this is from the dallas newspaper, The
Dallas Morning News, its a review for their new year's eve show they did here
in dallas in 1995. 

The Dallas Morning News: Tuesday, January 2, 1996  page 19A
Headline: Leaping In
Toadies start off new year with hopping good show
by Thor Christensen

     Chinese calenders say 1995 was the Year of the Pig. For local rock fans,
it was more like the the Year of the Toad.
     In 1995, Fort Worth's Toadies sold more than a half-million copies of
their Rubberneck album and scored an unlikely national radio hit with a song
about a psycho killer, Possum Kingdom: Thanks to the quartet, 1995 was the
year hard rock threw its spandex pants in the Dumpster and acquired cool new
threads.  
     So it was only fitting the band ended its triumphant year onstage Sunday
night before 2,700 sweaty fans at a stuffed-to-the-gills Bomb Factory. The
four-hour concert also featured three other promising local bands: Hagfish,
Brutal Juice, and Baboon. But the masses had clearly come to see the show's
headliner: Fans began chanting, "TOAD-IES! TOAD-IES!" when Hagfish had barely
unplugged its guitars.
     The Toadies hit the stage at midnight, blazed for 65 minutes and said
goodbye. Fans who were hungry for more began booing, prompting bassist Lisa
Umbarger to come back onstage to apologize: Singer Todd Lewis was sick with
the flu, she said, hence the lack of encores.
     Ailing or not, the Toadies more than lived up to their rep as a great
live band. Ms. Umbarger thrashed her head violently and sliced her guitar
neck through the air like Henry Aaron swinging a bat. Mr. Lewis was more
sedate, but he too seemed on the verge of going ballistic: With his
short-cropped hair, plaid shirt and spectacles, he was rock's answer to
Michael Douglas in Falling Down.
     The lyrics oozed dark tension: Sinners turned their back on salvation.
Love disolved into hate and murder. And as Mr. Lewis sang "you are my
sunshine," guitarist Darrel Herbert darkened the skies with a harrowing
death-metal riff.
     The audience didn't always agree on how to react. When Mr. Lewis
uncorked his blood-curdling cry of "Do you wanna die?" in Possum Kingdom,
some fans began moshing violently while others stripped off their bras and
tossed them onstage.
     Either response was OK, since the Toadies thrive on ambiguity: They can
reach down your throat and rip out your rib cage, as they proved Sunday night
with the menacing Backslider. But they're equally at home singing cheerful
cartoon theme songs such as Goolie Get-Together.
     Hagfish, who preceded the Toadies, didn't conquer any new musical
ground. Their debt to the Ramones was a bit too obvious - especially George
Reagan's Joey Ramone-like vocal delivery.
     But the band was still a blast to watch. Drummer Tony Barsotti managed
to put on a synchronized stick-tossing display between his kinetic
skin-pounding, and guitarist Zach Blair - Dallas' answer to AC/DC's Angus
Young - mugged up a storm and did the frug in his boxer shorts.