Page content from November 2003

Toad the Wet Sprocket is – in my humble opinion – one of the best bands this planet has ever seen!

I became a TTWS fan through Something’s Always Wrong off their 1994 album Dulcinea. However, I seemed to be the only Swiss who “knew” TTWS back then… I have to say that actually I only knew their music but nothing about the band itself. That was pre-Internet for most of us and I wasn’t one to read music magazines.

In September 1997 I left for a one-year stay in Santa Barbara, California (see About). Of course, I brought the Dulcinea CD along with me. One night I was listing to TTWS in my host family’s living room. My host dad walked in, listened for a few seconds, and then asked who this band was. I replied: “Oh, it’s one of my favorite bands but no one seems to know them. They call themselves ‘Toad the Wet Sprocket'”.
Can you imagine how excited I was when he told me that TTWS were from Santa Barbara?
Sadly, I’ve not yet managed to see TTWS live in concert. I arrived in Santa Barbara a few days after their 1997-08-30 concert at the Bowl. And then, on July 24th, 1998 Toad the Wet Sprocket officially ceased to exist. The world lost a wonderful band (so I thought, read on).

Since then TTWS have worked together off and on over the years. A few shows here, a few shows there but no real reunion. Their original domains http://www.toadthewetsprocket.com/ and http://www.houseoftoad.com now point to myspace.com and a record company respectively.

To honor this band I’ve dug out everything I could find through Google cache and broken links and reassembled the original website! It even includes the old original TTWS web site!

Update 2015-08-23

I haven’t been following Toad or the individual members since I wrote above paragraphs and put their old sites online in 2003. Why should I have? The band was dead, their rare concerts were all in the United States and I was here in Switzerland.

Nonetheless, their music has remained very special to me. No other band has ever managed to resonate so deeply with me. It’s an inexplicably strong connection I feel. Even without the play counter in iTunes I know that I listened to no other band or artist more frequently than I have listened to Toad.

Out of curiosity I opened Toad’s page on Wikipedia on 2015-08-23. WHAT? They reunited and released a new album as far back as 2013? How could I have missed that, sigh.

I bought New Constellation immediately and spent the following four or so hours immersing myself in the new songs. The first two hours were slightly disappointing but then I got really hooked again. The sound is new yet so familiar, like a long lost friend. Of course, I spent hours (more like days) catching up on what I had missed in the meantime. Reading and watching interviews and reading online articles without end.

Guys, great to have you back!