The Spinto Band + The Bullet Parade + The Bikini Carwash Company

The Spinto Band is going to be famous — hugely, unstoppably famous – and there’s not a thing I can do about it. Of course, that’s not to say I would sabotage their steady rise. It’s just that my favorite band’s name is suddenly on the lips of far too many New York hipsters. And even if I were so perverse, it’s too late; the wheels are in motion. Thanks to write-ups in Entertainment Weekly and Spin, the inflated list of bands “they kind of sound like”, and an unnecessary remix of “Oh Mandy”, this rock-pop six-piece out of Wilmington, Delaware — 15 minutes from my backyard – is about to go big time. Their first professionally-released album on Bar/None Records, Nice and Nicely Done, is amazing — Album of the Millennium according to premier Spinto photographer Joe Moore. He said as much when we stood together outside the Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia before the first show of the the band’s East Coast summer tour. I’m not arguing, and the real critics seem to like it. But every time I read a review peppered with Pavement and Flaming Lips references — and by the way, Yo La Tengo is really reaching – or that Origins-of-Spinto anecdote concerning Uncle Roy and his Crackerjack boxes, my gut reaction is bitch. I never wanted to become one of those people who insists, “I liked them before you!” but there it is. The first time I saw the Spinto Band was during the Fall semester of 2003 at Penn State, in the basement of my friends’ house. With that kind of introduction it’s only natural that the twenty or thirty times I’ve seen them since have been more like social gatherings than concerts. There’s this great picture of my friends and I lined up in the front row, gazing awe-struck as a historic moment in music unfolds in front of us. It was my first glimpse of songs from the band’s exceptional Good Answer EP as well as their dead-on cover of “Just What I Needed” and the hilarious “Walk the Dinosaur/Where My Dogs At?” complete with choreography. Since then, whether coordinating a dress code to see them at Roustabout! in State College, making pilgrimages to New York’s Knitting Factory for free shows, or just sitting around the living room marveling at how fucking good guitarist Nick Krill’s original Co-Mandies version of “Oh Mandy” really is, my favorite memories of the last few years are inextricably tied to my best friends and the love we share for the Spinto Band. And so, this June I set out on the road with my fellow Spinto-Heads to chronicle the band’s first “real” East Coast tour — that is, the first promoted by a record label and having more stops at bars and clubs than basements — and to relish what would most likely be their last tour in obscurity. Bittersweet, that after nearly two years of wondering when and how it would happen, we were about to embark on what we’ll remember as, among other things, the America Meets the Spinto Band tour. As I said, I joined up with this traveling circus when it rolled into Philly’s TLA on Friday June 17. It’s a place where I’ve seen the likes of Ben Folds and Stephen Malkmus, so to witness the Spinto Band taking the same stage was quite the mindfuck. Not much different from pulling off the old 2-2-2-10 in Team Sorry!, if you catch my drift. But there would be plenty of time for board games later. For now, the Spintos were oddly sandwiched between pseudo-hippie pied pipers Young Samuel and Townhall. And since the majority of ticket holders appeared to be more interested in that scene, the crowd was sparse as the Spinto Band took the stage. Their sound, honed in the early weeks of summer, was lost in the TLA which seemed cavernous compared to the typical cramped venues they used to play. Despite the hollow acoustics, the performance was a solid introduction to what we would come to expect from the tour: a pretty standard setlist highlighting the band’s new studio album. We could count on “Mountains” as the opener almost every night, followed by some combination of newer songs “So Kind, Stacy”, “Brown Boxes”, “Crack the Whip”, “Direct to Helmet”, and “Oh Mandy” mixed with “Did I Tell You”, “Trust vs Mistrust” and “Late”, originally from Good Answer. The hidden track “Atari”… uh, I mean “Japan Is An Island”, is all but lost from their live show. And “Spy vs Spy” was their closer, an appropriate finale with its upbeat tempo and an ending that, like the lilt in your voice when you ask a question, leaves you wanting more. Routine, though this is to be expected. Any band with a new album is going to make it the focus of their live show, especially with this kind of