Wednesday November 10, 2021 “Crazy Life” Toad the Wet Sprocket
Diving a little deeper into the Empire Records soundtrack we have “Crazy Life” by a band named after a Monty Python sketch that featured a fictional rock band called Toad the Wet Sprocket.
Eric Idle who wrote that Monty Python sketch said that when he conceived of the band “ I was trying to think of a name that would be so silly nobody would ever use it, or dream it could ever be used. So I wrote the words ‘Toad the Wet Sprocket.’ And a few years later, I was driving along the freeway in LA, and a song came on the radio, and the DJ said, ‘that was by Toad the Wet Sprocket’ and I nearly drove off the freeway.”
This actual band, Toad the Wet Sprocket was formed in 1986 by high school friends singer/songwriter/guitarist Glen Phillips, guitarist Todd Nichols, bassist Dean Dinning, and drummer Randy Guss formed the group in 1986 in their native Santa Barbara, California. The band would become one of the most successful alternative rock bands in the early '90s, boasting a thoughtful folk-pop sound that wielded enough melody and R.E.M. styled feel to reach both the modern rock and adult contemporary audiences.
Today's song is not about unrequited love but rather about the atrocities inflicted upon the Native American peoples by the US government. A reading companion to this song might be Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown.
Stay safe and well...and an interesting piece of musical trivial trivia, Toad the Wet Sprocket bassist Dean Dinning is the nephew of Mark Dinning who had that horribly morbid 1960 hit “Teen Angel”.