Toadies

 

“One thing to remember…always have a good time, all the time.” – Todd Lewis

 

“TYYYYYYYYYYYLEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!” – The crowd at a Toadies show

 

“The Toadies are obscure enough that there really aren’t any quotes I can find about them, so I just took two from the live album I bought like two days ago and pretended that they have significance, because I’m a BUTTFUCKER!!!!” – Me

 

 

 

 

 

Albums Reviewed:

Rubberneck

Hell Below / Stars Above

Best Of Toadies: Live From Paradise

No Deliverance

 

 

 

            The Toadies are a band that, unless you’re from Boston (where they became big on the radio stations here back in the mid-nineties for some reason) or Texas (where they’re from originally), you probably haven’t heard of, and that, to me, is one of the bigger injustices of the nineties.  This was one of my favorite bands when I was in middle school and my musical knowledge consisted of about ten bands, and, unlike other bands I adored when I was young and retarted (discounting Nirvana, because they really ARE good, and it’s not just me), I still like them a lot, and the way they were fucked up the ass by their record company still irks me today.  Their debut, Rubberneck, came out in 1994, and, even if you have no idea who this band is, you ALL know at least one of the songs from it, I bet.  I bet you also didn’t know that that “Make up your mind…decide to walk with me…around the lake tonight…” song was by them, did you!  And I bet you didn’t even know it was called “Possum Kingdom” either, huh?  Well, that’s what it’s called, and this is the band who did it.  And unfortunately, even though Rubberneck eventually went platinum, it took them SEVEN YEARS to follow it up, thanks to the repeated record company assrape I referred to previously.  I don’t know the specifics, but there’s an article by a Dallas newspaper floating around the Internet I read once a while ago.  I don’t have a link to it.  I probably could find one easily, but I’m lazy.  Anyhoo, after the seven years, their record company put about five cents of publicity behind the new album, it tanked, and the band split.  Damn shame.  This is a good band.  Not a great band, or a life-changing band, or whatever, but they deserved better than what they got.  It’s a cliché, I know, but this is truly a band that “slipped through the cracks,” and I’m here to give them their due, even if I might be massively overrating them because I loved them when I was younger.

            Anyhoo, onto the lineup.  In your picture, the fat dork with the grey hair is drummer Mark Reznicek, the skinny dork in the front is singer/guitarist Todd Lewis (FANTASTIC voice, he has.  No Geddy Lee here!), the fat ugly chick with the blue shirt is bassist Lisa Umbarger, and the dude with the sunglasses is either Darrel Herbert or Clark Vogeler, but I don’t know which because they switched guitarists between their first and second albums.  Fun stuff, eh?

            And, onto the reviews!

 

Justin D. Williamson (JWilliamson@crh.org) writes:

 

thank you for the Toadies reviews.  i still have the copy of rubberneck my brother got me for my 13th bday back when it came out.  i love this band so much i got the Hell Below/Stars Above album cover tattooed on my chest.  i'll send a pic if you'd like.

 

 

 

 

Rubberneck (1994)

Rating: 9

Best Song: “Possum Kingdom”

 

            This album probably takes the prize on this site for “record Brad has most hideously overrated due to personal childhood-related biases,” but, dagnabbit, this is, just, a GOOD record.  A VERY, VERY GOOD record.  And, biases be damned, I love it to frickin’ death.  I’ve loved it to frickin’ death for nearly a decade now (for a while it was my co-favorite album with Nevermind, back in the days when my CD collection had like 12 albums in it, and five of them were by Nirvana…so, clearly, I’ve let up some in my opinion for it), but I have to believe in its quality.  I mean, at that time I just mentioned, The Offspring’s Smash and Green Day’s Dookie were also probably in my top 5 or 10.  I don’t even have Smash anymore.  I lent it to a friend like 6 or 7 years ago.  I don’t even remember which friend it was, or whether we’re even friends anymore, or whether I’ve even seen him in five years (whoever it is).  I can’t even remember what more than like two songs off it are, and, to tell you the truth, I don’t think I give a fuck.  I still have a copy of Dookie, but, if I were to write a review of it right now, I’d probably give it a 7, I think.  Something like that.  So, you see, since my opinion of this album hasn’t retreated to “Oh, it’s decent”-ville.  Thus, it MUST be good, right?

