Coming To A TV Near You

The Spinto Band
Metro, Chicago
Saturday, March 18, 2006

Schubas, Chicago
Sunday, March 19, 2006

Bad news for Nick Krill, Thomas Hughes, Jon Eaton, Jeff Hobson, Sam Hughes, Joe Hobson, and Albert Birney, also known as The Spinto Band, effective this fall the WB will be no more.

Wicked minded people, not because it’s the only way the young lads will get heard, but because they sing about the soon to be defunct television network on “Oh Mandy” a track off their eighth album, Nice And Nicely Done. And, what will happen in a few years when an audience member shouts “PLAY ‘OH MANDY’!” and they sing “blah blah blah WB” and the reference no longer makes sense because the letters W and B are now associated with World Bank or some other acronym-fitting phrase. Although, ironically enough, their infectious sound, which falls somewhere between an upbeat The Cure and a younger, more poppy Franz Ferdinand, is very apropos for say a television series about good-looking twentysomething-year-old high school students living in a fictitious town know as Tree Hill. In laymen’s terms, in addition to singing about the WB, Spinto is essentially the quintessential WB band.

This isn’t a mean spirited, lack of respect, jab toward the guys, all of whom are in the soon to be CW’s (apparently the letter combination which results from the merging of the letters W-B and U-P-N? yeah, I’m confused too) target, younger-than-25 year old, demographic, because the television executives at the network seem to have their fingers on the pulse of “the next big thing.” Fall Out Boy and The All-American Rejects are only two of the bands whose songs have appeared on the WB series “One Tree Hill” and they are experiencing especially heavy rotation on both MTV and top 40 radio.

So what does all of this say about the boys who will be opening for Arctic Monkeys on March 18th at the Metro and will then be playing with The Guillemots the next night at Schubas? Catch them now in an intimate setting before they serenade Dawson and Joey, play MTV’s New Year’s Eve show, and start dating Ashley Simpson, resulting in arena shows and only arena shows for the fellas.

— Angie Maldonado

Click here to download “Brown Boxes.”

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly