They played "Last Plane Out" for a bit on the radio here in Oklahoma, and I went out and bought the album quickly. It is one of my all-time favorite albums -- so amazing.

Its fun to watch Tim Pierce's video on this since he played guitar on the album.

Nice piece guys. I discovered this album about a week ago, and I swear it's the best thing I've heard in 15 years.

Kevin Gilbert mastered my first solo album "Balance of Power" in his studio in Pasadena next to the Playhouse and became a good friend of mine. Really nice guy and we had lots of kooky fun over the holidays that year! Loved his solo album "Shaming of the True". It would have been great to hear him in Genesis as he was being considered lol Miss him 🎶🎸

Toy Matinee is my desert island record. I have two CDs, one dts DVD, and two copies on vinyl. Thanks for doing this broadcast. Always great to hear KG stories.

I only discovered Toy Matinee a year or two ago when Guy Pratt played it as part of his "Lockdown Licks" series on KZfaq. I have no doubt that if this album had been promoted in the UK and consequently Australia and New Zealand (where I'm from) then "Last Plane Out" would've been one of those memorable 80's and 90's pop-rock songs that I grew up with. Oh well, better 30 years late than never 😁

I discovered this album during quarantine and it was one of those “where has this been all my life?” Such a shame it didn’t take off as the songs are so strong. It’s pop but not in a conventional way. Nothing else quite like it.

I still have that CD and it's because I used to listen to Mark and Brian almost every morning. Good times and good music!

Great conversation! And obviously a GREAT album! Thanks guys

You mentioned how this is like a "Sgt. Peppers" in how it was so differenlty perfiect. I found this album when it came out in '90 ( and I was in Indiana). I definitely get that comparison. Even more than 30 years later, this remains a watershed, musical grail album for so many reasons to me. Tim Pierce's interviews with members only confirmed that in my mind.

Brilliant work!!! Great music withstands the test of time.

Giraffe used to rehearse in my studio (Streetnoise Studios) in Santa Clara as they perfected their show for the Universal Battle of the Bands where they ultimately took home second place and got the connection with Patrick Leonard and culminated with Toy Matinee. I remember their goal was to get a Steely Dan type of tightness to a Progressive Rock groove.

Heard Last Plane Out on the car radio and went straight out and bought it. It rocked my world then and still does. Crisp and clean, sophisticated lyrics with elevated background vocals. I was lucky, lucky, lucky to see Kevin Gilbert promoting this album at the Coachouse in San Juan Cap. It's a travesty we have only this one album to appreciate Gilbert's musical genius.

Thank you so much for this great conversation about Toy Matinee. I always warn people when I tell them about this record. It is like going to this amazing restaurant and having one of the best meals of your life and then a week later that restaurant is gone forever. Third Matinee was a great record as well.

Nice job kats- Chicago knew all about this scene as well. Word def got around.

What a fantastic album, one of my top albums. Hello from Ireland 🇮🇪

Love it over in Florida...

RIP KEVIN

I live in Denver and fell in love with this album when it was first released. They were not just an LA “thing”.

I will never forget how astounded I was that Toy Matinee, did not take off into the pop-rock stratosphere! I had Toy Matinee pegged as the next big thing, by my musical standards. Some of my closest musical buddies thought so as well. The album went nowhere and the group folded. It was the first time I realized my musical tastes were no longer ahead of the pack. I had lost my ability to have my finger on the pulse of what was current and popular. For years, for decades, I always thought my musical tastes in rock music were ahead of the pack until that fateful moment. By the time Toy Matinee emerged on the scene the musical sensibilities and values had changed. Really, really mediocre artists were becoming superstars. I will not name names. The trolls are rampant these days. Don’t want to offend those hypersensitive feelings, do we? And, I was older myself. Perhaps it was just me. Rock ain’t dead, just changing and evolving, my open-minded self rationalized. Nevertheless, Toy Matinee is still one of my all-time favorite albums. “Last Plane Out is clearly a top five Grammy-nominated song by any measure. I was so taken with the hauntingly compelling outro musical section of “There Was a Little Boy,” I recorded just that section and repeated it four times sequentially. “Queen of Misery” out rivals Genesis’ program rock chops in its execution. Smart, melodic, rocking, lyrical, impeccably state-of-the art recorded, the album is a bit somber at times. Perhaps too dark for the emerging boy-band radio standards of the time. The themes are adult and not teenage wasteland. Perhaps, that was the source of its lack of mainstream appeal. Toy Matinee was the last record album for a certain kind of rock music. It attained and surpassed the post-analog digital recording standard of the day while retaining the antecedents and spirit of rock and roll for those of us who were invested in rock music as a growing and expanding medium. I give it a listen every six months or so and I can still can count on Toy Matinee to revive in me an optimism for the potential in us all. Kevin Gilbert recorded Thud five years later and a year later he was dead. Gilbert was a rock musical genius by all accounts - an ahead-of-his-time multi-instrumentalist, lyricist and singer. Sheryl Crow said he was the most self-destructive person she ever met. But that’s another tangent in the story. “Goodness Gracious my grandma used to say The world's a scary place now Things were different in her day What horrors will be commonplace When my hair starts to grey?” -Last verse of the song “Goodness Gracious” from Thud. I always think about the prescient, last two lines of the verse when tragedies like Las Vegas happen. The fact that Kevin Gilbert is no longer around to witness the outcomes of his foretelling lends further weight to the meaning of those lines for me.

