The K.G.B. - Toast Studios

Toast Studios

The K.G.B. then headed to San Francisco's Toast Studios, where the allure of a big facility with seemingly unlimited tracks proved more a stumbling block than a blessing. "Those demos were totally bloated," Toby admits. "We were romanced by all the gizmos at our disposal. We used every track on the board and then some. We hadn't figured out yet that we didn't need to do so much."

The Toast tapes were nonetheless adequate for a major-label shopping trip. Toby and Moses packed up their acoustics and made the rounds, playing stripped-down K.G.B. numbers for prospective A&R reps, but their activity proved fruitless.

The trip wasn't a complete wash, however. In New York, Toby and Tom (who'd flown out when Moses had to return to the Bay Area), found time to practice the rock star moves they'd flirted with in Japan. "We got sent to this really fancy Japanese place by one of the labels," Toby recalls. "We ate a ton of Kobe beef. Then, after the meal, we went back to our hotel and spent hours tossing glasses and pillows and CDs the labels had given us out our 19th-story window. We broke so much stuff. But then we heard a knock at the door, so we threw all our clothes off and got into our beds to pretend we were sleeping. The hotel manager just yelled, 'You're outta here!' So at 2:00 a.m. we were on the street in our underwear with all the stuff we'd thrown out the window."