UM Virtual Tour: Wappy Sprayberry

For a song that has only been performed a total of 41 times, Wappy Sprayberry sure has a long and interesting history. First, we need to go back six and a half years to 9/17/2002 when UM played Durty Nellie’s in Palatine, IL. This show marked the debut of Smell The Mitten (a re-worked, now instrumental, version of a song previously known as Gesture Under a Mitten) as well as another instrumental titled Visions of Parin. The third debut at this show, was a jam called Wappy Sprayberry. It’s tough to classify this version of Wappy as a “song” because it’s really just a bass line. Wappy was played a number of times in 2002 with Mike Mirro on the drums and played only a couple of times in 2003 with then new drummer Kris Myers.

9-17-2002:

Fast forward to 11/17/2007 when a fan was given a copy of the band’s stage setlist and in the second set it read “Wappy > The Floor”. But nothing resembling Wappy was played at that show. It would be another two weeks before the reworked song, now with a bunch of new guitar riffs and two verses of catchy vocals would make its live debut. The new version was an instant fan-favorite. When the party tune did not appear at any of the Caribbean Holidaze shows that year, people began to wonder if the tune was here to stay, but another monster rendition appeared during night two of the band’s New Year’s Eve run at The Aragon Ballroom in December ’07.

According to UM webmaster and HT contributor Jeremy Welsh, the title of the song comes from a Mercer Mayer children’s book, as does another UM instrumental – Professor Wormbog

After the two versions in 2007, the first performance of 2008 had a few lyric modifications. For example, the first line of the song was originally “I can’t stand to even think of you” had become “I can’t stand to be away from you”, and many other lines in the song reflected a similar change in emotion. Wappy was in heavy rotation throughout ’08, appearing 28 times in 113 shows. As a fitting nod to what the song had become, UM decided to play Wappy as the final song of 2008 before dropping into their rendition of Auld Lang Syne that always ends up sounding like G.E. Smith & The Saturday Night Live Band.

The Virtual Tour continues all week. Check out these websites over the next three days for the three remaining videos: Altsounds, WNEW & Pop Culture Madness…