So thankful that you said it was like your Sgt Peppers. I totally agree! I cannot stop playing this CD since it came out up until today. Along with Kevin's original Giraffe "Power of Suggestion". Can't get enough of those.

Incredible record

Massive Kevin fans here in the Midwest! I discovered him about a year after he died, and have been involved in performances of his music at a few festivals. There are pockets of fans all over the world❤

Got the vinyl last year, a great album and Kevin was a genius

For me it was Mike Portnoy who introduced me to Toy Matinee around 2015/16. Then I found Kevin Gilbert album Thud and The Shaming of the true. Love Kaviar, too! What a unique musician and person he was.

I learned about Toy matinee and 1990s. They were the best thing I ever heard in my life. And I’m a child of the 80s and this was over the top amazing

I only found Kevin olin the last few years, but have been meaning to check him out since seeing his name on a Mike Keneally cd credits. Love it all, incredible to think what he would be doing now. I also love Dread Zeppelin! No Quarter Pounder & Hot and Spicy Beanburger have had a ton of plays from me over the last couple of decades. Genius playing on those albums as well.🍻

Thank you guys for mentioning Mark and Brian - they were very good friends with Kevin and Kevin's sideman Marc Bonilla who was the music director for Mark & Brian's Christmas shows for 23 years. Marc has some great stories touring with Kevin and then girlfriend Sheryl Crow who also sang back up on tour with Kevin.

I heard of Toy Matinee for the first time about a month ago. I listened to the album and I totally get it. There's something instantly and obviously special about this music. I can't explain what it is, but oooweee is it good.

I know the focus was on Kevin Gilbert and this album is definitely one of my favorites, but I wanted to chime in and say Third Matinee is a great one, too, with Patrick Leonard and Richard Page. Seems like Patrick wanted to continue the momentum and would have likely included Kevin Gilbert!

Really more Kevin Gilbert discussion than Toy Matinee. Amazing musicians in the band you didn’t even mention.

Guys, I just found your video, and I HAVE to say thanks! So much of why I love Toy Matinee now makes total sense to me, as I was basically unaware of pretty much everything you guys discussed here, LOL! (I'm an older guy now, and Yes and Genesis have been my favs since I discovered music.) 'Last Plane Out' was played locally here in Pittsburgh, and apparently like so many others, I ran out and bought the CD right away. Not many songs in life have grabbed me instantly, but this one did, and so did the entire album once I got to listen to it... I simply LOVE every track, with 'Things She Said' being my ultimate favorite. An amazing, amazing, amazing album, one of the best (and most underappreciated) ever!!

I never knew about this record at the time. I found out about it from Tim Pierce's video a few years ago and it almost immediately became one of my favorite albums. A lot of it predicted mid-to-late 90s alternative and post-grunge, and the production sound is Aja levels of clean.

Loved the album on first listen after it came out. Also a DZ fan too, saw them live twice. ;⁠-⁠)

I am stunned that there is no talk about Patrick Leonard in this. I love Kevin Gilbert but Patrick Leonard is equally responsible for this album. Both geniuses, and both made amazing record. Desert island for me!

An absolutely fucking fantastic song, production, etc. The Toy Matinee album is SOOO fucking good it's a goddamned crime it was never given the support and promotion it deserved... just absolutely tragic. One of the ONLY albums in almost 30 years that has been in heavy rotation in ALL my playlists on all my devices, since it was released. One of the greatest "Bands" ever, that came and went in a flash,....all incredibly talented musicians with the strangest story behind how it came together, & was recorded, the people involved, and what happened after it was done that basically killed it in the crib. Terribly sad this group of genius musicians never got to play it live and tour and the album was never promoted by the company but damn its one of the best albums that "nobody knows about" from an incredible group of musicians that came together, formed a REAL BAND, made magic & then disappeared before we knew it.... #LongliveToyMatinee

First heard this album in 1990 in Scranton, PA. Like you said, I’d never heard anything like it. Still haven’t since then.

I worked at KLOS back then. It wasn't Mark and Brian as much as it was their producer Nicole Sandler that got it on the air. She knew of Kevin when he was in Giraffe

I've had the CD in my possession ever since it was released. Just listened to it again and had to search youtube. It is by far one of the most well produced and best sounding albums I have ever heard. Let alone the song writing. And I've heard a lot!! It's my go to reference for my own productions: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/odJyjKx-y9rWh4E.html. I am humbled by Patrick Leonard, and all the amazing musicians on this CD. And I miss Kevin Gilbert so much.... forever.

