Album Essentials: Toy Matinee "Toy Matinee" (35th Anniversary)
By Dave Swanson - Summit FM Contributor
Some bands, it seems, make far too many albums — even worse in the CD era, when artists felt the need to fill up 79-plus minutes with their, um, art. Other bands, by design or happenstance, make one signature collection of songs and, to quote the ever-present George Costanza, “go out on a high note.”
A few that spring to mind over the decades include Blind Faith, a supergroup that featured Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker of Cream, Steve Winwood of Traffic and the Spencer Davis Group, and Ric Grech of Family. Though it was a moment in time for these friends to put a combo together, it was most likely a product of the era — and perhaps never meant to last past two sides of an LP.
On the other end of the line, we find the Sex Pistols — one of the most influential and significant bands of all time — who made only one album and a few singles. The internal combustion factor, the media, and a sort of planned obsolescence were all to blame for their one-and-done. Plus, they pretty much said everything they needed to say with that one eternal LP.
There were others — some radiant in their success, others, like Toy Matinee, glowing in their obscurity. Session players Guy Pratt (bass) and Patrick Leonard (keyboards) joined forces to work on some songs and suddenly, they had a band. Joined by fellow session players — multi-instrumentalist Kevin Gilbert, drummer Brian MacLeod, and guitarist Tim Pierce — Toy Matinee was born in 1988.
With a sound somewhat defined by that era, the band featured a glossy, radio-ready brand of sophisticated pop — somewhere between the sky-bound hills of Steely Dan and the shiny pop of Crowded House. Songs like “Last Plane Out” and “The Ballad of Jenny Ledge” were pushed at radio to no avail. It was quickly considered dead in the water by the record label, Warner/Reprise, and the plug was pulled.
Perhaps a decade earlier, or a decade later, they may have had better luck. But their slick, glossy “adult” sound couldn’t have been more out of step in a world about to explode with grunge, hip-hop, alternative, and so on. There are some who did hear the album who still hold it fondly within their music collection. There are far more who have never heard the thing!
Every musical cycle, trend, whim, or movement has boxloads of lost, forgotten or — more to the point — never-heard albums. Perhaps we’ll begin to feature more of those, thus expanding the definition of “essential” along the way.