10/06/91 The Edge, Palo Alto, CA
BLUE RHYTHMS
By some sort of mystical confluence of an article on Jim Courier in Tennis
magazine, an overnight trip to Santa Cruz to see Nicole and her friends at a
swanky beach house they'd rented, and the phone number of some girl named Katie
who neither of us ever called, Todd and I had been turned on to the wondrously
melancholic musical alchemy otherwise known as Toad early in our
nineteen-year-old summer of '91. "Toad The what Sprocket?!" I asked him as we
returned home early that Saturday evening in my first GTI.
Back in Green Valley a few hours later, I felt like I'd heard that light you hear
about some people seeing, like I'd stumbled upon the Holy Grail of mope-rock as
channeled by some imageless band who'd nicked their name from Monty Python. The
title of that gentle yet brilliant light was, fittingly, Pale. The singer
sure was unintelligible, but that was part of the allure of this new music, an
impulse buy of Todd's at the indirect behest of Mr. Courier. It was a hell of a
lot more memorable than the George Harrison LPs I bought that same day, although
I did pick up the 7" of Tommy Tutone's "867-5309 (Jenny)," a true fourth grade
classic.
Amy was there at their home and she liked it too, although she couldn't believe
one of us didn't buy the vinyl version with Katie's phone number on the
jacket...or maybe it was someone else later on who said that. But neither one of
us knew Katie, so it would have been an awkward phone conversation. Anyway,
not much later I "borrowed" the disc for a few weeks before finally scoring my
own copy in Berkeley before (or maybe during) my summer class one day.
The album itself sounded more sober than a Baptist chapel in Missouri on any
given Sunday (even with "Corporal Brown" and its "and I'm a bit drunk as I
watch...." line), yet it had this distinctly breezy air to it, if that makes any
sense. It sounded like a light wind rustling the leaves of backyard willow
trees late some morning, though I still haven't figured out exactly where this
backyard is or who owns it. I hope whomever's backyard it is reads this and
invites me over so I can listen to Pale there...for all I know it could be
around here, even on Partrick Road. But, all subjective qualities of the music
aside, it sounded like absolutely nothing else I'd heard before, and still does to this
day.
Isn't this a concert review? What then in the name of doolsa-nayuh does any of
this have to do with Toad's gig in Palo Alto in October '91? Lots, actually.
Things were much different back then, and I don't just mean hairstyles. Before
fear, Toad were, at least vis a vis their first pair of albums--to me, the
most devastating one-two debut punch ever-- this intangible entity of sheer
beauteous melancholia. I knew they were from somewhere in SoCal, I knew Jim
Courier dug them even though he had foolishly thought aloud that "their singer
sounds like Elton John" (?!), and I knew their second album was the sweetest
thing I'd yet heard, let alone that it came out of complete nowhere. I had no
idea which morose face on the Pale sleeve matched which band member's
name. I'd not yet heard, nor seen, nor met, nor discussed distribution with
Marvin The Mandolin Man, ne' producer Marvin Etzioni, whom Amy would really take
by surprise by recognizing on some street in Boulder the following year.
These days, mass exposure in magazines, on television, and on the
Internet virtually disallows any visual mystique in music, but until
I saw them in Palo Alto the following October I had nary a visual
image of Toad--just that of Pale's blurry artwork and hazy photos,
along with its 39 minutes of sublime music.
I got a postcard in the mail from Toad's management office in Santa Monica saying
they'd be performing in the Bay Area a couple of times in early October, which
meant that the lack of visual image was finally about to change...drastically,
even. And that was fine, because to suggest that I forever believe that
these four names who made this extraordinary music might not actually be true
physical beings was, you know, a pretty ludicrous notion. I got tickets for
Nicole and I to go to the Palo Alto gig since the Kennel Club show in SF was
21-and-up. Ten bucks...for a pair.
fear had come out late that summer and showed itself to be a radical
departure from the low-fi underproduction of the first two, while being just as
stuffed with incredible songs. I played the hell out of it in the days leading
up to the show at The Edge, which to my surprise was not part-owned by Dave Evans
of U2 (rim shot).
I remember driving up El Camino Real to Palo Alto from Santa Clara and going by a
KFC with a stuffed Colonel Sanders in the front window. We also passed about
nine Taco Bells in about twenty minutes, easily a record of sorts.
The worst band since Winger played first. Much wankery, big-rock posturing, et
al ensued. Then the Rosemarys from SF came on: one of these new-fangled
"alternative" bands, I thought to my suburban self--the same self who'd buy
Nevermind later that month on a solid rec from Ryan. "...Teen Spirit"
wasn't being played on eMpTyV ad grungeum quite yet, but Ryan was already
predicting big things for this band who, like Toad, also fancied blurry photos of
themsleves inside their album booklets. (The revolution was on and we were all
going to be better Americans for it...or so the Singles soundtrack would
soon lead one to believe.) We all have a proto-Ryan in our lives, a person whose
musical tastes are so parallel to our own that you believe if he or she digs
something then there's no way it could suck. Ryan, of course, knew of Toad
before I did (the hipster!) but failed to enlighten me with his brimming
familiarity of his local Central Coast music scene.
Anyway, the Rosemarys were okay, or maybe they weren't, I don't really remember.
I was getting tired, as was Nicole who was virtually asleep on my right shoulder,
even though we were standing the whole time.