            Eh, whatever.  I’ve listened to this thing about 6,000 times (I’d bet its second to Nevermind in total spins), so you can understand how tough it is to actually review the damn thing, but I still gave it another one or two honest “review-geared” listens, and the album struck me as a bit of a rush job.  The production is a little sloppy (the guitars don’t have much power, and when there’s two of them, one in each speaker, playing the same riff, they’re usually out of sync with each other), and it’s clear the band didn’t have enough space to fill out the damn album.  I mean, out of the eleven tracks here, “Mexican Hairless” is an instrumental, “Mister Love” and “Velvet” might as well be instrumentals, and, out of the eight actual songs, both the riff and vocal hook (“NO, NO, NO MORE SON OF A BITCH!!!”) from “Happyface” sound like they were written by a two-year-old. 

            So, why is there still a 9 up there?  Well, first of all, a couple of these songs RULE MERCILESS ASS.  “Possum Kingdom” is STILL being played on alterna-rock radio stations, and with good reason.  It’s just an excellent song, superbly crafted from start to finish.  I love the alternating 4/4 and 2/4 bars (3 of 4/4, 1 of 2/4, 3 of 4/4, 2 of 2/4, repeat).  “I Come From The Water” is dumb as hell, but it probably brings out the 13-year-old dork buried deep inside the current 21-year-old dork that is me better than any other song I can think of.  “Tyler” rules, despite the guitars being WAY to quiet in the mix, and I used to claim “I Burn” was better than “Possum Kingdom” to anyone who would listen to a 13-year-old dork, but I think I just wanted to be different.

            But that’s not the main reason for the 9.  No, see, this record has a vibe.  It’s sort of tough to pinpoint, and this might just be my searching for a rationalization for the rating I gave it, but it’s there.  It probably has more to do with Todd Lewis’ voice than anything (FUCK MY ASS, he has one of the coolest voices in all of nineties rock music).  I LOVE his kind of spooky, seemingly high-pitched (but not really) half-growl, half-yelp vocal delivery, and it absolutely MAKES a lot of these songs.  But it’s more than the voice, the vibe is.  It’s just the subject matter, lyrics, and overall feel of the album.  “Possum Kingdom” is about a vampire.  “Tyler” is about a rapist.  “I Burn” is about, well, a guy about to light himself on fire, I think.  “I Come From The Water” is about a prehistoric amphibian or some shit.  “Backslider” is about a little kid who’s about to get drowned by his father.  And all of these songs are in the first person.  And it all fits Todd Lewis’ voice perfectly.  I don’t know what “Quitter” is about, but it creeps the fuck out of me.  The pseudo-instrumentals, “Mister Love” and “Velvet,” are just dirty, like you feel dirty listening to them.  But in a GOOD way, you see.  Or something.  I don’t know.  You’ll just have to trust me on this.  I mean, the music itself, truthfully (except for “Possum Kingdom,” which will never cease to rule), isn’t the most creative music I’ve ever heard in my life (but it’s still damn solid, and about a zillion times more creative than what you hear on the radio today.  Why did Puddle of Mudd’s record sell like ten million copies?  THEY’RE FUCKING AWFUL!!!!!!!), but the vibe and feel of the album make up for it, even if a lot of it is just basic alterna-grunge.  I’m standing by this record, con sarnet, and when I’m 40 I’ll STILL say it’s one of the lost classics of nineties rock.

 

            Or I’m just overrating it a lot.  Either way.

 

            And, also, let me point out that the All Music Guide has THE WRONG RELEASE DATE for this album.  My copy CLEARLY says 1994 on it, yet the All Music Guide claims it was released in OCTOBER 1995!  What is THAT shit?

