Spider Problem @ Juanita's (Highland Park)

Comment of the night: You all look like you’re at summer camp. Are you all about to sing a camp song?

Response: Yes, we’re about to sing Kum Ba Yah.

Here’s a summer camp song for you all if that exchange makes you yearn for your summer camp days:

Late one night, when we were all in bed,
Mrs. O’Leary lit a lantern in the shed.
Her cow kicked it over,
Then winked her eye and said,
“There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!”
Fire! Fire! Fire!
Save my child! Save my child!
Jump baby jump!

This was one of those nights when a significant minority of the people knew each other. The summer camp comment was made when an individual walked out and saw close to 20 friends hanging around the fire pit.

Spider Problem at Juanita’s. I’ve followed Spider Problem for a little over a year. I last saw them in December at Echo Curio. I caught up with them again at Juanita’s on a Friday night. The night started off with Spider Problem setting up there gear at a leisurely pace. If you’ve seen Spider Problem before you know this leisurely pace doesn’t last long. When they were ready, Shayne (lead singer) gave some praise to Juanita’s and then they went at it. Shayne immediately grabbed her microphone stand and took it for a quick tour around the front of the stage. The microphone stand soon found itself underneath the stage; abandoned, having served its duty as a microphone holder.

This band does love liquids. Shayne grabbed a beer and poured it over the guitar player, John. He then decided to do the same. This band also loves going crazy. Here’s an observation I have on the band. This band purposely goes for off balanced poses, hoping that they end up sprawled against each other. Notice the photo below and the untied shoelaces. And if, as Shayne goes roaming across the front of the stage and makes contact with someone in the audience, that person better be ready for some one on one slam dancing.

Just a note: They were having some equipment problems, which was most unfortunate. If I heard correctly, they needed to make some adjustments to their song list due to these issues.

Just another note: This band has gone through some band changes. The guitar and lead singer are still the same, but late last year they brought on a new drummer. This time, they had a new bassist, who was a fill-in (male bassist – I mention this for the following sentence). I read their myspace blog and it mentioned that they now have a female bassist. (I might suggest reading their myspace blog. There is a new blog every one or two weeks. It is an entertaining blog.)

Side note: How do I describe Spider Problem to friends? They’re a band verging on the psychotic. They’re the equivalent of screaming, waifish banshees. Like I mentioned on a blog I wrote on them last year, watching them is like watching the roller derby. They’ll leave you bruised and cheerful, if you let them.