Music We Listen To, feat., Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Genre: Rock, Punk, Blues
It’s the Blues Explosion! The Confirmed Hardest Working Band in Rock and Roll.
I’ve covered the demise of Grunge, to some degree, in my earlier tribute to Chris Cornell. I put the end of grunge as the end of music scenes, and that was true — genres collapsed, splintered, fused and then spun completely out of control. In the short time between the end of grunge and the rise of the boy-band/”Battle of the Dueling Brittneys” nonsense that dominated the radio and MTV by the end of the 90s, rock was in ferment. That slowburn weathered NSync, and produced a brief brilliant period in the first half of the 2000s, where alternative rock was dominated by the likes of the White Stripes, The Strokes, and The Killers, before removing itself to some weird Edwardian throwback in the likes of “indie” hipster bands like Mumford and Sons, The Decemberists and the Lumineers, where men sported huge waxed mustaches and women wore nerdy glasses, and all bands had a stompy bass drum and a huge back up chorus…
The post-grunge/pre-Boy Band rock landscape had a million awesome bands littered around. I got into the Cardigans, I got into Portishead, I got into 311, I got into a lot of the SoCal punk and ska sound. But no band was more hard rockin and bombastic than Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. JSBX, as they are also called, formed in New York City in the early 1990s. Spencer was, by the time, a rock veteran, and upon the demise of his old punk band, known as Pussy Galore, put together the trio and began recording psycho-punkabilly and blues rock. They put out several albums during the era, and by the time I caught up with them in early 1997, as they were releasing their Al Yankovic-directed video for the song “Wail”, they were huge in a kind of growing alternative rock movement. I loved them from the first moment I heard them, and have listened to them ever since.
JSBX were definitely influenced by punk. They were certainly influenced by the blues, without appropriating it — they recorded a whole record, and toured with old blues legend R.L Burnside, and one of their songs featured vocals from Rufus Thomas. But more than anything, the Blues Explosion was just bonkers Rock n’ Roll!
And they weren’t ashamed to say as much. Their song titles and lyrics frequently feature the three words, almost obsessively shouted by Spencer, who also has no problem referencing himself and his band in his own music. If you listen to a JSBX album, basically any of them, you will hear Rock and Roll, guaranteed!
But they aren’t just any old rock band, to be sure. They broke the mold after they created the Blues Explosion. Spencer himself sounds like an Elvis Impersonator eating a microphone (and if you listen to him, he kind of talks like that too.) Judah Bauer, from Wisconsin, plays the bass parts on a regular 6 string guitar, as well as lead, if that makes any sense. And the drummer, named Russel Simins, plays the hell out of a 3-piece trap kit that really put the need for anything bigger into serious doubt. They sound weird. Their music is not only rocking and rolling, but it is also kind of odd sounding — they infuse their rock with strange effects, and unusual instruments, and record scratching in some places, and awesome fuzz pedals, and Chuck D is on one of their tracks, and Beck is on another, and Winona Ryder is in one of their videos playing Jon Spencer, and they cover Black Flag and the Beastie Boys, and… it’s a huge glorious mess designed for fans of rock and roll and drugs. But of course if you have ever heard of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, you probably already knew that.
The Blues Explosion have not lost a bit of their energy or their bizarre take on rock and roll, not in the 26-and-counting years that they have been master blasting.
Without further ado, allow me to present Plastic Fang. This record was JSBX at perhaps their most rockin’ and probably least experimental. Play it loud and play it often!
This is music we listen to. This is Jon Spencer Blues Explosion!
As a bonus: Click here for more Black Flag Blues Explosion! Rock n’ Roll!