 

Russell Harris writes:

 

Brad, (if that is ur name)

 

I just recently found ur website (by luck) and boy am I happy that I did.  I absolutely love the fucking TOADIES!!!!

The reviews you had on them was great.  However, one question arouses about the Rubberneck review.  Y have you

not mentioned anything at all about the song “away” (I think it is called that)?  That song is great, just wondered

if you forgot about it or u just do not like it.  Besides that, I have seen the Toadies about three times live….never have

I ever been disappointed.  They always put on a great show…I mean always.  You are right when you say they have

tons of energy in their music. 

 

Great website.

 

Erik Hajnal (jammasterjay5@yahoo.com) writes:

 

I stumbled upon your Toadies page and read your review
of Rubberneck. I'm not sure if you wrote that a long
time ago or what, but your descriptions of the songs
are way off. Possum Kingdom is NOT about vampires, if
you read any interviews with Toadies they explain what
it's about. Backslider is NOT about a boy being
drowned by his father, it's about being baptized;
Lewis's father was a minister. Look up backslider in
the dictionary and maybe you'll understand the song
better. I'm not trying to be a dick but for someone
who claims to be a huge fan of Toadies you don't seem
to know that much about them.

 

 

 

Hell Below / Stars Above (2001)

Rating: 8

Best Song: “Hell Below / Stars Above”

 

            Yeah, it’s a good album, but can you believe it took them SEVEN FUCKING YEARS to follow up Rubberneck????  Assfuckers.  I remember visiting the band’s official website like every fucking day, because the band would say “oh, the new album’s being released on so-and-so,” and then some shit with the label would happen, and it’d get scrapped.  This happened at least two or three times.  They went through about three album titles and at least twenty songs that aren’t even on this album before they FINALLY released the damn thing.  With a new guitarist (Darrel Herbert?  OUT!  Clark Vogeler?  IN!  Not that you can tell the goddamn difference.  Neither guy is Jimmy Page.), and seven years of musical growth to boot!

            Actually, musically, they advanced about three millimeters in seven years, which isn’t such a big deal until you consider the fact that Radiohead went from Pablo Honey to Kid A in the exact same time frame.  But I’m not gonna penalize them for that, because I never really expected them to advance much musically.  The rating’s lower because the record’s just not as good, although it IS plenty good, ofcourse.  Objectively, though, this album SHOULD be better than Rubberneck.  All of the twelve tracks here are fully-developed songs (as they should be, considering it’s been SEVEN GODDAMN FUCKING YEARS).  No more “Mexical Hairless” or “Velvet” (even though I dig those things).  The production is EONS better: the guitars are fuller and louder, when they stick one in each headphone they’re actually IN SYNC WITH EACH OTHER, and there are actually a few neat little production tricks on here, whereas Rubberneck didn’t know the MEANING of the phrase “production trick” (and occasionally didn’t know the meaning of the word “production”…the guitars in “Tyler” have NO excuse for being at that low a volume).  You can just tell this record was MUCH more meticulously crafted than Rubberneck, even if one of the production tricks is a fucking Spanish radio broadcast that’s entertaining for about two seconds, yet goes on for about twenty, and then another is a maraca being overdubbed in EVERY SONG for some reason, even the ones where it doesn’t make any goddamn sense (like “Pressed Against The Sky”).  It’s like they told an intern one day to just play the album back and shake a maraca into a microphone for its entire duration for no reason.  Goofy.

