Musical Musings: Five of the Best - Toad the Wet Sprocket

For this edition, Ken Cheshire champions a band whose ridiculous name (lifted from a Monty Python sketch Eric Idle designed to be “so silly nobody would ever use it”) has always undersold the quiet brilliance underneath. High-school friends from Santa Barbara — Glen Phillips, Todd Nichols, Dean Dinning and Randy Guss — they made warm, jangly, thoughtful alt-rock that could land a knockout blow by…