![]() ![]() Or that the band had started as half hobby/half something to do. These guys vibed off each other.Īt the time, I had no idea they’d met in high school in Santa Barbara. It was the collective spirit of what was going on. But it wasn’t the individuals that convinced me. And Glen sang with the clarity and style of someone who’d been at it for decades though he was only seventeen. The singer, Glen Phillips, might have been of two minds about selling himself to the highest industry bidder, but he was clearly of singular purpose in the putting across of the songs.Īs I watched him, and the band behind him of Todd Nichols, Dean Dinning and former drummer Randy Guss, I knew I was seeing something rare: the real thing. And the lead singer seemed so uncertain about performing for this audience, that he began hugging himself as he started to sing. And also to decide if this was merely another competent Athens influenced combo or a band singing and playing something that mattered to them.īefore I made up my mind, we were at the gig wearing the stock record biz dude implacable expressions on our faces. I rewound Way Away two or three times to try and get the words. A confident, laid back urgency, that demanded attention. Record biz guys, which we were at the time, were way too cool to let something like a band’s tape stop them from regaling each other with stories of conquests professional and personal. It was more a long form demo than a proper album (at that time, I think maybe 600 of them were pressed and recorded to tape).Īs soon as the music started, we stopped talking. On the way there, my friend and I popped the band’s first, self-recorded, self-financed album into the cassette player. Enough so that they were selected as the keepers.įor me, one of those keepers is a concert- no, concert is way too big a word- is a performance by Toad The Wet Sprocket in Los Angeles, California, in 1990.Ī friend kind of dragged me to this small bar where we were to see the latest hyped up indie combo try to impress the music industry crowd. The things that stay lodged in your memory matter. Something you just know you will never forget is gone, replaced by the new thing you are sure you will always hold onto.
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