            But, as I hope many of you know, oh-so-clever studio tricks like using a maraca (!!!) don’t necessarily guarantee quality.  Now, again, it’s STILL PLENTY GOOD, but I can’t put in on the same level as Rubberneck.  First off, nothing on here can touch “Possum Kingdom,” DUH, although nothing on here annoys me as much as “Happyface” either.  It’s just that a lot of that hard-to-pinpoint “vibe” that permeated Rubberneck is gone from this record, like the slicker, more professional production neutered the band a bit.  I mean, the band still has personality (Todd Lewis actually gives a better overall vocal performance here, I think), and that repeated “MUST GET YOUR HEAD AROUND IT!!!!” in “Motivational” and the weird, half-spoken monologue thing in “Heel” (“You will…learn some…RESPECT!  RESPECT!!!!!”) prove it.  It’s just that so many of these songs are, well, just songs.  I can’t really differentiate a whole lot of them.  I couldn’t really tell you what they’re about (except for the weird lyrical fascination with peeling off people’s skin, which is in like 3 or 4 of these tunes).  It’s like the shoddy production of Rubberneck allowed each song’s personality to shine through, while the superb production here just sort of slicked everything over to the point where 2/3 of these songs are sort of indistinguishable from each other.

            Four rule penis, though, and it’s the four that have a different tempo than everything else.  Basically, eight tunes here are midtempo, two are fast, and two are ultra-slow, and I love the ones that AREN’T midtempo.  “Plane Crash” starts the album off in AWESOME fashion.  The first lyric Todd sings is a completely insane scream, before the song jumps into gear with so much energy that it doesn’t know what to do with itself.  “Pressed Against The Sky” is a slow, moody, undistorted ballad thingy that the band BRILLIANTLY sticks right in the middle of the record, and would’ve been a hit on alterna-rock stations had the damn thing been released as a single.  The band continues to help their cause via superb sequencing (methinks U fucking 2 could learn a thing or two) with the title track-“Dollskin” suite that ends the record on a REALLY high note.  The title track has two sections, starting WAYYYYY too fast (but in a good way) before it suddenly slows down, with a piano (which had never been in a Toadies record before, so I thought it was pretty neat), about 50 Todds and A CHORUS OF GOSPEL SINGERS (It works!  Really!) finishing it out, followed by a segue into “Dollskin,” which lasts six minutes, goes slowwwwwwwwwww, and is as close to “art-rock” as the band ever got.  But not really, because they’re just the frickin’ Toadies, and the fact that they stuck a piano on their album is actually a noteworthy accomplishment.

            Now, I’m not saying this album is a brilliant masterpiece or anything, but the fact that it sold about 20 copies really pisses me off.  Like I said in the intro, their record company just put absolutely NO publicity WHATSOEVER behind it, the record absolutely tanked, no one bought it, and the band summarily broke up.  I suppose the fact that they chose to release “Push The Hand,” which is just a limp-dicked “Backslider” rewrite and the worst song on the goddamn album, as the single (a fact I know from the band’s now-defunct website…you never heard the song on the radio, trust me) didn’t help, but there’s no excuse for bands like Puddle of Mudd and their ilk being SHOVED DOWN MY THROAT while an honest-to-goodness GOOD BAND who fits so snugly into the boundaries for generic radio-ready alterna-rock gets the shaft like this.  Sometimes I hate the world.

            And then I remember the Red Sox haven’t won a World Series since thirty years before my fifty-four-year-old father was born, and I hate the world even more.

 

            Oh, by the way, the Toadies have a live album that I didn’t even know EXISTED until like a few days ago.  I picked up a copy, it’s pretty good, review coming soon.  So, um…look forward to that.  To an obscure live album released on a small label that got so little press that I, a fan, didn’t know of its existence until this week.  Yes, that.  Look forward to that.

 

 

 

Best Of Toadies: Live From Paradise (2002)

Rating: 8

Best Song: “Hell Below / Stars Above”

 

            And heeeeeeeeeeeere’s that live album I was talking about.  Damn solid live album.  Good songs.  Energetic playing.  Good stuff all around.  I would’ve broken out the 9 if not for two things: first, Todd Lewis sounds like he has an entire family of bullfrogs in his throat, and just croaks his way through the show like an 80-year-old man who lost his last pair of Depends; second, Mark Reznicek abuses the crash cymbal in such a manner as to make it illegal in 48 states, leaving Tennesee and Mississippi to allow this kind of wanton, sexually explicit conduct (ofcourse, I gave best song nod up there to “Hell Below / Stars Above,” where the crash cymbal abuse is at its most vile…so perhaps I have no point there).  In any case, Todd Lewis still sounds like he smoked about 600 cigars simultaneously before going on stage, so that detracts a bit.