The Rosemarys finished and left. Anticipation grew to a fever pitch. I wanted
to know what these guys in Toad--this seemingly invisible band with the mumbly
singer, the sweet guitar textures, and the songs about funerals, clowns, your
basic angst and, naturally, doomed relationships--looked like in person. I was
curious as to which face played what instrument. I wondered aloud what tunes
they'd play, if they'd do any Bread And Circus/Pale stuff, or if they'd
stick with the new sugar-coated tunes like "Is It For Me" and "In My Ear." Then
the lights went down around 11PM and the crowd, fairly packed but not to the
point of sardine comparisons, cheered like crowds always cheer at concerts when
the lights go down.
Then the Odds came on. Everywhere I looked: blueballs. Confusion, for a short
while, reigned. In my mind, I threw things.
But to their lasting credit, the Odds, on tour with Toad that season and under
the same Blake & Bradford management umbrella, were pretty damn groovy. We
enjoyed their Canuck-flavoured wit and their weird little mini-power-pop songs
about things like bed bugs and, I quote directly here, "fucking Wendy under the
stars the night that Elvis died." (Wendy Jo Sperber from "Bosom Buddies,"
perhaps?) My initial bafflement turned to applause over the 45 minutes they were
onstage, and so it was a notably bizarre and retro moment when I saw them open for
Toad once again in '95 at a beautiful outdoor amphitheater in Portland, Oregon,
especially when they played the aforementioned infamous tune, even though the
singer altered the operative verb to "screwing." You get older, you get less
risque I guess, especially when you're performing in a bucolic rose garden beneath
a Bank Of America banner the size of an actual Bank Of America.
Back to Palo Alto. By the time this short, light (in both physical
and personality stature) guy with a crewcut came onstage and strapped
on a mandolin, I was thoroughly befuddled, worried, and full of
negative emotions I didn't even realize I possessed. A fourth opening band?, I
frustratingly wondered to myself. Were Toad on the bill? Were we here the wrong
night? Good grief. But then I saw a blond guy with a light beard who appeared to
look like a guy I'd seen on the new album's interior artwork. Next thing I
knew it was "We spotted the ocean...." It was technically October 7th by this
time, a Monday morning. I had class in a few hours.
For the first ten minutes, I'm sure I looked like the guy who shows up on the
blind date expecting Ernest Borgnine and instead gets Meg Ryan. 100% permagrin.
There were several songs off B&C, everything off fear except "Pray Your
Gods" and "Something To Say," and scores of Pale tunes. I remember
certain moments of dialogue:
Audience member to Glen: "Why'd you cut your hair off?"
Glen: "Bad lice."
Glen, intro'ing "Don't Go Away": "My dad asked me
which girl this next song is about. I told him it was about this friend of mine I
grew up with from a very young age. We kind of grew apart and years later we saw
each other again, at some point in high school I think. He'd turned into a real
asshole. But my dad still insists it's about some girl."
And because of Glen telling that story, I will probably always associate that
song with Pat Freitas.
Glen, intro'ing "In My Ear": "Here's one about Q-Tips."
And Randy, sensing palpable Stanfurd territory, said something about being
partial to Berkeley, even though they rejected his application.
I remember "Stories I Tell" being pretty loud and heavy for a band who'd later be
derisively (yet humorously) labelled as "R.E.M. interpreted by Air Supply." I
remember "Way Away" being what it is today and always will be: the perfect
pop-rock song with Toad's own staple of a maudlin lyric set to ridiculously
catchy music. I remember "Granted" and thinking how nice it'd be to have someone
to slow-dance with, but still enjoying the song a lot anyway. Strangely, I don't
remember the first time I heard "Know Me" live, which is my favorite in-concert
song by anybody...you'd think it'd stick out in my mind. Some guy I didn't know
at school came up to me the next day, commented on my Toad shirt (front: image of
an animated flying Toad; back: IT HAPPENS; the one about which Chris Blake always
comments "You know, that's our rarest shirt....") and told me how he was "stoked
that they played that Waterboys song before 'Know Me.'" Never mind that I didn't
know who they Waterboys were in 1991....
I dropped Nicole off at her dorm at SCU at some God-awful hour, and sped up 680
at three in the morning, waking up in the other lane not once, but twice around
San Ramon. I lived, however, and even made it to my 9AM that morning.
Toad now had a visual image and, amazingly enough, a wicked sense of humor,
something I should have expected from a band named after an English comedy
sketch. Things would never be the same: "All I Want" and "...Ocean" would go
apeshit in '92, they'd get their picture in People (or was it Sassy?)
magazine, the venues would get bigger, etc. etc. But to everyone's credit,
including we Toadophiles, added popularity and mainstream success wouldn't ruin
the love affair. Indeed, things were drastically different in the
pre-fear days, and I harbor no overt egoism in claiming that I was riding
the Toadwagon when Pale was still their most recent album. However, I felt glad
for Glen when he said in Sacramento in '92, just before playing "All I Want,"
that it was good to be able to afford health insurance now.
That night at The Edge is far from crystal-clear in my mind these days, but I
remember enough about it to where I can register the level of import it had upon
how I still think of Toad today. Before that very long, drawn-out evening four
bands wide, Toad were, to me, exactly what Pale portrayed them to be:
these downtrodden-looking and sounding sods who somehow were not only unannoying
in their seemingly pathetic woefulness, but also so eloquently expressed in their
music the notion that sometime it feels amazingly good to feel a little lousy.
After all, Shelley wrote that "our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest
thought." He probably would have liked Pale.
Of course, Percy Bysshe Shelley wasn't in Palo Alto that early autumn night, so
he wouldn't have had a clue about Toad's wisenheimer yang so integral to their
music's disconsolate yin. However, if you've ever seen Toad live...whether
they're musically waltzing to Kiss, blasting through "Hold Her Down," or getting
sappy on "All Things In Time"...you surely know what I mean.
CH, 2/3/98