Know Me — Toad the Wet Sprocket
#365Songs: August 9
Two days ago I drove to Cleveland for a Toad the Wet Sprocket concert. I suppose the Gin Blossoms were the headliner, but I was just happy I didn’t have to stay until the end of the show before starting my 135-minute drive home.
This marks the second time I’ve mentioned the Gin Blossoms in a #365Songs post without actually picking one of their songs. I’m tempted to write about “Allison Road” for this post, but the inside joke isn’t even worth explaining.
I have previously written about Toad the Wet Sprocket. “Windmills” was actually the first song I ever picked back on February 5th, 2021. Toad played “Windmills” on Wednesday night because, as they said, they were digging into some deep cuts from Dulcinea for the album’s 30th anniversary. That marked the second time I’ve ever heard it live — and the first since a show in 1998 at Georgia State University.
There’s one thing I’ll never quite process about Toad the Wet Sprocket concerts. I actively dislike their two most popular songs. They’re one of my favorite bands, one of those eccentric loves that differentiates my music obsessions from everyone else’s. When they play “Walk on the Ocean” and everyone jumps out of their middle-aged music seats to record the phenomenon on their fucking phones and sing along with the flaccid radio jingle, I just look around and wonder WHY THIS SONG?
I am notoriously judgmental about music taste. I’ve gotten better over the years in terms of voicing these opinions, but I guarantee my wife can still see the flames behind my eyeballs when suppressing a particularly unhinged tirade about, say, when my daughter hears me listening to Aphex Twin and calls it a “TikTok song” thereby casually dropping it into the company of Post Malone, Benson Boone, and Lil Nas X.
I want to burn it all down.
And, no, that’s not fair. It’s not like the “Walk on the Ocean” loving attendees are crashing my party by feeling joy from a different Toad the Wet Sprocket song — it’s just that I love a very different band than the casuals who think the Toad discography begins with “Walk on the Ocean” and ends with “All I Want.”
They’re from the same album (fear) and they’re like the sixth and eights best songs on the record. (Not that I just ranked the songs on fear just now to prove a point to myself.) So I’m not mad, but I suppose I am.
The judgment isn’t like the “TikTok song” slight or Drake and the state of modern hip-hop. It’s the wild recognition that when people hear I’m a huge Toad the Wet Sprocket fan they immediately think of “Walk on the Ocean” and “All I Want.” And I immediately sense their patronizing tone when they say something akin to— Oh yeah. I remember that band. They were nice.
I know my response isn’t normal or accepting or necessarily even rational. But as an asshole that thinks very highly of his taste in music, it’s like wearing fine-grain sandpaper boxer briefs. It’s not bad to start out, but after a few hours you’re rubbed bloody raw and you can’t tell anybody about how pissed off you are because you were the dumbass that wore sandpaper underwear.
I drove six hours today to a film festival in New York state and I’m still here typing this post at 12:35am on the 10th after watching three movies tonight so not all (any?) of my analogies are going to be fucking bangers.
I’m a petty, petulant insecure music fan. I think we all are. We want to project our discriminating taste, to make sure that people see who we are. It’s childish, but essential to our identity, a reflection of our insecurities. Even if nobody necessarily thinks less of me for liking an utterly banal Toad the Wet Sprocket radio hit, a radio hit that — consequently — probably pays for their entire and continued existence as a band, I know I would think less of myself.
See above, that part about being an asshole.
My editor’s tap tap tapping his foot waiting for this post to go live. So. In conclusion, here’s my favorite deepest cut Toad the Wet Sprocket song that perfectly reflects the band I love, the band that plays when I’m at my lowest, that eases the bad and buoys the good.
Now, when I say I’m a Toad fan, you will “Know Me” for better and worse.
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