Supagroup

The magic of music, once you’ve gotten past marveling at the confluence of lyrics, composition and skill, or in some cases the incredibly skill-less yet somehow perfect style à la Sex Pistols and Stooges, is ultimately just that inexplicable sensation, devoid of intellectualization, that courses through the body like electric pulses overriding external influences and preconceptions. This may happen when you listen to your old Foreigner records, which you claim to only enjoy ironically, but the fact is those old songs about dirty white boys and jukebox heroes speak to your very chemical makeup and force you to eschew your conceits. No logical explanation exists for why one might feel an arbitrary sense that when Chris Lee, frontman for rock quartet Supagroup, declares “we’re from New Orleans and we came to kick your ass!”, some kind of truth has been spoken: an identifiable statement eliciting yells and screams of “Right on! Woooooo!”, hands upraised in the rock ‘n’ roll horns. The glaringly straightforward lyrics of “Rock and Roll Tried to Ruin My Life” (expand upon the title and you’ll get the idea), akin to an AC/DC tune like “Have a Drink On Me”, become poetry for the spleen and dares you to say anything critical. It may not be all that clever but it’s not trying to be. It just rocks, and that’s all Supagroup has come to do — in a very good way. Remember back to when you were 13 years old. Twenty minutes spent before the mirror trying on various different badass facial expressions you were sure made you look 17. The Mötley Crüe tee sported under the Levi’s jean jacket, hanging around the mall parking lot, smoking long cigarettes stolen from someone’s mom with your rad buddies or playing an Ozzy Ozbourne record backward, pretending to hear the devil message and living to tell about it. The feeling that you were getting away with some bad stuff necessitated a soundtrack and bands like Van Halen blasted from every radio to oblige. Even if you couldn’t always hear it, it was in your head, as if the songs had been written just for you and your pissed off little self. You really were running with the devil — whatever that meant. Supagroup steps in where all those bands left off 20 years ago and suddenly, as if no time had passed, I found myself at their live show which, to my retrospectively 13-year-old eyes and ears, was an ultimate thrill and the long overdue fulfillment of many ignored childhood whines. From Benji Lee’s Eddie Van Halen licks (guitar and tongue) in “One Better” to his brother Chris yelling “Everybody knows I totally fucked her” in “Hogwild”, it’s clear this band’s natural habitat is an arena filled with thousands of adoring fans — acid-washed everything topped with nests of Aquanetted hair. Likewise Michael Brueggen’s drum solo, not uninspired by John Bonham’s Moby Dick madness and a killer bass line, right out of ZZ Top’s “Waiting For the Bus” courtesy of Leif Robinson Swift — his ‘stache, mutton chops and cowboy hat making him look ever the lost member of Bad Company — demand a crowd roar to reciprocate, not the lame claps and scattered cheers made available in this small club. Other tunes included “I Need a Drink” and the down-tempo, as Chris Lee put it, “mandatory advice-from-the-band song” “Murder, Suicide, Death”. But alas, this type of music does not fill stadiums anymore. Commercial hip-hop, post-grunge and bubblegum pop dominate these venues nowadays — of course the latter has always been a seat filler: thank you Debbie Gibson. But through the tunnel of recycled things and retro cachet a small light is visible, it is called the Darkness: England’s newest answer to, well, every hard rock band from the ’70s. But as Supagroup’s Chris Lee said to me after the show, “we’ve got an edge on them ’cause we’re American.” Indeed. Why must we rely on England to either discover a band’s talent or to import it to us altogether? We need not do so anymore because Supagroup has arrived to kick our asses and I, for one, accept the beating whole-heartedly. This much fun (ironic or non — Supagroup is fully aware of both possibilities) and self-indulgent reminiscing is worth it. Taking something so potentially stale as early ’80s hard rock and penning brand-new tunes that fit seamlessly into the canon and manage to sound completely fresh and newly visceral seems certainly to be a challenge, but Supagroup rises to meet it. The show was crawling with industry talent scouts so hopefully these dudes will get signed to a big label and be appearing at a stadium near you. But should the arena rock of yore fail to resurface, Supagroup in the flesh is definitely still worth the small venue compromise.