The Pink Spiders
"Welcome to 2016," a friend at a neighboring urinal told The Spin in the Mercy Lounge men's room Saturday night, minutes before reunited Nashville power-pop-punk ambassadors The Pink Spiders appeared to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their major label debut Teenage Graffiti.
Indeed, the packed-out club felt like a veritable time machine to a bygone era. It was an era equal parts Old Nashville and old music industry, when Music City's most nakedly ambitious high-gloss-gutter-rockers sparked a hot-pink major label bidding war, rubbed elbows with rock heroes, jumped on tours of Warped nature and made a big-budget music video that made it onto MTV. Said times were perhaps best summed up by the archive Total Request Live segment on the band that played on a projection screen just before frontman Matt "Friction" Bell (now Mercy's general manager), Coke-bottle-bespectacled drummer Bob Ferrari and bassist Jon Decious, bolstered by former touring guitarist Dave Paulson and auxiliary keyboardist Raf Cevallos took the stage before a packed house of old friends and die-hard fans, many of whom travelled great distances to be there. ... And a little news item that's come across The Spin's wire means Saturday night wasn't the last chance they'll get to see the band.
But first, back to that TRL clip.
"Musically, they're kind of in a place where Ramones punk meets Weezer pop meets the swagger of the early Stones," an over-caffeinated John Norris tells the teenagers of America. "And visually they've got it down — lots of black and white and of course pink. Maybe THE most surprising thing about this band The Pink Spiders, though, is where they're from. They're not from New York or L.A. or Cleveland or Boston or Seattle or some other traditional hotbed of rock. No, these guys hail from the capital of country music. ..."
You see where this is going. Here, check it out for yourselves:
%{[ data-embed-type="oembed" data-embed-id="https://youtu.be/v3E4KZ0xRtA" data-embed-element="aside">And with that, for the first time since 2010, the Spiders in their original lineup — back from local-rock's great beyond years after a fall that was almost as rapid as their rise — hit the stage like black and white and, of course, pink-clad bulls bucking out of a chute. They opened what ended up being a confident multi-encore two-hour-and-ten-minute set (a perhaps unprecedented feat we didn't realize was possible for this band) with full performance of Graffiti, followed by an all-smiles run through tunes from their other records, 2005's Hot Pink and 2008's Sweat It Out. Spiders die-hards gleefully sang and clapped along to could've-been-hits like "Little Razorblade" and "Modern Swinger," while locals in the crowd seemed to forget the backlash that, when they "sold out" back in the day, made many a Nashvillian think that they were too cool to admit this band was good.
So charged was the excitement leading up to and following this gig, it's been a catalyst for the band going a few steps further and making a return to active-status.Today, via Facebook, the Spiders announced Mutations, their first LP in nine years, will land in the spring of 2017. They also posted what Bell says will "probably" be the cover art (below).
"I think we were pretty blown away by the reaction for the 10-year anniversary show and it kind of rekindled a little bit of the creative spark again," the singer tells the Scene. "I had a stash of half-finished ideas that I hadn’t been all that inspired to finish over the past few years since I had no outlet for them. I played some of them for Bob and he got really excited and that got me excited, and things started to really happen behind the scenes from there. Right now, we’re just trying to sort out the logistics of crowdsourcing the recording budget and figuring the details for the sessions this fall."
Now check out a grip of shit-hot pics from Saturday night's show.
The Pink SpidersSteve Cross
The Pink SpidersSteve Cross
The Pink SpidersSteve Cross
The Pink SpidersSteve Cross
The Pink SpidersSteve Cross
The Pink SpidersSteve Cross
Steve Cross