I never heard Toy Matinee on the radio but I had a friend who was always known for finding/sharing gems just outside the mainstream. One night he put "Toy Matinee" in his cd player and it wasn't long before I was hooked. "Things She Said", "Remember My Name", "They Always Come Home", "Jenny Ledge", "Last Plane", "Salvador"....all great songs. The only thing I didn't like was their name- I always thought the name "Toy Matinee" did their band a disservice b/c I felt it lacked rock appeal. Anyway, I looked up the album on KZfaq recently, have been sharing it with my kids, and I'm falling in love with the album all over again. That's how I stumbled into this conversation. It's kind of heartbreaking that such talent was never recognized and so many people haven't had the opportunity to appreciate this masterpiece. I don't use that word lightly. It's a master-class production- from the guitar, to the keys, the dynamite bass pickups, and Kevin Gilbert's voice. And Toy Matinee owns the bridge:)

WLAV in Grand Rapids, MI played TM quite a bit. And I'm a proud owner of a first run, tape cassette. Years later some person saw the CD in my collection and asked where I got it, and he told me that Toy Matinee was pretty much a *tool* in the kit of sound check pros. That many pros found it the best sounding album.

Love Toy Matinee, Guy Pratt took me to them, but my defining album of the era is David & David's Welcome to the Boomtown, also a precursor to Tuesday Night Music Club.

Love Toy Matinee. I won their cassette in college (not the CD but the Cassette) in 1990. I played that tape a lot. I would eventually find the CD and still on a hunt for the European pressing from Germany (only country that pressed it to vinyl). I do have the MOV reissue. This album in some format is played at leadt once a day 3 or 4 tumes a week. I work at a record shop on the weekends and put this on and 75% of the time i hear, "who is this?" from people of alk ages.

I too am enamored with the Toy Matinee album (and really all of Kevin's work) down to a molecular level. A friend and fellow musician turned me onto Spock's Beard and I started following them and saw that he had worked on the Beware of Darkness album, so i knew the name. The next time I saw that friend he played me the Suit Fugue from The Shaming Of The True album and I was hooked, i had to have everything. I've always described the Toy Matinee album as a post-80s Steely Dan. It's like Aja in it's perfection and cleanliness, but after the decade of gloss and polish. It has all of the polish of an 80s album, but it's not overprocessed to the point of soundjng fake, something that would continue into 90s productions. The drums sound like real drums, but they're in HD. The guitars and bass are crisp and clean, not saturated in effects and even though they're nearly perfect, you still hear the performance and character of the players. And even though there's obviously some high IQ in the playing and writing, it never feels like posturing like, "look what we can do." It's the perfect bridge between the 80s and 90s, the missing link if you will. The 80s brought us all sorts of synths and sequencers, drum machines, big fake reverbs after the dry, dead sound of the 70s, but it eventually evolved from sounding artificial and taken too far to using those tools to sound hyper realistic. Snare drums went from sounding dull and flat, to sounding like a raquetball, to sounding like a high definition, technicolor high fidelity real snare drum.

I bought it immediately after I heard The Ballad of Jenny Ledge and have never gotten tired of it. I listen to it regularly (the whole album - not just Ballad of Jenny Ledge). It's not just an LA thing...

👌🏻

It ain't an "Only in LA" thing. I discovered it while I was in my early Dream Theater years, and living on the East coast. It's on my 6-year-old's playlist, he loves it too

Its not only an LA thing. Because of KG, its also a Bay Area thing. His previous band, Giraffe, was on regular rotation in local stations.

Kevin had a studio called the lawn mower shop? Like in the Genesis song me I'm just a lawn mower? I think Kevin was supposed to audition to be the lead singer for Genesis after Phil wanted out? Correct me if I'm wrong? Kevin was a genius like Peter Gabriel!

I discovered this album in a really odd way…I was a “neo-prog” fan in high school…Spock’s Beard, Porcupine Tree, Flower Kings, Transatlantic. That inevitably led to Kevin Gilbert *then* Toy Matinee. It’s the direct opposite of how most people would discover such music since Toy Matinee received more airplay than all of those bands combined. I was kindergartner on the east coast when this album was at its peak though…so that wasn’t gonna happen lol

It's not just a LA thing, I'm over hear in Tampa bay and have loved them since hearing "The last plane out", which was my first introduction to the band.

Search for the band Giraffe

Never mind the bollocks I wanna hear bout the Prime Movers!

Technically there was a follow up with 3rd Matinee. Patrick Leonard with Richard Paige. I personally thought that album was was nearly as stunning as Toy Matinee. TM was just so unique. But I thought 3rd Matinee was a worthy follow up.

Don't confuse the band with the touring band. Marc Bonilla and Russ Parrish had nothing to do with the album,. Also, TH was Pat Leonard's project. The album is songs were mostly co-written by Kevin, Pat, and Guy Pratt.

Who is the girl on the cover?

Sounds like Sheryl Crow……..lol

another 'old men shooting the breeze' post.

Don’t forget… the genesis of this album was Patrick Leonard. It was basically his solo record…. A gift from WB for the shitload of $$$ he’d made them as a composer/producer