The K.G.B. - Japan

Japan

Success in these venues led to a purported trip to Japan, apparently sponsored by a package tour showcasing young American rock and pop acts.

"The Japanese loved us," Toby boasts. "We had an amazing time, even destroyed some hotel rooms. That's also where we developed a very serious sushi fetish; in the studio, we had to eat sushi four or five times a week." Tom alleges: "We opened for The Knack in Osaka - at Budokan." Toby ups the ante: "And we met Yoko Ono. We were playing one night and she jumped onstage, grabbed a mic and just started shrieking. We were playing 'Goodbye Girl' and the show suddenly turned into an avant-garde noise jam."

Back home, The K.G.B. served as test subjects for students at a local engineering college in exchange for free studio time. "It sucked", Toby declares. "You'd sit there for, like, six hours while some instructor explained what all the buttons did; then you'd get an hour to do as much recording as you could. I'd do all my vocal takes in a row. I wouldn't even break between songs."

Not surprisingly, he describes their first demos as "total crap", pointing out, "I sound like a castrated 10-year-old girl." Still, these tapes piqued the curiosity of the local music industry. Folks at San Francisco's influential Live 105 caught on, as did a handful of managers, including EGM's Eric Godtland and Dusty Sorenson, who also handle Third Eye Blind (with whom The K.G.B. have since toured) Comments Godtland: "Their songs were brilliant, but the guys were still finding their vocabulary. They were devouring music: The Police, Led Zeppelin, Squeeze, Stax. They ransacked my huge vinyl collection. For two years, it was like a music school - they absorbed everything, practiced for eight hours a day and wrote like crazy."

EGM connected the band with producer Michael Urbano (who has played drums for Cracker and served as a sideman for John Hiatt). He also helped foster The K.G.B.'s development from high school garage bashers to eclectic, melodic musicians. Urbano schooled them in the work of James Brown and the classic Motown artists, significantly augmenting their understanding of grooveology.

Toby says of the experience: "Michael taught the horns to listen to the vocals and the bass to listen to the kick drum - all the little things you naturally pick up from playing in bands for 10 years. We learned more in three months with Michael than we had the entire time we'd been a band. We started listening to more soul music and straight-up rock and realized we could apply all that to our sound, which was great because playing reggae-influenced stuff had just gotten old. Our songs became more fluid and expansive; you could play them a lot of different ways and they still sounded cool."