Talking Points: Toy Matinee and 3rd Matinee

Dw. Dunphy: What strikes me most about both these records is they’re right up my alley. They are pop, but they have progressive tendencies, and they don’t indulge in those as much as flirt with them. You can tell they were made by industry-aware creators given a chance to go nuts, but are too cognizant of that industry to go full-on. I would have fallen hard for these in the ’90s if I knew they were there.

After Toy Matinee came out, Patrick Leonard booked producing Waters’ Amused To Death. Leonard was sued because he couldn’t tour Toy Matinee because of it. Members of the group went with Leonard. Others went in a different direction. Eventually, that flipped into what became one of the biggest albums of the 1990s, including Toy Matinee producer Bill Bottrell. (We’ll dig deeper into this phase later.)

David Medsker: It wasn’t until the mid-2010s that I heard the story about Toy Matinee being a gift to Patrick Leonard for making Warner Bros. a billion dollars with Like a Prayer. Even better, Leonard wrote a song for the record about Madonna, and called it “Queen of Misery.”

This album, it goes without saying, does not get made today for a number of reasons, starting with the fact that no modern-day major label would offer a make-good deal like that. No, Leonard would have to take his earnings from the album and pay for the record himself. And then it gets released on an indie.

But I digress.

A college friend recommended the album to me shortly after its release. I was intrigued because I was a big fan of Leonard’s production work with Madge, Bryan Ferry, Julian Lennon, and the Dream Academy. The album’s deft blending of pop sensibilities and fusion textures was catnip to my early twenties self. I reviewed the album for The Ohio University Post. I needed everyone to know about it.

I found 3rd Matinee – which features several co-writes by Dream Academy singer Nick Laird-Clowes – in a cutout bin in the late spring or early summer of 1994. I had no idea it had been made, but I snatched it up once I saw who was involved. It had only been out for a couple of months, but the album’s fate was already sealed, and I can see why. 1990 was a great time to release Toy Matinee. 1994 was a terrible time to release Meanwhile.

Also, why does Roger Waters ruin everything he touches? (Rhetorical question, we all know the answer.)

Dunphy: First – Hah!

Second, I found Toy Matinee in, of all places, my local library. I’m kind of a prog-head, which is not as cut-and-dried as it would seem. You got your classicists, your neo-prog which is more pop-friendly, and any number of splinter fans that have different extremes of the stuff they prefer. And most of them could agree on Toy Matinee.

This is really strange to me because, while the album is polished and professional, I wouldn’t necessarily call it progressive rock. It might be that given its 1990 origin, a lot of the audience did not hear it until “Nirvana killed my career,” the time where it was more important to be passionate than polished. Assumptions.

Medsker: I wouldn’t call it progressive, either. Fusion, yes. Prog, no.

I forgot to mention, I knew Kevin Gilbert’s name because he did a baller remix for “Hanky Panky,” the second single from Madonna’s Dick Tracy album I’m Breathless, plus he co-produced the hopped up “Now I’m Following You (Part II),” which serves as the perfect segue into what is for all intents and purposes a bonus track in “Vogue.”

At first glance, Gilbert was a Shep Pettibone type, someone with killer dance floor instincts. When I first listened to Toy Matinee, I expected it to sound more like those tracks.

But if it had, we wouldn’t be talking about it today.

I also want to give Warners (Reprise, technically) credit for not just bankrolling and releasing the album, but doing at least a little promotion. They made a video for “The Ballad of Jenny Ledge,” which aired on MTV at least once, because I saw it. Once.

By the way, also involved in those I’m Breathless sessions: Bill Bottrell, producer of Toy Matinee. I will let you tell our dear readers what Gilbert and Bottrell did after that.

Dunphy: When Toy Matinee broke down, Kevin Gilbert’s then-girlfriend Sheryl Crow filled in on tour. That led roundabout to her breakout Tuesday Night Music Club (1993) album, produced by Bottrell. Gilbert has songwriting credits on at least half the album, including “Leaving Las Vegas,” “Strong Enough,”  and “All I Wanna Do.”

Bottrell is an interesting producer in that he knows exactly how to put things together to get them heard, be they on the radio or otherwise. You heard that with the very tasteful Toy Matinee, Tuesday Night Music Club, and more. But he has a distinctly prog side, producing King Crimson’s THRAK (featuring co-drumming by former Mr. Mister drummer Pat Mastellotto, who is a “6-degrees-of” in this story, but we’ll get there), Tool’s Lateralus, and remixing Rush’s Vapor Trails. And as you mentioned, I’m Breathless.

I can hear why Warners would at least try to promote Toy Matinee. Despite the cover art glancingly referencing Salvador Dali – and not coincidentally the song “Turn It On Salvador” – it isn’t so artsy as to be a loss out of the gate. I mean this not in a critical way but from an aesthetic position: this could have been added easily to the cycle of songs played on Adult Contemporary stations or in store Muzak systems. It’s not off-putting. Hell, if such played Kate Bush’s “King of the Mountain” back when it was a contemporary track, Toy Matinee would not stand out like black metal amongst other offerings.

I’d go so far to say that if you put horns and maybe bongo percussion on “Things She Said” as is, it would be the best Chicago song they weren’t making at that time. It has an adult contemporary vibe that fits well into that world.

