COVER STORY .

Dance Dance Evolution

GANG


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Published: Mar 7, 2007

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

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Seven songs in their repertoire. Six shows under their belt. Five tracks on their EP. Four months since their first show. Three ladies. (Two sisters.) One dude. And GANG is ready for launch.

"It's happening so fast. I find that pretty crazy," singer/rapper/glockenspiel player Jaclyn McGraw (pictured, right) says during a sitdown at GANG's South Philly headquarters. "We put two songs up on MySpace — two songs and a music video."

Posted early last summer, those first songs — "Past, Present, Future" and the awesome B-52s-meets-Beastie Boys boast "Rat Poison" — were enough to make listeners beg Jaclyn and singer Amanda Damron for more.

"That was all we had," says Amanda (pictured, left). "But we were, like, wanting to play. ... We had to tell people, 'Oh, no, we can't yet. We have two songs. We can play a five-minute set with a CD.' But then there were a couple of shows that we really wanted to — we got some good show offers and we were like, 'Oh, we should play them,' and then we were like, 'Let's write some more songs.'"

The pair turned to Tim Sonnefeld and Nicole McGraw — aka The Big Kids — for help. First they lent beats, and then they officially joined GANG on drums and bass. The foursome played their first show on Halloween, and local label Hot Dog City released Guess What You'll Find... last month. "Rat Poison" is one of the EP's highlights, along with a faithful cover of The B-52s' "Dance This Mess Around."

GANG is part science class, part art project, part dance party.

If the tight beats and frequent giggle fits make it seem like they've been together longer than a few months, that's because they have. Amanda and Jaclyn have been best friends for more than eight years; Jaclyn and Nicole have been sisters for nearly 25. Tim joined the family a few years back, when he and Nicole started dating.

Nicole lays out the group-within-a-group dynamic. "At first we were just like The Big Kids," she says. "When we first started making beats and stuff together, it was just like, 'Well, we need a production name,' so then it was The Big Kids. And then just having, like, GANG with The Big Kids, that's like a trend right now anyway. Like DangerDoom and Gnarls Barkley."

When future historians sift through the group's sibling rivalries and lovers' quarrels, they'll look back at this as the golden era, filled with fun tunes, bizarre fashions and raucous laughter. It's anybody's guess who'd win if the two factions got into a rumble: The Big Kids are older and faster; GANG's louder, and Amanda has a sword. For now, they need one another, and everybody wins.

But when Behind the Music does come calling, the foreboding voiceovers are ready. Amanda predicts her own downfall: "Amanda didn't leave her house and played Sudoku all day." "Jaclyn's coffee addiction was taking a turn for the worse," Tim adds doomily. "And then their dad came over with too many garlic knots," Amanda says, and they all crack up.