            But, god man, the ENERGY on display here.  It’s one complete performance from 2001, actually at the Paradise in Boston (GODDAMMIT, I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THEY WERE COMING THROUGH BOSTON!!!!!!!!  GAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!), and recorded “au natural,” as they say.  “No overdubs.  Warts and all!” it says on the back of the album.  Perhaps they SHOULD have taken some time to fix up Todd Lewis’ horrible vocal display, but the idea is still appreciated, and it REALLY helps the energy of the performance shine through.  From this album, the Toadies really strike me as a blue-collar band, one that cares about their audience (and not just from the hilarious pictures of Mark Reznicek you can find inside: fat, grey-haired, and smoking a cigarette while he’s playing his kit, which has a cupholder to put his beer in built onto the snare drum!!!!!!!).  I think by now the band knew they were close to throwing in the towel (seeing as how no one outside of me and the people at this show had actually purchased their second album), and there’s a certain affection between the band and the audience in the air.  Seriously, I can sense it just from listening to the CD.  It’s palpable.  How the audience yells out “Toooaaaaaaadiiieeeeeees!!!!” when the band takes the stage.  How they sing along to the chorus of “I Come From The Water” (I like a good audience singalong to a song about a prehistoric amphibian now and then, doesn’t everybody?).  How, near the end of the album, Todd asks, “what’s next?” and the audience responds, “TYYYYYYYYLLLLLLLLEEEEEERRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!”  All this shit is cool.  I love this shit.  The band loved this shit.  The people at the show loved this shit.  But, apparently, the band’s record company loved Seether and Puddle Of Mudd instead (or whoever was signed to the same record company, all these bands are the same fucking piece of shit band), and did NOT love this shit.  So The Toadies are no more.  BULLSHIT, man.

            I guess I should talk a little about the music besides going “there’s lots of energy!” and “Todd’s voice sucks tonight,” huh?  Well, sure.  One thing that strikes me about the record is just how much the Hell Below / Stars Above tracks (except for “Push The Hand,” which still is suck) absolutely annihilate the Rubberneck tracks (except for “Possum Kingdom,” which still is rule).  Snuh?  Fneh?  HA!  I TOLD you!  See?  This proves my theory about the slick production on their last album!  It neutered these songs!  Who knew “Little Sin” was one of the best songs the band’s ever done?  I sure didn’t!  Cool. 

            Oh, the band also plays two unreleased songs (“Paper Dress” and “ATF”), which do nothing but show why they were unreleased, and cover a Pixies (appropriate, because I’ve heard the Toadies called “the Pixies, if they secretly wanted to be Metallica”) tune (“Where Is My Mind?”) at the end QUITE (being a synonym for “very,” and allowing me to insert my third parenthesis in a six word span, which is pretty darn neat!) nicely.  Good album.  Good band.  Better than Puddle Of Mudd.  Now go spread the word, my little minions!  Mwwwwwwwah hah hah hah HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

No Deliverance (2008)

Rating: 7

Best Song: “Song I Hate”

 

            The Toadies put a new album out?  What?  The Toadies put a new album out?  But…didn’t they break up?  Wasn’t Todd making records with the drummer guy from Horton Heat?  You’re kidding, right?  The…the Toadies put a new album out?  Serious?  Wow…um…yeah…the Toadies, man!  The Toadies!!!  The fucking Toadies put a new album out!  Yeah!  Toadies!!!