Medsker: Granted, I only know the singles, but did Chicago write anything as interesting as “Things She Said” the entire time they worked with David “Into the Ears of Madness” Foster? I am trying to imagine this, and I just can’t, sorry.

Dunphy: Addressing the former, the entirety of the Foster Transit Authority was never very artistic, but from the viewpoint of someone standing in a department store listening to the Muzak, there isn’t something so shocking about Toy Matinee that it couldn’t be there. And maybe I gave Foster XVII more credit than it deserved! (I’m a big, yet humble man.)

Medsker: Listening to the Matinee albums back to back is a bit jarring. Weird how I’d never done it before, and how much taller Toy Matinee stands in comparison. Meanwhile feels too mannered, the kind of album that could easily be a Christian pop record if you changed a couple of lyrics. Having Richard Page sing these almost-Christian songs actually heightens that problem. Lovely as his voice is (and it is), there was an edge to Kevin Gilbert’s voice that elevated the tension in the Toy Matinee songs. With Page at the helm, the 3rd Matinee songs veer towards the middle of the road, all puns intended.

“She Dreams,” though, that’s my jam. I never stopped listening to that one.

Dunphy: You are correct about your observation about 3rd Matinee. It does not take big swings. I enjoy it quite a bit more than you, but you can feel the Reprise thumb on the project. Even though Toy Matinee was a “thank you” for the Madonna money, the label still expected returns it did not receive. The carte blanche treatment is not here, whether imposed or self-imposed.

The path to 3rd Matinee is a mess. While we tend to focus on this being the duo of Kevin Gilbert and Patrick Leonard, all the documentary evidence I’ve seen states it was a committed band composed of well-respected studio session players – including guitarist Tim Pierce, bassist Guy Pratt, and drummer Brian MacLeod. When Leonard went on to produce Roger Waters’ Amused To Death, Pierce and MacLeod went with him for sessions. Gilbert reconstituted Toy Matinee to fulfill touring commitments as mentioned, with Crow, briefly in the mix.

Again, Tuesday Night Music Club happened and focus shifted. MacLeod joined in these sessions and has a few co-writing credits on as well. Pratt moved on to do bass duties in David Gilmour’s version of Pink Floyd.

I feel like right about here, Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet turns to the reader and insists, “Everybody got that?”

That’s the life of a studio musician, after all. Someone hires you and you take the work. To be blunt, the writing was on the wall for Toy Matinee via those initial sales. Only in an alternate universe could we imagine that touring the album could have reversed those fortunes. (Nonetheless, lawyers were involved. No surprise there.)

But we should address 3rd Matinee. Even though I enjoy it, I have to agree it is the weaker of the two. It seems in most respects to telegraph the sound of the Mr. Mister 2010 reunion album, Pull.

There are decent songs on it but nothing is daring or challenging, or outside of the comfortable middle of the road. “Holiday For Sweet Louise” sounds like Steely Dan, but not Aja-era. More like the dry, antiseptic and micromanaged Two Against Nature-era, where everyone knows it won awards but no one can name a single song from it.

It is, therefore, unfair of me to frame it as a natural follow-up to Toy Matinee. Strictly speculating, I think the name suggests the end of Toy Matinee and Mr. Mister. The “3rd” is a nod to that. This is its own entity, and is very, very safe.

Medsker: About 10 years ago, the aforementioned Ohio University Post held a staff reunion on campus, and it was great to see a bunch of my fellow Posties for the first time since graduation. I had a conversation with a guy about Joy Division, and I brought up something that has always bothered me about how people talk about them. Much is made of Ian Curtis killing himself right before the band’s first US tour, and it’s assumed that if he had just held on, Joy Division would have blown up and become superstars.

That was never going to happen. Joy Division was always going to be a cult band, and so was Toy Matinee. Now that we’re 30+ years removed from its original release, I’m amused by the thought of lawyers getting involved over anything involving this group. If anything, I feel lucky that we got the one album from them, and in fairness to 3rd Matinee, I never expected it to live up to Toy Matinee. I may not love the record, but I’m thankful to have something Toy Matinee-adjacent.

Dunphy: Agreed.

We’ve chewed on this idea a lot, not just in this piece but in pop culture discourse on the whole. There are artists, books, movies, TV shows, whatever, that we want to believe had a “right time,” and if only the work landed at that right time, everything would be different.

It’s a fallacy, as you rightly pointed out. In the case of Joy Division, it was the cultish fandom and the tragedy that paved the way for fandom that came after, that created that unfulfilled right time. It is more likely that had Curtis delivered on that tour, it would have been a footnote, the movements that evolved in the aftermath would not have, and that right time would never have existed in the first place. It’s all chicken & egg.

And you are correct – Toy Matinee was always going to be a fluke. It was too far above the average pop-rock of the day. Like Jellyfish on another end of the pop spectrum, they weren’t as hedonistic and decadent (externally) as the receding hair metal rock stars. They weren’t in the same camp as what was about to come: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, or even Beck. We got what we got. That will have to be good enough.

Medsker: You’ve mentioned Jellyfish twice here, and I have intentionally not taken the bait because this convo will quadruple in size. Oh, how I loved that band.