Toiling Midgets is a

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

band from

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, California formed in 1979 by members of San Francisco punk bands Sleepers and

Negative Trend Negative Trend was an American punk rock band, active between 1977 and 1979. Before they disbanded, the band released one self-titled EP in September 1978.Charles Strong, Martin''The Great Indie Discography'': Negative Trend Canongate Books Ltd. ...

. They have been active on-and-off since 1979, with their early 1990s lineup getting most attention due to the involvement of

Mark Eitzel Mark Eitzel (born January 30, 1959) is an American musician, best known as a songwriter and lead singer of the San Francisco band American Music Club. Biography Eitzel spent his formative years in a military family living in Okinawa, Taiwan, Ohi ...

American Music Club American Music Club was an American, San Francisco-based indie rock band, led by singer-songwriter Mark Eitzel. Formed in 1983, the band released seven albums before splitting up in 1995. They reformed in 2003 and released two further albums. ...

. They reunited in 2007.

History

Toiling Midgets was formed in 1979 by drummer

Tim Mooney Tim Mooney (October 6, 1958 – June 13, 2012) was an American drummer, producer, and sound engineer. He drummed in the Sleepers, Toiling Midgets, Negative Trend, Sun Kil Moon and American Music Club. Musical career In the 1970s and 1980s, ...

, of The Sleepers and

, and guitarist Craig Gray also of the local San Francisco band

, guitarist Paul Hood from Seattle's

Punk Punk or punks may refer to: Genres, subculture, and related aspects * Punk rock, a music genre originating in the 1970s associated with various subgenres * Punk subculture, a subculture associated with punk rock, or aspects of the subculture s ...

bands Meyce and The Enemy, and bassist Nosmo King (aka Johnathan Henrickson).Warshaw, Aaron
Toiling Midgets Biography
,

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

. Retrieved December 23, 2018 Initially an instrumental band, they added former Sleepers and Flipper singer

Ricky Williams Errick Miron (born Errick Lynne Williams Jr.; May 21, 1977) is an American former football running back who played 11 seasons in the National Football League (NFL) and one season in the Canadian Football League (CFL). After playing baseball an ...

to its lineup in 1980. This lineup of the band recorded the first Toiling Midgets album, ''Sea of Unrest'', produced by Tom Mallon and released in 1982 by

Rough Trade Records Rough Trade Records is an independent record label based in London, England. It was formed in 1976 by Geoff Travis who had opened a record store off Ladbroke Grove. Having successfully promoted and sold records by punk rock and early post-pun ...

.Sprague, David
Toiling Midgets
, ''

Trouser Press ''Trouser Press'' was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow fan of the Who Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" (a reference to ...

''. Retrieved December 23, 2018 The album was described by Jordan N. Mamone in ''CMJ New Music Report'' as a "junkie-rock monument...beautiful, yet horribly-sick stuff".Mamone, Jordan N. (1999)
Toiling Midgets ''Sea of Unrest''
, ''

CMJ New Music Report CMJ Holdings Corp. is a music events and online media company, originally founded in 1978, which ran a website, hosted an annual festival in New York City, and published two magazines, ''CMJ New Music Monthly'' and ''CMJ New Music Report''. Th ...

'', April 5, 1999. Retrieved December 23, 2018 via

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

The album was included in Andrew Earles' 2014 book ''Gimme Indie Rock: 500 Essential American Underground Rock Albums 1981-1996''. Williams and King left the band, with Aaron Gregory (bass, ex-Maggots) and Annie Ungar (guitar, ex-

Gun Club The Gun Club were an American rock band from Los Angeles, California, United States, which existed from 1979 to 1996. It was formed and led by singer-songwriter and guitarist Jeffrey Lee Pierce. History Early days (1979–1980) The Gun Club w ...