            Look, I like the Toadies.  A lot.  The quality and influence of their music is completely unworthy of the personal adoration I have for this band, and I am totally comfortable with that.  They were my first band along with Nirvana.  There will always be a special little place reserved in my heart for them, even if, you know, they’re just the Toadies, in the grand scheme of things they’ll never be anything more than “that ‘around the lake tonight’ band,” and for some reason they always take seven years between albums, which probably doesn’t help them any.  I have such fondness for them that the prospect of their getting back together and putting out a new record made me a little apprehensive at first.  It’s not like they have some sort of legendary career or image that they needed to protect (though Rubberneck and Hell Below/Stars Above are still pretty kick-ass albums, mind you), but dammit, they’re old!  Clark Vogeler’s hair is completely white now and I think he ate Lisa Umbarger, which I swear is the real reason that they felt they needed a new bassist.  I was kind of afraid that it would taint the nice little legacy that the band had built up in my beer-addled brain.  To put it bluntly, a shitty Toadies album would have ruined my childhood.  So no pressure or anything, Todd.

            Thankfully, it’s good.  It’s not like I’m gonna sit here and lie and tell you that it’s the greatest hard rock album ever and that it’s mindblowingly amazing and original and whatever, but it’s good.  Todd’s voice still sounds just as great and fucked-up and possessed as it always did, and the production is as thick and raw and kick-ass as you’d like.  They bring the rawk pretty good, and the riffs are consistently, you know, present in the songs and entertaining to a sufficient degree, which is always nice (the Toadies don’t do lazy 3-chord bullshit non-riff non-rock, you know).  It’s the least original and least “chance-taking” Toadies album of the three, sure, but considering these guys are like 40 or whatever now, I’ll take a well-done, pleasant, partially generic copy of classic “Toadies music.”  The grinding heavy rock guitars and crazy screaming Todd singing about slightly dirty and odd things that make you feel moderately unclean are ingredients that served them well in the past, and it’s good to see them back again.

            Individual songs?  You want individual songs?  That’s hard on this one because, in terms of chance-taking or variety, it makes Rubberneck sound like Sgt. Pepper’s or something.  The closing “I Want Your Love” has Todd yelling over some pounding tom drums with no other accompaniment like some sort of tribal hibbity-jibbity and thus is probably the only instance of the kind of stuff you can’t find in nearly exactly the same form on earlier Toadies albums, but eh.  It’s not one of the best tunes here.  And fuck it, why would I be looking to the Toadies to break down musical boundaries and blow my mind anyway?  They’re the Toadies!  Just rock my ass, be a little off, and be done with it.  That’s exactly what they do, too.  This album was made to be immediately pleasing to people who still listen to Rubberneck on repeat and yet not come close to supplanting it, and that’s exactly what it does.  There’s even a shuffly song with “Water” in the title on here!  Blatant!  But that’s fine.  This isn’t Radiohead.  This is the Toadies.  My expectations for this band are completely different, and as long as the riffs are solid, the production rocks, Todd’s voice sounds good, and that famous “off” Toadies vibe is present, I’m a happy camper.  Give me some fast shouty stuff with guitars doing that “chica chicka” thing that was all over Rubberneck (e.g. “So Long Lovely Eyes”) and I’m a happy camper.  Give me some slow, sludgy stuff with Todd’s sounding like he’s gonna pass a stone and totally owning it (e.g. “Flower”) and I’m a happy camper.  Give me something with an incredibly simple, repetitive guitar line, a bass line straight from the Pixies, a tempo moderately slower than most of the “rock” stuff, and lyrics that are part-love song and part-kinda disturbing thing like “Tyler” (e.g. “Song I Hate,” which might as well be called “Tyler II” but is nevertheless my favorite song here precisely because it might as well be called “Tyler II”) and I’m a happy camper.  This is not rocket science.  This is the Toadies.  And you know what?  Fuck you, I like the Toadies.

If you want production tricks, I can give you the guitar solo thing in “Don’t Go My Way” where the note sways back and forth between the headphones like a sine curve.  If you want some solid rock that sounds like it’s 1995 and the Toadies are putting out that sequel to Rubberneck they never did that sounds just like it but has songs that aren’t quite as immediately memorable but still rocks, dude, I can give you this entire album.  Brad is happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm not gonna lie.  I'll not be a gentleman.