The first thing you notice upon seeing Spider Bags on stage is how damn young working class hero lead singer Dan McGee looks, his beard gone he appears to have dropped a decade, and with a slim athletic build that has lost the brick house look of the manual laborer McGee used to be, he could be 25 years old not a decade older.
Dan is leading drummer Rock Forbes and bassist Steve Oliva through a blistering 30 minute set performing much of 2012;s best album, Shake My Head and an early set "Quel Viva El Rocanroll off their second album and post-Head "Papa Was A Shithead", Much like one of their songs, they are a little too tight, with no setlist they communicate with heads and whispers but there is nothing stoic or self-satisfied, nothing satiric or meaningless, the humor is in the language and the attitude and the pure business of rock and roll. But the lack of sloppiness make em feel like a professional hit job at times. They play half an hour and they leave, even when Dan speak to the audience the feedback makes him inaudible and the set itself less builds and more glides to a series of licks as jams.
It takes a couple of songs for the band to hit on all cylinders but by "Friday Night" they've reached where they are going, with McGee's drawled out "oh yeah" a wonder and a the bridge cum lick jammed right up against the guitar. As a later "I'll Go Crazy" the band are very at home with collective grooves and the bassist moves from bottom to top, playing off the drums and playing off the guitar.
Dan is a good singer, he works his voice into little arrows pushing ideas that sound like aphorisms and stories that are like, well, they are like Dan McGee stories, who since his punk rock DC Snipers days at the turn of the century has been able to rattle off a story. Tonight his stories turned into mantras, the closing "Daymare" starts like a country romp but ends like a hypnotized psychedelic ego cremation, "I wish I was never alive".
But when not self-immolating the band burned us up, Spider Bags sweat while being a pure cultish cool, they are hipper than hell while desperately denying hipness and on stage they give it everything they've got while seeming to retain a little in the gas. The set is great but the evening is wrong, they should have cut the middle band, Lazy Eyes, a young Purity Of Being Young At Heart melodic rock band, and gone from surfers gone to see Gross Ghost to Spider Bags and Spider Bags should have played an hour. I am all for short sets but this was too short. It was just settling in when it was over. All three members of the band are miles away from the fast loud mode, Dan plays a mean bottle neck and Rock, who is a really nice guy, has heavy and nimble hands.
On stage the band is what a rock band is, with great song after great song they give us a familial band dynamic though Gregg Levy is nowhere to be seen, the band throttles forward before working out on the lick, both bass and guitar jamming together. It's the thrill of both the old and the new. I realize not everybody loves rock and roll and I am more likely not than to listen to rock myself, but if you can't get behind Spider Bags it is pop music you don't love. The POV of SP on stage is essentially dance be entertained, there is no "Teenage Eyes" or "Waking Up Drunk", not until the end do they unfurl their country flag and the heart of the matter remains the heart of the matter: the strength of shared joys and horrors and how a clever melodic trick and a smart line of platter can save your life. Yeah, you're thinking the Replacements and so am I, except the Replacements had at least the cultishness of cult. Spider Bags feels like a cult band whose cult hasn't found em yet. How could Shake My Head not break pop, or at least nationwide rock? Spider Bags a regional band? Get the fuck outta here.
All three band albums testify to rocks ability to not heal but shed light on the human condition while leaving you to dance away the ramifications. On stage Spider Bags did it with ease, but they needed more to fill in the picture. After the show I introduce myself to Dan (I'd interviewed him over the phone last summer) , "You look exactly like I thought you would", Dan claims and since I was half dead with cold I wasn't very flattered. As for Dan? He isn't too tall and he isn't too short.
Grade: A-