Released: 1991
Tracks: What I Find; Scary Movies; Shiny Suit; Lolita; Jigsaw Man; White Elephants; Kokracha’s Homecoming; It’s Wrong; Drive; Strange; Silence is Toothpaste; Gone
Best track: It’s Wrong
Track to skip: yeaaaah right!
Excellence.
I am a huge Grumpy fan and when I found out that there was a ‘pre-Grumpy’ called Mongol Beach Party, I jumped all over it. I was originally given a tape with Lolita and Jigsaw Man on it and when I heard Jigsaw Man I just flipped: it was Grumpy! Well, Grumpy with an additional guy singing, but the rest of the band was the same. I acquired a tape of the full album and then a few years later I saw the actual CD itself for sale online so I snatched it. I was very excited.
You know why I was excited? It’s because this CD is damn good. Better than that, it’s excellent. The band (Christian Hankel-vocals, Jeff Freling-guitars/vocals, Billy Belzer-drums, Scott Easterday-bass, Mark Southerland-saxophone, and Kyle Dahlquist-trombone/coronet/French horn) came up with some top-notch material for this album. All the songs are great and absolutely full of energy. Like I said about their demo, they have a strong resemblance to Barenaked Ladies, but MBP grooves a lot harder and has a huge jazz influence that BNL don’t have. It’s hard to pick a ‘best track’ on here, but I’d say that It’s Wrong gets me going the most.
All the guys in the group are really great players and very creative. All they needed to become truly amazing was for Hankel to go solo and the bassist be replaced by one Thomas Montgomery, who actually mixed this for the band. And a name change to Grumpy. I’ve seen two copies of this CD online, so it’s not totally impossible to find, it just takes a lot of effort. And it’s so worth it, this album is fantastic.
Rating: 96
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Addendum – 12/23/08
I witnessed the reunion shows of the band this past weekend and I was blown away. Great news – Toast has been remastered with 5 bonus tracks. The remastering job is excellent and the album sounds even better. For information on getting this album (highly recommended) head to mongolbeachparty.com
May 3, 2008, 
7:02 pm
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