) joining, this formation recording the instrumental ''Dead Beats'' album, released on

Joe Carducci Joe Carducci is an American writer, record producer, and former A&R executive, formerly most closely associated with the influential record label SST Records. Carducci lived for a time in Chicago before moving to Hollywood in 1976. From 1981 to 19 ...

's Thermidor label in 1985. After a few years on hiatus, in 1989 Hood, Gray and Mooney reunited, initially again as an instrumental band, with Joe Goldring on bass, but they recruited singer

(for whom Williams had been an influence) of the

in 1990.Body, Sean (1999) ''Wish the World Away: Mark Eitzel and the American Music Club'', SAF Publishing Ltd, , p. 45, 99Strong, Martin C. (2003) ''The Great Indie Discography'', Canongate, , p. 202 />The new group released the album ''SON'' on

Matador Records Matador Records is an independent record label, with a roster of mainly indie rock, but also punk rock, experimental rock, alternative rock, and electronic acts. History Matador was created in 1989 by Chris Lombardi in his New York City apart ...

in June 1991, by which time Eitzel had left the band. After touring in the summer of 1991 to support ''SON'' drummer Mooney and bassist Goldring left the band. Mooney went on to join the

, which Eitzel was still fronting, and Goldring later formed Touched by a Janitor and

Enablers Enablers are originally a post-punk band formed in San Francisco, California which features the poetry/spoken word of Pete Simonelli. The current members now exist on opposite sides of the American coasts-- most of the time. History In addition ...

. They were replaced by drummer and long-time producer Tom Mallon and bassist Erich Werner, formerly a member of Telepaths and

The Blackouts The Blackouts were a punk rock band formed in Seattle in 1979 by singer/guitarist Erich Werner, bassist Mike Davidson, and drummer Bill Rieflin, who were all former members of a local punk band, The Telepaths. They were joined by Roland Barker, f ...

. Williams returned to the band and recorded 6 songs as well as a show in the fall of 1992 but died on November 21, 1992, due to respiratory complications and a mixture of drug and alcohol abuse. Mallon, Werner, Gray, and Hood continued with keyboard player Mark Sullivan (Lucky, Motorcade) joining, and Paul Hood's sister, violist Joanna Hood (who had performed with the Loma Mar Quartet and

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...

) also joining briefly. The group went on an indefinite hiatus in 1997, but reformed in May, 2007 to play at Dirkfest, a June 7–June 8, 2007 festival taking place at Slim's and the

Great American Music Hall The Great American Music Hall is a concert hall in San Francisco, California. It is located on O'Farrell Street in the Tenderloin neighborhood on the same block as the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre. It is known for its decorative balconies ...

, respectively, honoring the late

Dirk Dirksen Dirk Dirksen (August 25, 1937 – November 20, 2006) was a music promoter and emcee of the San Francisco punk rock clubs Mabuhay Gardens and On Broadway in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Dirksen was nicknamed the "Pope of Punk." Dirksen was born i ...

and to play the

Haight-Ashbury Haight-Ashbury () is a district of San Francisco, California, named for the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets. It is also called The Haight and The Upper Haight. The neighborhood is known as one of the main centers of the counterculture ...

Street Fair (June 10, 2007). There was a short tour of the Northwest in November, 2009. A new LP was recorded in 2011 but remains unreleased. Tim Mooney died in June 2012. In 2013 Ektro Records released a live album ''Toiling Midgets Live at the Waldorf 1982''. Tom Mallon died in January 2014 after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. Ektro Records put out the career retrospective double LP ''A Smaller Life'' in 2015 and an accompanying cassette ''A Smaller Tape'' in 2017.A Smaller Tape
, Ektro Records In 2019 the Midgets toured Europe with Simon Bell on bass and vocals along with

Daniel Benjamin Daniel Benjamin (born October 16, 1961) is an American diplomat and journalist and was the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the United States Department of State from 2009 to 2012, appointed by Secretary Hillary Clinton. Benjamin was the direct ...

of SEA + AIR on drums. In Sept of 2019 the LP ''Sea of Tranquility'' was released on

Green Monkey Records Green Monkey Records is an underground record label started in Seattle, Washington (state), Washington, US. It was established by local musician Tom Dyer and was active from 1983 to 1991 and from 2009 to present, with sporadic releases in the inter ...

