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SUPAGROUP with The Rod Iron Haulers and Zappnin' Black Tuesday July 13 at Lucky Bar
| Message Board > Up n' Coming! (aka Shameless Promotion) > SUPAGROUP with The Rod Iron Haulers and Zappnin' Black Tuesday July 13 at Lucky Bar |
| Lucky Bar User Info... | An evening of rock n roll debauchery with local favorites Zappnin' Black and The Rod Iron Haulers. This is SUPAGROUP: Chris Lee - Vocals, Guitar Benji Lee - Guitar Leif Swift - Bass Michael Brueggen - Drums "We're SUPAGROUP from New Orleans, Louisiana and we're here to kick your ass." On Supagroup, the high-octane rocker�s first Foodchain Records release, frontman Chris Lee makes this announcement with his trademark blend of bravado and the bluff of a seasoned gambler. Whether he's joking or not, it's a promise made and kept. SUPAGROUP guitarist Benji Lee and Grammy Award-winner Trina Shoemaker produced the album in New Orleans last winter using the tried and true tools of the rock n� roll trade � guitars and lots of them. The result is as hard, sweet and satisfying as a shot of Jack Daniels neat, but much more enduring. SUPAGROUP�s self-titled national debut may just be coming out, but the band�s members are no rock n� roll rookies. When they released the acclaimed Rock & Roll Tried to Ruin My Life in 2001, SUPAGROUP hit the road with a who's who of American underground rock � Queens of the Stone Age, Supersuckers, Fu Manchu and Drive-By Truckers to name a few. One night at a time, one person at a time, they�ve been gaining fans the old-fashioned way � they earn them. "SUPAGROUP is everything a rock band should be,� praises the Hit List, while New York�s Mass Appeal reports that they are �the aural equivalent of losing your virginity at an AC/DC concert in heaven. On really, really good dope." "AC/DC is only the tip of the iceberg,� acclaims Athens� FLAGPOLE, adding �There are elements of the whiskey-bent-and-hell-bound fury of the Supersuckers and the sweaty, sloppy enthusiasm of MC5 in the mix.� �If Angus were still young and Axl still mighty as a rose, they�d be in this band,� proclaims the Austin American-Statesman. New Orleans� magazine OffBEAT offers major kudos, reporting that "only the Dictators have occupied such shifty territory as effectively, loving rock and simultaneously mocking it with their outsized affection for everything rock n� roll stands for." SUPAGROUP is led by half-Chinese brothers Chris and Benji Lee � Alaskans by birth, New Orleanians by choice, and mother fuckers by an act of God. Just don�t ask them about being distant relatives of Bruce Lee. Chris, the singing, lyric-writing Lee is the big brother, while Benji is the younger, bad-ass guitar-playing Lee. "You've gotta know the blues scale to play around me," Benji declares firmly. With a Gibson SG, Marshall amps, and no fear of the spotlight, he is working single-handedly to revive the guitar hero tradition. "People don't have traditions anymore," he says, "and they don't often understand rock n� roll. They rock, but they don't �ROCK N� ROLL.'� Real rock n� roll needs chops, craft, a sense of humor and heavy rhythm. The latter doesn't happen without a bass player, although countless bands today might think otherwise. Those bands would all benefit from having a Leif Swift, who joined when an earlier, �crappy� bass player was fired. "I'd seen the band before," he says, "and I knew right off those guys were going somewhere." Drummer Michael Brueggen is the newest band member, and his gift for precise power has kept him in demand in recent years. Before SUPAGROUP, he played with the legendary Blackula, Syrup, and Rock City Morgue. "These guys are more than just my band though � they're my friends. They're who I call to drink with," Chris explains. As rock n� roll traditionalists, booze is a part of the band's beating heart . . . but not in a bad way. "I Need a Drink" came about while Chris was bartending a �dead shift,� pouring drinks for retirees when their welfare checks came in. "One guy was always rattling off one-liners, and one day he said to me, 'Y'know, work is the curse of the drinking man,' and I thought, 'Thank you' and a song was born." Booze is not only part of the band's lyrical concerns, but when they're off the road, it's their employer; Chris is co-owner of The Saint, a bar in New Orleans' Garden District, and both Brueggen and Benji tend bar there. As the band's name and song titles suggest, rock n� roll is the band's number one concern. �The music is the only thing that really matters. There�s only three things we really sing about anyways: sex, drinking and