Jeff Moody
Stripwax

Toadies Is The Name Of A Great Track By The Minutemen And A Lousy Band From Texas

By - Aug 11th, 2010 10:33 am

Toadies is a band from Ft. Worth, TX that had a taste of success back in 1994 when they toured with Bush (remember them/that?) and had a track named “Possum Kingdom” that caught fire briefly with FM rock stations jumping on the then-fledgling alternacrap format, wedged between shit like Candlebox, Blind Melon, Live, and a cast of thousands who made music that drove Kurt Cobain to blow out his brains.

Feeler, the story goes, was the follow up elpee to their big selling debut, but the suits at their label, Interscope, were not digging it at all, and sent Toadies back to the studio to record a new set of songs, released as Hell Below, Stars Above. It was 1997, and rock radio had moved on to new garbage like Third Eye Blind, Incubus, and 311. Toadies called it quits less than a half year after the release of Hell Below, Stars Above, but always had that itch to release Feeler, goddammit… so here it is.

And… it is shit, but not even fresh, steaming shit. Feeler is 1997 (may as well be 1994) all over again, which makes it old, dried up and long-forgotten shit. Unless you like songs that plop themselves down smack dab in the middle of the road and refuse to do anything.

The elpee opens up with “Best Of Three,” which begs (begs!) to be renamed a phonetically-similar “Lethargy.” Singer Vaden Todd Lewis whines his way through to the vocals til the middle of the track, where the band finally finds something of a hook lifted from The Stone Temple Pilots or any other band in heavy FM alternacrap rotation FIFTEEN FUCKING YEARS AGO, but by then, you’ll be looking for anything else to listen to. The following track, “Clarksville” falls blindly into the same rut: an attempt to build tension, some half-assed release, and brought to a finale by Lewis’ overwrought vocal spray, and that’s followed by two tracks worth of mid-tempo guck that go nowhere… and so on.

I spent a week with this waste of time and resources so you wouldn’t have to.

So don’t.

Categories: Other-views, Stripwax

0 thoughts on “Stripwax: Toadies Is The Name Of A Great Track By The Minutemen And A Lousy Band From Texas”

  1. Anonymous says:

    hahaha. you dumbass. you listened to the unfinished 1997 version.

    hahahaah!!!!!!!!!!!!

  2. Anonymous says:

    Correct on both counts. I did, and in this case, I am. And you are
    correct for pointing it out. It’s embarrassing, but what’s worse, it’s
    unfair to the band, regardless of what I think about their music. This was done for all the wrong reasons. Very sloppy on my part.

    Jeff

  3. Anonymous says:

    This article is terrible, you should be fired, you don’t know shit… Go listen to Justin Bieber you fuck hole!

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