. Simon quit the band just after the LP release and was replaced by Kevin Kuhn from the band Die Nerven. The Toiling Midgets are in their most vital shape in decades. They released new EP in Summer 2022, and a full length LP record, including special guest musicians Chris Eckman (The Walkabouts), Kevin Kuhn (Die Nerven) and Chris Cacavas (Green On Red, The Dream Syndicate) and Eugene Robinson (Oxbow) and more is scheduled for 2023, alongside with European tour. Their latest line-up consists of 5 people living in 8 countries: an Italian bass player from Leipzig, Germany, a Czech singer & clarinet player from London, a German drummer from Thessaloniki, Greece who joined the two original members, Craig Gray from Vancouver, Canada and Paul Hood from Seattle, USA.

Members

Current

*Craig Gray - Guitar *Paul Hood - Guitar *Marco Zarmonta - Bass *Daniel Benjamin - Drums *Daniel Cerny - Vocals, Clarinet, Electronics

Former

*Tony Sales - Drums *Mark Sullivan - Keyboards *Erich Werner - Bass *Nosmo King - Bass *Tim Mooney - Drums (deceased) *

- Vocals (deceased) *Aaron Gregory - Bass (deceased) *Tom Mallon - Drums (deceased) *Annie Ungar - Guitar (deceased) *

- Vocals *Joe Goldring - Bass *Joanna Hood - Viola *David Ripley - Vocals *Carla Fabrizio - Cello on "Son" *Lisa Davis - Bass on "Son" *Simon Bell - Bass and Vocals *Kevin Kuhn - Bass and Vocals

Discography

Albums

;Studio: *''Sea of Unrest'' (1982),

Instant In physics and the philosophy of science, instant refers to an infinitesimal interval in time, whose passage is instantaneous. In ordinary speech, an instant has been defined as "a point or very short space of time," a notion deriving from its ety ...

/ Rough Trade USA – re-released in 1994 on Fistpuppet Records *''Dead Beats'', (1985), Thermidor *''Son'' (1992),

Matador A bullfighter (or matador) is a performer in the activity of bullfighting. ''Torero'' () or ''toureiro'' (), both from Latin ''taurarius'', are the Spanish and Portuguese words for bullfighter and describe all the performers in the activit ...

*''Sea of Tranquility'' (2019)

*''Three Things'' (2022) ;Compilations, demos, live, etc.: *''Four Track Mind (A Retrospective Of Home Recordings, 1980-1983'' (1983), Mogul Home Recording *''1982 vol. 1'' (2012) *''Live At The Old Waldorf, July 21, 1982'' (2012), Full Contact *''God's Man'' (2013), Toiling Midgets Media – a demo from 1989-90 recorded by Tom Mallon *''3rd Brain'' (2013) *''Mark Has Left The Building! - Live at the IBeam SF 91'' (2015) *''Do the Incendiary: 1980 Demos'' (2015) *''Deadbeats EP'' (2015) *''A Smaller Life'' (2015) *''A Smaller Tape'' (2017), Ruton Music

Singles

*"Golden Frog" 7" (1991), Matador *"Faux Pony" (1992),

Hut A hut is a small dwelling, which may be constructed of various local materials. Huts are a type of vernacular architecture because they are built of readily available materials such as wood, snow, ice, stone, grass, palm leaves, branches, hid ...

References

External links

*
Toiling Midgets
old Grifter Records site (archived) {{Authority control American instrumental musical groups American post-rock groups American post-hardcore musical groups Shoegazing musical groups American art rock groups Musical groups from San Francisco Musical groups established in 1979