rock n� roll." "'Rock and Roll Star' is about the shit you go through from the start, why you go through it, and what you're after," Benji says. "My dream is never working a day job again," states Chris. "To make it, you have to be prepared to live like an animal, and not for a year but for ten years. You have to ruin the rest of your life with nothing to fall back on," he says laughing. "Cat Soup" looks comically at just how far you might have to go to rock n� roll. Rock n� roll may appear easy, but it is hard sweaty work � not just brute force and ignorance. Songs like SUPAGROUP's don't happen by lucking across a riff and pounding it into submission. "Woulda Been Nice" didn't fall out of a box of Count Chocula. In "Bats Out the Belfry," Chris sings, "Resistance is futile," and where the songs are concerned, a lot of care is taken to make sure resistance is not only futile but damned near impossible. As Chris sings in their enduring anthem, "Rock and roll tried to ruin my life," but it only made his better, the same way it makes ours better. More than anything else, SUPAGROUP is fun. "Our songs are about having fun, and they are fun," Chris says. This explains the band's impatience with an unnamed nu-metal band in "One Better." He sings, "What makes you think I give a damn / Why your daddy made you cry?" As Benji succinctly puts it, "When music is whiny, I tune out." SUPAGROUP's self-titled album is a celebration of ROCK N� ROLL. Here's what the critics are saying: Some recent press: "SUPAGROUP put on the best live show I've ever seen. They�re everything that the Datsuns and all those other bands will never be." -- Detroit Metro Times "A SUPAGROUP show is the nearest thing to seeing AC/DC in a club nowadays." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "Thanks to 40 minutes of blinding, fist-pumping fury SUPAGROUP reconverted me to the cause of rock n� roll and all it�s life-changing glory." -- Austin Chronicle "To see SUPAGROUP play live is to feel everything that was ever good about real rock and roll course through your body." -- Audio Galaxy "The sound could be called trashy, but the way SUPAGROUP works itself into a fervor and plays with conviction, it comes off as somehow religious." -- Pitch Weekly "Singer Chris Lee is the front man all the trendier rock bands lack." -- Austin American Statesman "Everywhere you turned, nothin� but shit eating grins, spilt beers, guitar solos and pumping fists. It begged the question, why don�t bands rock like that anymore?" -- Mean Street "Their new Foodchain disc recalls the ravaging riffage of AC/DC, the restless bop of the Ramones and the bluesy groove of the Stones - all rendered with a bit of a wink and one helluva chug." -- L.A. Weekly "A more honest, straightforward rock record there could not be in these times, chock-full of headbang worthy riffs and ripping guitar chops." -- Las Vegas City Life "This is THE CD of the year by the greatest rock and roll band in these fifty great states. Amen." -- Tangerine Magazine "Supagroup is what you would call kicking your ass right now." -- Las Vegas Mercury "SUPAGROUP is everything a rock band should be." -- The Hit List "SUPAGROUP is the purest, most unadulterated hard rock band around." -- Pat Hood / The Drive By Truckers "A contender for the rock n� roll throne." -- Plan 9 "These guys do not simply play their instruments, they wield them." -- Detroit Metro Times "The watchdogs for the dirty rock n� roll world, a story of the little rock band that could". -- Detroit Metro Times "What do you get when you cross a sweaty, kung-fu-fox with an unassailably thunderous rhythm section and a guitar player that positively shoots sparks? You get SUPAGROUP, my friends." -- Audio Galaxy "Their heady punch is equal parts Van Halen bombast and Buzzcocks levity." Minneapolis City Pages "The aural equivalent of losing your virginity at an AC/DC concert in heaven. On really, really good dope." -- Mass Appeal "AC/DC is only the tip of the iceberg, there are elements of the whiskey-bent and hell-bound fury of the Supersuckers and the sweaty enthusiasm of MC5 in the mix." Flagpole - Fri, 2 Jul 2004 5:02pm | ||
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| snuh User Info... | Come early to enjoy all the great music at Lucky on the 13th. The first hundred people through the door will receive a warm smile and a firm handshake* from none other than Johnny Black. See you there! *Limit one warm smile and firm handshake per patron. - Sat, 10 Jul 2004 10:20am | ||
| lucky bar User Info... | tonight. - Tue, 13 Jul 2004 1:12pm | ||
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