Concert Report: The Toadies

We've got a special treat today: a guest post from my brother Bill Brassky, who went to see the Toadies Thursday night in Los Angeles and was kind enough to file this report.

Toadies at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip... in 2008.

For an hour and 45 minutes, it felt like 1995. There was a mosh pit. There was crowd surfing. (One guy even went with the daring face first crowd surf, inviting hands to grab whatever they pleased.) There was an obscure Waynes World 2 reference. Another dude even got thrown out. The guys in the band seemed genuinely touched by all the enthusiasm (probably a result of the years off) and threw in an extra new song during a five song encore.

Since they only have three albums of material, they were able to play every song you'd think they would--with the notable exception of "Hell Below/Stars Above." They opened with an instrumental jam before going into "Backslider." Finished the regular portion of the show with "I Come From the Water." Opened the encore with "Hell or High Water" (I think that's the title) from the new album and closed with "Tyler." They played "Possum Kingdom" in the middle of the set right after "Push That Hand" (which might have been the highlight of the night for me). There was a lot of jumping up and down.

I had seen the Toadies once before in 2000 when they were promoting Hell Below/Stars Above. Mr. Peppers and I drove out to Foss, Oklahoma (halfway between Amarillo and OKC) to see them at the Foss Ballroom. I don't really remember much about this show except that the lead singer played one of the songs off that album by hitting his guitar with a mallet (he did that again last night) and being told that the place was dead before the show by a rustler at a nearby Conoco.
The Toadies we saw that night were in the same position as the ones I saw Thursday night--a band trying to come back from years away. But the current version seems to be having a better time and accepts that most of the 30somethings in the crowd just want to hear "I Burn" and "Mister Love," not the new stuff. Though, that might also be the difference in playing for a few hundred people in middle of nowhere Oklahoma and a packed room on the Sunset Strip.

It's too bad the Toadies weren't more famous back in the day because they're still really tight. New songs, old songs, not-so-old songs, all sounded great. Their awesomeness might be diminished by playing in bigger venues, but they should give Sponge and the Presidents of the United States of America a call and put together some sort of larger tour (i.e. the greatest tour ever). I'm not sure if those bands appeal to the same audience, but 6th grade me would give up his best Airwalks to see a show like that. If they could somehow get Weezer to quit sucking, they've got themselves a headliner.

Concert report: Everclear

So I saw Everclear yesterday... sort of. This isn't exactly the Everclear you or I remember. Bassist Craig Montoya and drummer Greg Eklund split in the fall of 2003, after touring for the poorly-received Slow Motion Daydream (Eklund is now playing guitar for The Oohlas, who had some blog buzz earlier this year and a song on the Spider-Man 3 soundtrack... Montoya is in two bands: one called Tri-Polar who hearken back to '80s cock-rock and one called Castella that are more Angels&Airwaves-sounding).

Art Alexakis re-tooled with a second guitarist, an organist, and a new bass player and drummer, released a greatest-hits compilation, Ten Years Gone, got dropped by Capitol, and then put out a new album last year called Welcome to the Drama Club. It did not do well, though I think some of the songs are as strong as anything else in the Everclear catalog.

Which brings us to yesterday's show, which took place at 5 in the afternoon at my local college for about 500 people, only 100 or so of whom seemed actually into the music. Art's voice wasn't in very good shape (it cracked at least four times), but they did play the hits: "Everything to Everyone," "Santa Monica," "I will Buy you a new life," "Wonderful," even "AM Radio," which, let's be honest, was the jump-the-shark moment for this band (seriously, who thought a pop song about growing up in the early '70s, featuring a sample from "Mr. Big Stuff," would work for a post-grunge band?). They also dragged out "Volvo Driving Soccer Mom," their last charting song (#30 on the modern rock charts in 2003), some songs off the new album, and, bizarrely, covers of "Brown-Eyed Girl" and "867-5309" (during which Art wore some girl's oversized sunglasses... see the picture at right).

And... it was all right. The band only played for an hour, and the arrangements seemed to have suffered in the transition from a trio to a five-piece (especially on "Everything to Everyone"), but overall, it was a decent show. Everclear was one of those bands that were few people's favorites, but few people openly hated them, either. They were there, they had some hits on the radio that people liked, and now they're struggling (see this report on Art's severe financial problems, as well as his reaction to it on his Myspace blog). The most recent album proves that Art is still a fairly-talented songwriter, so here's hoping that this isn't the last I ever hear of Everclear. Considering he's a reported $3 million in debt, I imagine Everclear will keep touring like this until the last community college in Montana says no.

But while we're here, let's take a look back, shall we?
This site has a great collection of live and rare Everclear mp3s, and YouTube, of course, has most of the band's videos, like:

They did not play "Heartspark Dollarsign" at the show yesterday, which was a disappointment, as it's one of their best songs. Apparently, Art doesn't like it much anymore, since it was inexplicably left off the greatest-hits CD.

Here's one from when everything started to go pear-shaped (intercut with some random dude's trip to Wales, but that's all I could find), the aptly-named "When It All Goes Wrong Again." I like the odd implications that Art has become some sort of cult leader.


They didn't play this one, either.

And to wrap up, here's one from the last album, called "Glorious." I really like this song. Note all the new band members.