praise (B+ in Entertainment Weekly!). And since Nice and Nicely Done is in fact awesome, it’s not like we minded. Besides, this was really just the warm-up anyway. While the Spintos banged through their set, flyers were distributed none-too-discreetly through the crowd announcing the after-party, i.e. the reason not to bother sticking around for Townhall. Actually, there were three: the Bikini Carwash Company, the Bullet Parade and, of course, more Spinto Band, all at a narrow bar in Fishtown called the Fire. The first thing I saw upon entering was a throng of Penn State students. And when the first band went on, it really felt like home. Hailing from Happy Valley, USA — or State College, Pennsylvania to the layperson — the Bullet Parade is easily the best original band from that town, and has hosted the Spinto Band several times at their weekly music showcase, Roustabout!. At the Fire, the uniform-dressed, psychedelic Brit-poppers were the guests, but set the tone with one of the tightest performances I’ve ever seen them give. They were followed by the Spinto Band’s tour partner the Bikini Carwash Company: seven guys, all quite handsome, six of which seemed oddly familiar. Inspired by Nada Surf, the Negatones, and Hawaiian pizza, Scott Weiner is the Bikini Carwash Company. He arranged and recorded the album Bicycle entirely on his own and plays nearly every instrument on it. Of course, such grand sound is difficult to reproduce as a solo performer. I’ve seen him try, about a year ago at the Fire in fact, playing acoustic guitar with a tambourine strapped to his foot. It still held up — simply because he’s such a talented songwriter and performer. But on this tour his friends in the Spinto Band were pulling double duty to back him up and the results were outstanding. Bursts of synth from keyboardist Sam Hughes — not to mention Joe Hobson manning the mighty glockenspiel — transformed “Your Guitar” into a sweeping epic, and the extra guitars and Jeff Hobson’s hard-hitting work on drums made the noise-pop anthem “Dinosaurs!” feel like a prehistoric mauling. I can’t wait to get my hands on a bootleg. Finally, the Spinto Band took to the stage yet again for the third and final time of the night. And if their performance at the TLA was routine, this was anything but. The last time the boys played the Fire was for a David Bowie tribute, and one of their selections was an unbelievable rendition of “Chilly Down” (fuckin’ ay!, the song from Labyrinth). They opened here with another great cover, perfectly suited to Thomas Hughes’s offbeat pop sensibility and singing voice: ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky”. Next came “Small Burg” from the self-titled 7″, probably their best old song that didn’t make it onto the new album, followed by “Puff Daddy Blowjob Movement”, their best old song that probably never had a shot. Then they launched into “Direct to Helmet”, with a roaring stop/start climax that halted on a dime. It’s a cream dream. They even threw in the rarely-seen “My Special Car” — break out your Pavement references — and “Road to Newark”, a driving song with plenty of mentions of local geography. It was a secret stash of hits that probably no other crowd would be treated to on this tour, and for that I considered myself rather privileged. I left the Fire feeling like a proud parent. So what if the Spinto Band’s fan base has become exponentially larger than the capacity of Bryan Farrell’s basement? The pair of shows that night was the perfect illustration of my conflicted feelings about the Spinto Band’s success, but the fact that I’d just had the time of my life proved that these thoughts could coexist. The set at the Fire — the entire lineup, in fact — might as well have been specifically for me and my friends. It reminded me that we still had something that couldn’t be touched. No matter how many new fans the Spinto Band picks up in the next couple weeks, months, whatever, no mix of words or even music can ever do justice to what it was like in our little corner of time and space, brought together by our favorite band. I went on to six more shows over the course of June and July (starting with the next day and the day after that) but that first night is my hands-down favorite. We said goodbye a few weeks later in Claymont, Delaware, the last stop before the Spinto Band caulked their wagon to cross the Mississippi and tour the West Coast. They make their triumphant return on September 2 to play the dance party Immediate! at Silk City in Philadelphia, and you should really go see them. Only don’t even think about requesting any old songs. Those are ours. Bitches.