AB-JOIVZ Prototype- Stage 001‏

If there is one thing Professor Detritus has learned over the course of his endless decades of rigorously adhering to the sacred Steps of the Scientific method, it’s to always send a robot to do a human’s job—especially if you’re not really a hundred percent sure on whatever it is you’re doing.

So plans for a trial-run pilot were drawn to helm the newly constructed Detritus temporal conveyor. Thusly, Artificial Unit AB-J0IVZ was produced, but only with the few spare parts at hand left over.

There was, however, one seemingly insignificant omission…


Suddenly fresh out of computer programming punch cards—the only crude technology at his disposal-- the mad professor made a creative adjustment on the fly: spare pages randomly torn from Larry LeGripsey’s antique bathroom reading material, an ancient dog-eared copy of a 1978 Sears Catalog accidentally acquired through E Bay several years ago.













And though it wasn’t readily apparent through initial systems analysis scanning, there was no detection of the something that was about to occur in the logic circuits of Abernathy’s Central Processing Unit.


That something was an anomalous spark that spun a chain of thoughts and dreams threaded together into a fantastic object of astounding desire: A nicely tailored pair of smart-looking affordable pants.

As the supposed tale goes, the origins of The Hot Apple Spider began between Moravian College students John Newcomer and Mike Kolinsky late one evening when Kolinsky revealed he owned 1964 Slingerland drum kit. Days later the entire kit was set up in the kitchen of Kolinsky’s apartment. A profusion of longform jamming commenced and, sometime after, they encountered keyboardist Justin Deangelo through Bethlehem area painter Chris Kosztyo, and before long a 1973 Rhodes electric piano was filling the remaining space next to the fridge.

What playing would result during these early kitchen sessions usually didn’t amount to much more than gratuitous jamming, typically drum and keyboard duo material made up on the spot and soon after buried to near-forgotten status.

It was at this moment, as the delay pedal-infused space/psych rock sensibilities of Newcomer’s guitar met the harmonic direction and vintage keyboard timbres of Deangelo's keys all backed with Kolinsky’s solid drumming, that the central core of The Hot Apple Spider was created, though not officially appellated (by Mr. Newcomer) until almost a year later.

It took them about 18 months to write their first song. After that, the rest was easy.

After a 3 year stint performing regular gigs in and around the Lehigh Valley, followed by a 2 year hiatus (as Mr. Deangelo musical studies dictated), the Hot Apple Spider returns to the Lehigh Valley again, this time with the addition of the adaptable and dynamic Daniel “DanO” O’Connor, from Reading PA’s popular dance-rock band Indian Rope Trick and obscure underground New Jersey-based Psychedelic Folk-Tune Trio Cat Head Mange, who serendipitously swooped in and filled out their sound in August 2008.

Describing The Hot Apple Spider’s music style is challenging, since each of the Spiders has a varied, vastly broad, and wildly eclectic taste in music. Indie Rock or Lo-fi Lounge, sometimes 50’s rock ‘n’ roll, sometimes 80’s New Wave, and sometimes early 70’s Progressive, (They like to say “From ABBA to Zappa”) they take each song they forge as a new opportunity to delve deeply into a different music genre and from there try to exploit it to its fullest or invert it to its most unrecognizable.

The Hot Apple Spider is poised to be not only be wildly popular, but to carve out its own musical niche by the sheer efficacy of their own voice of originality. All that is needed is a rabid fan base, which augments with each new audience, and they will be well on their way to a stage near you.

An Introduction:

An unlikely collective of anomalously variegated musician/artist/writers, known as The Hot Apple Spider, established itself in a series of improvised kitchen jams in and around the Lehigh Valley/ Bethlehem Pennsylvania area in the latter part of the 20th Century.

In their present conclusive state: John Newcomer: on Guitar and Vocals, Justin DeAngelo: Keys and Vocals, Mike Kolinsky: Drums and Vocals, and DanO: Bass and Vocals, The Spiders have been performing their live shows locally for the last several years. Their original music—an idiosyncratic content with capricious musical shifts-- is a strange but familiar mixed bag of treats and tricks, from toe-tapping jams and melodic old-school riffs, to angular space rock, cryptic prog anthems and emotional odes to Ricardo Montalban. Their multifarious and disparately inspired song output, include reports and observances of obscure Dickens characters, rebellious aquatic organisms, sweater-wearing goats, and a particular pants-obsessed robot. They’ve also been known to surreptitiously pepper their sets with various cover songs that include Frank Zappa, The Flaming Lips, Dire Straits, The Beatles and the theme to the 1971 Michael Caine version of “Get Carter”.

Their latest effort, a ridiculous sci-fi themed rock opera to be performed at The Reading Planetarium at the end of June 2010, will more than marginally enhance their already slowly burgeoning cult-fan base.

Stay Tuned...