I Spider ~ Remastered [Bonus Tracks] [Extra tracks, PAL, Original recording remastered]

I can't get enough of the fifth track,Always I Wait.This is a prog gem from 1970 that is on the jazzier side.Web consists of the usual quartet plus sax and vibraphone,the latter giving them a totally unique sound.The star of the band is the keyboard player who wrote all the songs and sings also.His keyboard solos are very unorthadox as he has free reign to play over top of the song structure.His name is Dave Lawson and he went on to play in Greenslade.After the album "I Spider" Webb changed their name to Samurai and put out one album in 1971 which is also a must have.Both albums have a mellow acid jazz feel,but not overly jazzy.I guess I would call this proto-prog with a jazz feel.Check this out,highly recommened.

Web already had two albums under their belt with a different singer, American-born John L. Watson. Those albums were Fully Interlocking (1968) and Theraphosa Blondi (1970), both released on Deram. By 1970, Watson had left to be replaced by none other than vocalist/keyboardist Dave Lawson. Many of you already know Lawson from his involvement with Greenslade and the four albums they made between 1973 and 1975. Web moved from Deram to Polydor and I Spider was the results. Their first two, John L. Watson-led albums were said to be more pop/psychedelia, but I Spider is full-on progressive with jazz-leanings, and regarded as their best album. Since many of you will probably be aware of Web through Lawson's involvement with Greenslade, you might expect him to have that same high-pitched voice he did with Greenslade. He doesn't, his voice seems to be lower here, but it also reveals he isn't the best singer on the face of the planet. The rest of the band consisted of drummer/percussionist Lennie Wright, drummer/percussionist Kenny Beveridge, saxist/flautist Tom Harris, guitarist Tony Edwards, and bassist John Eaton. Apparently the band had two drummers, like the Grateful Dead (even though Web's music hardly sounds like The Dead, of course). The music of Web doesn't sound much like Greenslade. Wind instruments take center stage, although Dave Lawson is still highly visible with his keyboards. Mostly he plays Hammond organ here, but he played piano, harpsichord, and even some Mellotron (his Mellotron use is not on the scale of say, Greenslade's Bedside Manners are Extra, which at that point, it was Dave Greenslade handling the tron, rather than Lawson). "Concerto For Bedsprings" is a four piece suite that sounds like a collection of separate songs all segued together. Some of it is rather jazzy, others are quite rocking, it's basically a song criticizing city noise and the 9 to 5. The title track is a slow, organ-dominated number in a rather dramatic fashion. It's a truly wonderful, but moody piece. "Love You" starts off mellow, like mellow King Crimson, with Mellotron, before rocking, dominated by sax, with some nice organ work. "Ymphasomniac" is the album's only instrumental piece, starts off almost Gentle Giant-like, then there's a percussion solo, before the band jams, letting the sax take center stage. "Always I Wait" finds Dave Lawson with a more jazzy style of singing. This song is packed with some really nice use of Hammond organ. It seemed like Mr. Lawson had some serious problems with self-esteem, as this song had lyrics wishing he found that love of his. Throughout the album, there's that slight Colosseum or Gentle Giant-like feel (the Gentle Giant comparisons come from the wind-instruments), maybe a little Van der Graaf Generator (especially the title track), but their sound wasn't a copy of any of these groups. Luckily this isn't the last we heard from Web. Saxist Tom Harris left the band and was replaced by two new wind players (Tony Roberts, Don Fay) and changed their name to Samurai and released a self-entitled album in 1971 on the Greenwich label (this Samurai wasn't to be confused with a Japanese prog/psych band that existed around the same time with Tetsu Yamauchi that released the albums Green Tea in 1970 and Kappa in 1971). I have since acquired the Samurai album (as a CD reissue) and I have to say it was even better than I Spider. That one was mellower overall, but Dave Lawson had perhaps the most appealing singing of any album he ever appeared on (too bad he didn't continue singing the way he did in Samurai with Greenslade). After Samurai, the band vanished, except of course Dave Lawson, who simply teamed up with two ex-Colosseum members, Dave Greenslade and Tony Reeves, with ex-King Crimson and Fields drummer Andy McColloch to form Greenslade, which was obviously the best-known and most successful band Lawson was in.

While I don't exactly call I Spider a must have, it's still worth having if you like early British prog rock. I say, go for the Samurai album first, then come here.

Well, this is more like it. After two abolutely laughable psych-lounge albums, Fully Interlocking andTheraphosa Blondi, Dave Lawson took over Web.

This is the sound of a group transformed. I-Spider makes you forget everything you heard before. This is true jazz-prog-rock. Long songs with mutiple parts, fantastic playing, and guitar roars that remind me of early King Crimson. Heavy riffs segue into long, lyrical panio solos. Lawson's tasteful voice replaces the Tom Jones in tye-dye nightmare of Web's first vocalist.

Great recrod. Get it.