Another good band bites the dust in the wake of poor album sales: ""The label was doing the usual label thing: 'If you don't sell X number within X number of days, then you suck...'"
I blame the fact that it took them 6 years to come out with their sophomore album. They should've captialized on their success a lot sooner. Oh well, I still love both of their albums.
I believe the reason it took 6 years for their album to come out was because they were in a dispute with their label over the content of the album--the label wasn't giving them enough control over the music. The band just refused to put out the album instead of caving in to the label. I could be wrong on that, though...maybe someone else can clarify.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO damnit.....they were one of my FAVORITE live bands!! Freaking corporations are taking over and all crappy bands are taking over and that means my life is basically over!!!!!!!
this isn't entirely true. originally, the toadies belonged to smaller, more independent (relative-speaking) label (interscope) that was gobbled up by a larger (read: corporate) entity shortly after their breakthru in 1995-ish. the toadies turned in a follow-up, but received little to no feedback on it, excpet that it wasn't in the company's plans to release it. in their interscope days, the label was small enough to send an a-n-r guy their way to help iron out the kinks. but the bigger label had neither the time nor the interest to help out, so the band whithered. so it wasn't a case of not capitalizing -- they tried. they were just never given the time of day (read: money) to make it happen. and that's too bad, because they put on quite a show live. i was lucky enough to attend UNT during dallas' hey-day as a burgeoning seattle, and saw a lot of local (or close-by) bands at small venues play their hearts out -- the toadies, tripping daisy, slobberbone, the rev. horton heat... it was a great time.
The state of rock music is such a joke. I would quit too if I was the toadies, there is no point anymore. All the good rock bands from the early 90's are gone or changed their sound to pop. I saw this one coming.
Hmm, so if what Freak and Ric said is true, then a great band is no more because of corporate tie-ups and delays. Meanwhile, the labels make sure the pop product continues to churn out the assembly line. And they say Napster was the problem for the music industry...
Whoa there Ric! I'm not sure you can call Dallas a "burgeoning Seattle" at any point in time in it's history. Not that I'm in love with Seattle music, but they did happen to achieve worldwide pop culture success for about 4 or 5 years before things died back down. The Toadies, Tripping Daisy, Slobberbone, and Rev. Horton Heat hardly came close to defining a generation of popular music like Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Foo Fighters, Alice in Chains, and Everclear.
thus the use of the word, "burgeoning" -- ie growing, budding, rising... when nirvana, et al, broke, and seattle became a scene, whorish record executives went in search of the next seattle (that's how they do things in the record business). at the time, dallas had the potential, with several bands on the outskirts who had the chops to possibly go mainstream. and for a spell, tripping daisy, the rev and the toadies all hit it big, albiet in small doses. then, for various reasons, flameout set in, and things died down. but for a brief, fleeting moment... dallas had it going on.
Lesson to be learned - if you want creative control, don't stick with a major label. Fugazi and Ani DiFranco make more money than 99% of major label artists but get to do whatever they want. The Toadies would have been smarter to work out a severance with their label when it got bought up and hooked up with a label that gave a crap about musicians, not walking Barbie/Ken dolls. Then again, I always thought the Toadies were a one-trick pony.
I agreed with your quote up to the point where you mentioned Seattle bands. Unfortunately the Foo's and Everclear are based out of SoCal
Although I love the Toadies, I don't put them or the other bands you mentioned up with PJ, Soundgarden, AIC, etc... Their songs are just not as good as Jeremy, Teen Spirit, and Hunger Strike. The record companies may dictate what gets popular but you can't justify comparing Tripping Daisy to Alice in Chians. Perhaps Dallas was a very very very poor mans Seattle. But there were other cities with more potential than Dallas at the time.
I was 13 or 14 years old and hanging outside a 1000-seat capacity all ages club, the buds and I was full of parents money and it wasn't a school night. It was either a show or the mall. I guy we knew at this club told us that an unknown British band was playing tonight for five bucks, "their second or third show right off the boat." We paid, went in, and listened to two or three hours of the crappiest music we had ever heard. It took us until the fourth song, when the lead singer actually spoke, to remember that the British band was indeed British. We watched the entire opening set of the other band and still couldn't figure out if the bassist was a broad or a dude. We left, laughed, and thanked the heavens that we'd never have to hear those two groups again. Within months, Bush was all over MTV, and the Toadies weren't close behind. Dammit.
when and where did i compare any specific groups? seattle broke out and became a "scene." record executives, who don't have the faintest clue about much of anything, figured, "if a lot of good groups came from seattle, and seattle is a city, then there must be other cities just like it" that's the kind of "thinking" record executives employ -- they're scavengers, hopelessly devoid of original thoughts or ideas, so they're forced to feed off of other successes until they've devoured all the meat and move on to the next trend that inexplicable breaks through the mold. so, of course, in lieu of actually seeking out good bands (what a concept) they went in search of a city. dallas was one of the cities with some heat, because they had more than a handful of good bands that were putting out some respectable music at the time. i never said anything about it having even near the impact seattle did, nor the popularity, and i never mentioned any of dallas' bands being on par with seattle's. if you go back and read my original post, waaaaaay back when, (not to mention the first time i had to explain this) i used the term "burgeoning." you do know what burgeoning means, right?
Toadies were a great band, but I have to say that their second album kinda sucked. I really dug the first one but the second one really disappointed me.
RIP, Toadies. Thanks for kicking my ass last night at the Austin farewell show...too bad it stopped raining, it was pretty cool there for a while, with Toadies coming out and playing "I Come from the Water", while it was raining. Thanks for playing every single song for us (except the great "Plane Crash", which was a PC casualty). I miss you already!
Funny, I could not place who the Toadies were, then looked them up and discovered, much to my dismay, that they were the "do you wanna die?" (repeat over and over) band. This is also funny because I was in Dallas (ugh) during their popularity. Then Ric brings up Tripping Daisy and I get more evil flashbacks. I thought I had these memories repressed deep enough. Guess not. Dallas had a crap music scene. I did see Rev at Trees (I had first heard him earlier in the 90's) and like(ed) him alright, but after you listen to a lot of his music, it becomes apparent that there is not much originality in his "rockabilly" songs. The titles are mostly (not always) interchangeable. Freak, A review I read of them seemed to think they were somewhat derivative of those "boring" Seattle bands: the Toadies' singer is loud, strong and on-key, blending the blues stylings of Eddie Vedder and Weiland with some Chris Cornell shrieks, a little bit of Danzig histrionics and a lot of pop passion I don't know enough about them to know how true this is, just thought I would throw it out. Anyway, there corporate label saw that they were playing music de4emed passe, they ignored them for it. Don't act surprised, it is nothing new. It will only get better (sarcasm).
