Mean Red Spiders

Mean Red Spiders

Mean Red Spiders is a Canadian avant-pop alternative rock band formed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in September 1993. Mean Red Spiders' music is largely guitar-based, and influenced by psychedelic music. Stage shows were lit with projected layers of screen images with liquid light techniques. Their music makes extensive use of distortion, digital keyboard loops, recorded voice samples, and effects pedals, creating a repeatable orchestrated wall of Sound style with vocals, considered by some reviewers to fit into the shoegaze, or dreampop genres, or described as being space rock.

The band is not to be confused with the earlier British R&B outfit of the same name (1985-1993) who issued two albums, 'Nude Guitarist in Wet Lettuce Frenzy' (1987) and 'Dark Hours' (1991), the punk rock band made up of members of The Chesterfield Kings, or the UK outfit currently performing under the same name.

Career

Co-founding member David Humphreys (guitar/vocals), played his last show July 13, 2001. Humphreys on to form a band Terrible Workers whose 2006 release "Asleep and Dreaming" is an Avant-psychedelic intertuptation of schizophrenia, and features the first known virtual auditority hallucinations made by someone diagnosed with schizophrenia. Following Humphreys's departure, Rob Boak (of Interstellar) joined, contributing three songs to Still Life Fast Moving and touring with the band in 2002. Boak left the band early in 2003 and Dave Rodgers (of Neck/Christiana) joined. Humphreys rejoined MRS in 2007. Mean Red Spiders continue to record and release material, while indulging themselves in Ghostlight free-form improvisational collective featuring members of Mean Red Spiders, along with James Anderson and Scott Cameron, all friends from Toronto's musical community.

Band members

At the time of the release of their January 2003 album, Still Life Fast Moving, Mean Red Spiders personnel were:

• Adam Rosen - drums (of 122 Greige)
• Rob Boak - guitar
• Minesh Mandoda - keyboards, guitars, loops (of Parts Unknown)
• Lisa Nighswander - bass guitar and lead vocalist
• Greg Chambers - guitar

Other musicians that have been in MRS include:

• Don Goldrick - Drums (named the band in 1994)
• Nick Andrews - Bass/vocals (of Ottawa's Restless Virgins)
• Paul Boddum - Drums (of Neck/Christiana)
• Martin (vocals on El Diabolo's Devo cover Mongoloid)
• Serge (original lead vocalist)
• Leanne Davies - Drums (of Amor de Cosmos/Mason Hornet)
• Jim Bravo - Drums (of Jim Bravo & the Beetoven Frieze)

Discography

• El Diabolo- May 1995
• Places You Call Home - May 1998 - Teenage USA
• Stars and Sons - May 2000 - Teenage USA
• Still Life, Fast Moving - March 2003 - Clairecords

• Dave Newfeld co-produced Places You Call Home with Mean Red Spiders from 1997-1998 in the basement of his then shared Forest Hill home, and produced Stars and Sons from 1999-2000 at Stars and Sons studio located in Chinatown Toronto.
• Jeff McMurrich recorded and co-produced Still Life Fast Moving in his old studio at Dupont & Spadina and in the band's Pod Studio.
• Al Forte (of Groundcover) recorded the bass and drum tracks for Places You Call Home in 1996.

External links

• Mean Red Spiders at MySpace
• New Music Canada: Mean Red Spiders profile, accessed 19 July 2006
• [2] Terrible Workers at My space