Kevin Gilbert “Tired Old Man” first released

Tired Old Man Kevin Gilbert

Writer(s): Kevin Gilbert (see lyrics here) Recorded: 1986? Released: October 19, 2009 (on Nuts) First Charted: -- Peak: 1 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Singer/songwriter and musician Kevin Gilbert was born in 1966 in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. He started playing piano at four years old, studying classical piano. He said a hippy guitarist named Mike Scully heard Gilbert playing piano at church and brought him Genesis’ Fox Trot CH and that by age ten, he was into pop and progressive rock. RB-N Gilbert said he was terrible at reading music and would go buy the records, listen to them, and then play it for his piano teacher, convincing her he was reading the music. She eventually got frustrated with him and quit. SD He attended high school in San Mateo, California. He spent a lot of time at Sunnyvale’s Sensa Sound studio after hours. JS96 He ended up writing and recording the album No Reasons Given in 1984 under the name NRG before he’d graduated from high school. The album wouldn’t be widely available until he’d made a bigger name for himself and it was offered at KevinGilbert.com. From 1984 to 1987, Gilbert continued to record more music although it wasn’t getting him an audience. In 2021, his estate released the box set Call Me Kai, which gathered recordings from the era. One disc, called Sometimes Why, assembled songs recorded by Gilbert in 1986. It included a four-part version of “Tired Old Man,” a song which had circulated as a bootleg for years amongst Gilbert’s fans, and had been first officially released on the archival set Nuts in 2009. The song is a beautiful take on the tale of Pinocchio through Gepetto’s eyes. It serves as one of the best arguments there is that Gilbert was an overlooked genius. He would go on to tour as a keyboardist with Eddie Money and release two albums with Giraffe in the late ‘80s. and collaborate with Patrick Leonard (a producer who worked for Michael Jackson and Madonna) in Toy Matinee in 1990. He was part of a collective known as the Tuesday Night Music Club which lifted Sheryl Crow to fame. He released his first solo album in 1995 and was working on the next one when he died in 1996 at the age of 29. He never did become a household name, but he left an enviable body of work more than worth exploring. Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Kevin Gilbert RB-N Richard Buskin (2002). No Fool to This Game. Billboard Books: New York. Pages 58 and 64. SD Sibyl Darter (12/88: Vol. 4, No. 12). AfterTouch – The Official Publication of the Yamaha Users Group CH Christine Holz, co-editor (11/94 – 1/95). “Toying with Kevin Gilbert.” Music News Network. TheDebster.com JS96 Joel Selvin (9/15/96). San Francisco Chronicle “More Than ‘The Piano Player’ – Dumped by Sheryl Crow after propelling her to success, brilliant musician Kevin Gilbert died before finding his own” Related Links: First posted 10/8/2022.

Kevin Gilbert “Song for a Dead Friend” released

Song for a Dead Friend Kevin Gilbert

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“There Was a Little Boy” released as album cut on Toy Matinee

There Was a Little Boy Toy Matinee

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Toy Matinee released self-titled debut

Toy Matinee Toy Matinee

Released: June 28, 1990 Peak: 129 US, 13 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Genre: adult alternative/neo-progressive rock

Tracks: Click on a song titled for more details. Last Plane Out [5:13] Turn It on Salvador [4:54] Things She Said [4:57] Remember My Name [5:18] The Toy Matinee [5:02] Queen of Misery [4:31] The Ballad of Jenny Ledge [5:50] There Was a Little Boy [5:35] We Always Come Home [4:29] Total Running Time: 45:44 The Players: Kevin Gilbert (vocals, guitar, keyboards) Patrick Leonard (keyboards, backing vocals) Brian MacLeod (drums, percussion) Tim Pierce (guitar) Guy Pratt (bass)

Rating: 3.844 out of 5.00 (average of 12 ratings) Quotable: A “marvelous hour or so of progressive pop music” – Duke Egbert, Daily Vault Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album They only had one album, but it “is a gem of progressive pop and worth digging for.” DE Keyboardist, producer, and composer Patrick Leonard worked with Madonna on her True Blue through I’m Breathless albums. He approached bassist Guy Pratt, who he met while working on Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach,” WK about forming a band. They added drummer Brian MacLeod of Wire Train, guitarist Tim Pierce, and singer, lyricist and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Gilbert, who’d released two albums with the band Giraffe. Despite the others’ contributions, Toy Matinee was promoted as a duo of Gilbert and Leonard. They crafted “polished and carefully arranged pop/rock ditties.” JV Their “clever, intelligent, rich pop music” DE ran the “gamut…from dance to rock to ballad to almost-blues.” DE “All in all, …Toy Matinee…offers thoughtfully constructed and exceptionally played pop/rock songs alongside a number of slightly derivative songs that have a bit too much of that teased-out 1990s hair band aura.” JV However, with its “marvelous hour or so of progressive pop music, Toy Matinee is a definite winner.” DE The group was short-lived. Pratt, who was engaged to the daughter of Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright, had a commitment to tour with that band. Leonard wasn’t interested in touring. MacLeod and Pierce moved on to other session work. Only Gibert remained, working desperately to promote the album with a newly assembled band which included guitar Marc Bonilla, bassist Spencer Campbell, drummer Toss Panos, and then-girlfriend Sheryl Crow on keyboards. No more studio efforts from Toy Matinee were released, but in 2010, Live at the Roxy was released. Gilbert and Bottrell went on to work with Sheryl Crow on her Tuesday Night Music album and Leonard formed another one-time band, Third Matinee, with Mr. Mister frontman Richard Page. Gilbert’s death in 1996 ended any chance of another Toy Matinee album. Special Edition A rereleased Special Edition of the album included demos of “Things She Said,” “There Was a Little Boy,” “Last Plane Out,” unreleased “Blank Page,” and the odd thirty-second “Eenitam Yot Eht” (“The Toy Matinee” backwards). The Songs Here’s a breakdown of each of the individual songs.

Last Plane Out Toy Matinee

Writer(s): Kevin Gilbert, Patrick Leonard, Guy Pratt Released: promo single (9/22/1990), Toy Matinee (6/28/1990), Toy Matinee Acoustic (acoustic recordings, 1990-91), Live at the Roxy (live, recorded 5/1/1991) Peak: 23 AR, 5 DF Click for codes to charts. About the Song: The album “starts with the layered vocals of Last Plane Out, a powerful anthem about the world and its downhill path.” DE “Like most of the band's songs, [it is] characterized by diatonic vocal harmonies, a tight rhythm section, blues guitar riffs, and a hook-heavy chorus.” JV The song grew out of Pratt’s long-time fascination with “the idea of the last flight out of a war zone.” WK

Turn It on Salvador Toy Matinee

Writer(s): Kevin Gilbert, Patrick Leonard, Guy Pratt Released: Toy Matinee (6/28/1990), Toy Matinee Acoustic (acoustic recordings, 1990-91), Live at the Roxy (live, recorded 5/1/1991) Peak: 18 DF Click for codes to charts. About the Song: “With Turn It on Salvador, a song dedicated to Salvador Dali and immersed in appropriately surreal lyrics, Julian Lennon chimes in with backing vocals in a section that sounds particularly Beatlesque. Sal's Clarinet Trio — Jon Clarke, Jon Kip, and Donald Markese — closes [the song] with a swinging melodic phrase that compliments Leonard's concordant piano passages.” JV

Things She Said Toy Matinee

Writer(s): Kevin Gilbert, Patrick Leonard, Guy Pratt Released: Toy Matinee (6/28/1990), Toy Matinee Acoustic (acoustic recordings, 1990-91), Live at the Roxy (live, recorded 5/1/1991) Peak: 23 DF Click for codes to charts. About the Song: “Things She Said” is a song about obsession. DE

Remember My Name Toy Matinee

Writer(s): Kevin Gilbert, Bill Bottrell, Patrick Leonard Released: Toy Matinee (6/28/1990), Toy Matinee Acoustic (acoustic recordings, 1990-91), Live at the Roxy (live, recorded 5/1/1991) Peak: 18 DF Click for codes to charts.

