwards’, the basic instrumental elements of which would have been pilfered from Gary’s own early 80s single ‘Is My Toaster Sentient?’ Obviously this would only have worked if I’d continued with the idea of Gary being a genuine 80s pop star. And even then, it would probably have been too elaborate for me to pull off. So I ditched it. But around March 2003, when I made the fateful decision to do a show at the Edinburgh Fringe, I realised I needed to start getting serious about the music. Or, more specifically, about the breadth and range of Gary’s music and the dramatic structure of the show. One of the main things I wanted to do was split the show into three acts, with the first being a general, accessible introduction to the character, accompanied by music you’d most likely recognise as ‘New Romantic’, the second act heading deeper into more hardcore territory with tales of ‘adult’ pursuits and harder-edged electronic pieces, then the third being more of an emotional resolution, getting right into Gary’s core, with a big rousing Vienna-style ballad to send him off. At this point, I had the opening and I had the Vienna ballad, but I didn’t have anything hard enough for the middle. And that’s where Toaster comes in. It wasn’t anything I particularly wanted to say as much as the way I wanted to say it. Electronic, yes, but harder edged, with guitars (or at least, the closest thing I could get to guitars on a Sony PlayStation) - somewhere more towards rock, with a funkier beat - and lyrics that threw forth multiple images in quick succession, without giving you much time to process them before beating you over the head with the next one. It felt risky - I had no idea whether it would really land as comedy or just sound like a garbled load of nonsense, and no idea whether I could actually pull it off as a vocal performance - but that just made me think it was absolutely necessary I get it right. So I sat down with a bunch of Gary Numan records and just listened to them over and over again, reading the lyrics, writing bits down and slightly changing them, paying attention to the patterns and the recurring themes, filtering them through Gary’s mindset and hammering it out until I had something approaching a song. It took a few goes to get it right - there’s a demo with different lyrics and the first live performance clearly isn’t there yet - but perseverance paid off, and the song became the main highlight of both the show and the album. So what’s it about then? Looking at it now, not having thought about it for ten years, I was half- expecting it to be about nothing much at all. But surprisingly it tells quite a vivid story of a lonely man going slightly mad in his bedsit, overthinking a few metaphysical questions and anthropomorphising the various appliances around him to a paranoid, maybe even schizophrenic, degree. It might be a genuine cry for help - he certainly isn’t normal and he doesn’t seem able to forge meaningful relationships - but it could all be for show. He comes across as a bit of an edgelord, with his Nazi posters and his gas mask ready for the apocalypse. Trying too hard to shock. He reckons he’s a rapist, which should probably scare you, but he also says he’s going to kill himself by plugging his cock in the wall, so he’s probably harmless. Another thing I see now is how well it sells the original vision I had for Gary Le Strange. By the time I wrote it, I already knew I wasn’t going to include his earliest songs (Sex Dummy and Geometry) in the show, which gave me permission to recast those same ideas in a new light. As with Sex Dummy, he clearly has a sexual fetish for inanimate objects, but here there’s some movement beyond that (the invitation at the end to ‘come back to my place’ is clearly a question aimed at the listener, who presumably isn’t a mannequin or a toaster). And like Geometry, it paints a picture of an obsessive loner who might get a bit carried away with bizarre ideas in his bedroom. It clearly takes place a bit later in his life than Geometry though - he talks about his ‘bedsit’ rather than his ‘bedroom’, so he no longer lives with his Mum. But he still fears what she might say if she knew what he was up to. ALT VERSIONS The main synth hook at the top of the song is reused from an earlier piece I’d written called Dakini (a species of Goddess or demon in Hindu and Buddhist mythology), which I’ve included here (see the top of the page). The track’s pretty basic and deeply uncool, but the riff has a strong whiff of Numan about it and felt suitably epic, so it was begging to be repurposed. The demo (don’t know the precise date, but it must be sometime shortly before the first performance on April 19th) has different lyrics, with a different spoken section about a film he wants to watch on BBC2, and a different ending (which makes it much clearer Gary’s been cottaging). The live version at Chats Palace is similar, but I’ve replaced the bizarre last line about flies with a better one about not telling his Mum. There’s a live version I recorded with a band - Gary’s short lived backing band, The Masques of Mandragora - namely Dan Mersh on guitar, Jeremy Limb on keyboards and his brother Chris Limb on bass. This was the night of our debut performance at my brief comedy night, Club Le Strange, recorded onto a minidisc through the soundboard. Sadly the beginning of Toaster is missing, but thankfully we recorded the whole song in the soundcheck, so I’ve spliced them both together for a seamless experience. (The seam is actually just before ‘Oh look, there’s JG Ballard’ if you really want to know.) Even more sadly, Chris’ bass doesn’t seem to have been put through the same system, so we can’t actually hear it. Especially sad because he broke his arm the following week and this was the only time all four of us played together. There’s another song from the same night here, complete with visuals. Oh and if you’re wondering about the references to Dave and Anthony - Dave was Dan Mersh’s character’s name, but I’m not sure which Anthony I’m talking to. I’d like to think it was the late, great Antony Elvin, but I’m not sure I knew him in 2005. Sincere apologies to whichever Anthony I’ve forgotten about. There’s another surprisingly uplifting live version, from the second episode of Radio 2’s Out To Lunch. We had to replace some of the words to make it suitable for daytime broadcast - he drinks oil instead of taking smack, his bin is a twit and he threatens to electrocute his chest hair rather than his penis - but that makes it a lot more fun in a way, and the piece as a whole goes down very well with the two or three punters who actually like it. As often the case with Gary Le Strange, the laughter isn’t universal, but where it hits, it hits hard. Thankfully by this point we’d decided to drop the dreadful spoken part of the act (see Ballerina for the offending clip), so it’s just pure music this time, and it works as well as can be expected. But the best live performance might well be the one on this video, a spirited version from Oram & Meeten’s Club Fantastico in February 2007, which I only just discovered a few weeks ago on an old mini- DV tape at the back of a drawer. I’d already been through Beef Scarecrow and out the other side by this point, so it’s interesting to see how enthusiastic I was about doing his old material again. ANECDOTES & TRIVIA I’ve never actually sat down and counted, but I strongly suspect Toaster is the one song I’ve sung more than any other. It’s certainly been the most requested. It’s also the song I’ve most frequently filmed for TV: four times at the last count (three of which are here, here and here). THOUGHTS & FEELINGS I was chuffed to bits with it at the time but it’s never been my favourite. Still, unlike other songs, I’ve never fallen completely out of love with it either. I like how it tells its story in a non-linear, non-obvious way. A bit more like a pop song than a short story or a comedy sketch, teetering on the edge of accessibility but still somehow managing to stay within its confines. It also has an energy I’ve rarely matched with any other song since. A risk that paid off. I like it.