The Toy Matinee Toy Matinee

Writer(s): Kevin Gilbert, Patrick Leonard, Guy Pratt Released: Toy Matinee (6/28/1990), Live at the Roxy (live, recorded 5/1/1991) Peak: 15 DF Click for codes to charts. About the Song: “The band's songs are mostly unique, though shades of a Pink Floyd ballad can be heard at the beginning of the” JV “wistful” DE title track.

Queen of Misery Toy Matinee

Writer(s): Kevin Gilbert, Patrick Leonard Released: Toy Matinee (6/28/1990), Live at the Roxy (live, recorded 5/1/1991) Peak: 18 DF Click for codes to charts. About the Song: “Queen of Misery” was about Madonna, with whom Leonard, Pratt, and the album’s producer, Bill Bottrell, had worked. WK

The Ballad of Jenny Ledge Toy Matinee

Writer(s): Kevin Gilbert, Patrick Leonard Released: promo single (1/19/1991), Toy Matinee (6/28/1990), Toy Matinee Acoustic (acoustic recordings, 1990-91), Live at the Roxy (live, recorded 5/1/1991), Live at the Troubadour (live, recorded 6/1/1995), Bolts (archives: 1984-96, released 2009) Peak: 23 AR, 7 DF Click for codes to charts. About the Song: “Steely Dan-sounding chord progressions are undeniably present on…The Ballad of Jenny Ledge.” JV

There Was a Little Boy Toy Matinee

Writer(s): Kevin Gilbert, Patick Leonard Released: Toy Matinee (6/28/1990), Toy Matinee Acoustic (acoustic recordings, 1990-91), Live at the Roxy (live, recorded 5/1/1991) Peak: 1 DF Click for codes to charts.

Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Song: Toy Matinee became that rare album where I eventually embraced every cut. The song that stood out the most, though, was “There Was a Little Boy.” It tackled the subject of child abuse, a topic recently traversed by other 1990 hits like Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun” and Madonna’s “Oh Father.” “There Was a Little Boy” took the perspective of a nine-year-old boy whose new stepfather “waits around to play with sister / But he plays too serious, he plays too rough.” As an adult, he finds himself “questioning his once upon a time” as he tries to deal with the long-term effects of abuse. Gilbert sings, “This boy was once a strong man, but getting weaker / He carries more than just the shame inside.” The song matched the lyrical heft with its instrumental. An incessant beat demands the listener to crank up the sound and break into some serious air drumming. Gilbert amps up the volume himself when he gets to the chorus. While I’m fortunate to have never endured abuse myself, my heart goes out to those who have. Kudos to Leonard or Gilbert for crafting a song which I suspect is a very personal message from one of them to anyone else who has been abused.

We Always Come Home Toy Matinee

Writer(s): Patrick Leonard Released: Toy Matinee (6/28/1990), Live at the Roxy (live, recorded 5/1/1991) Peak: 18 DF Click for codes to charts. About the Song: “We Always Come Home” is a “hauntingly sweet ballad.” DE

Resources/References: DE Duke Egbert, Daily Vault JV John Vallier, AllMusic.com WK Wikipedia Related DMDB Pages: First posted 2/15/2008; last updated 8/29/2025.

Madonna “Oh Father” released

Oh Father Madonna

Writer(s): Madonna, Patrick Leonard (see lyrics here) Released: October 24, 1989 First Charted: November 4, 1989 Peak: 20 US, 15 CB, 18 RR, 16 UK, 14 CN, 59 AU, 1 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 9.3 video, -- streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Madonna was only five years old when her mother died from breast cancer. That left her father to raise four kids on his own. Two years later, he married the housekeeper and had two more children. The song “Oh Father” deals with Madonna’s feelings of loss regarding her mother and anger toward her father. The song and its accompanying video (which Rolling Stone named one of the top 100 videos of all time) suggests Madonna may have been physically abused, although she has never confirmed that. She has said that “her father was a disciplinarian and her stepmother was hard on her.” WK In the book Madonna: Like an Icon, author Lucy O’Brien says the song is more about the emotional neglect Madonna experienced when her grief-ridden father wasn’t able to be there for her. WK Madonna has also said the song is about “me dealing with all authority figures in my life” SF and coming to terms with all the men in her life who had hurt her. SF Patrick Leonard, who produced and co-wrote many of Madonna’s late ‘80s hits, said, “My favorite thing that we ever recorded…is ‘Oh Father’…because we knew when we did it that there was something about this that was in a way kind of the most ‘real’ thing.” WK He created the basic melody outline and different chord progressions and she wrote lyrics to fit the melody. From a chart standpoint, this song ended Madonna’s streak of 16 consecutive top-5 singles and 17 consecutive top10 singles in the United States when it peaked at #20. On a personal note, however, this is my favorite song by Madonna. All Music Guide’s Stewart Mason called it “one of the most personal songs Madonna has ever performed and arguably her finest ballad performance ever.” AMG In Madonna: The Complete Guide to Her Music, Rikky Rooksby says the song “was the most compassionate and generous moment in Madonna’s musical career.” WK Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Madonna AMG All Music Guide review by Stewart Mason SF Songfacts WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 8/22/2022.

Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” hit #1

Like a Prayer Madonna

Writer(s): Patrick Leonard, Madonna (see lyrics here) Released: February 27, 1989 First Charted: March 10, 1989 Peak: 13 US, 13 CB, 13 GR, 13 RR, 3 AC, 20, RB, 134 CN, 14 AU (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 2.1 US, 0.85 UK, 5.0 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): 1.0 radio, 356.87 video, 335.13 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Madonna’s return to the Billboard Hot 100 charts after a nearly year-and-a-half absence was marked by her third collaboration on a #1 song with Patrick Leonard. He had also worked on her hits “Live to Tell” and “Who’s That Girl?” He remembers “Like a Prayer” initially having bongos and Latin percussion. They abandoned that and went with a gospel sound with church organ and a choir led by Andraé Crouch instead. He also recalls that “it was written and the lead vocal was recorded within three hours.” FB Madonna saw her career at a plateau. Her “shocking sex themes…and the ditzy dancefloor stuff…were becoming outmoded.” TB She needed something more “intellectually satisfying” TB and came up with a song that “probes deeply into the lines intersecting sex and religion, and she gives it one of her most fervent performances.” SS The song thematically focused on a girl’s love of God as the only male figure in her life. WK In a biography by Mary Cross, she says “the song is a mix of the sacred and the profane…[that] still sounds catchy and danceable.” WK Author Toby Creswell called it “a beautifully crafted devotional song in the guise of perfect pop.” TC Medium’s Richard LaBeau called it “one of the…best pop songs ever made.” WK Still, the song’s mix of sex and religion raised eyebrows for some. For example, in the first verse she sings, “When you call my name/ It’s like a little prayer/ I’m down on my knees/ I wana take you there.” Leonard suggested changing the words so it didn’t sound like a reference to fellatio, but Madonna was determined to keep the double entendres intact. WK The video proved controversial as well. Madonna signed a $5 million deal with Pepsi and used a commercial during the Grammys – which Pepsi said was seen by 250 million people – to launch the song. SF However, the Vatican condemned the “Like a Prayer” video and fundamentalists threatened to boycott Pepsi because of what they considered blasphemous images. FB Pepsi ended up pulling the spot. The video, which included images of burning crosses and Madonna kissing a black saint, portrayed a forbidden interracial love affair and was steeped in religious symbolism. The video won the Viewers’ Choice MTV Video Music Award and in 2005 was voted the most groundbreaking music video of all time. WK The song was the top-seller of the year in Australia and Canada. WK It hit #1 in those countries as well as the United States, the UK, Japan, Belgium, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. WK Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Madonna FB Fred Bronson (2007). The Billboard Book of Number One Hits (4th edition). Billboard Books: New York, NY. Page 840. RC Rod Couch (2015). The Top 500 Songs of the Rock Era: 1955-2015. Pages 517-8. TC Toby Creswell (2005). 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. Thunder’s Mouth Press: New York, NY. Page 187. SF Songfacts SS Steve Sullivan (2013). Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings (Volumes I & II). Scarecrow Press: Lanham, Maryland. Pages 502-3. TB Thunder Bay Press (2006). Singles: Six Decades of Hot Hits & Classic Cuts. Outline Press Ltd.: San Diego, CA. Page 235. WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 11/1/2019; last updated 5/1/2024.