The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
On stage and in the studio, Jon Spencer has destroyed and rebuilt American roots music with such ferocity and wild abandon that it's hard to believe there is anything left. The trail of musical destruction Spencer created with his legendary group Pussy Galore still smolders in the avant punk blues and nasty garage grind of The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, whose incredible, innovative output remains an indelible totem to his enormous mojo spirit and red-hot power of deliverance.
It's been twenty years since The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion first pressed 'record', twenty years since Spencer and his A-Team of sonic terrorists (Judah Bauer, guitar, and Russell Simins, drums) tore up the indie-rock landscape with fever and a visceral, untouchable vision of rock'n'roll that did for a new wave of blues-punk primitivists what Helen of Troy's face did for the armada.
But make no mistake: Jon Spencer was there first. He is the original. It was his sanctified outbursts and blues-bending riffs that began the new-fangled roots rock revolution and spawned countless imitators. With Pussy Galore he gargled with the Stones and Stooges and wrestled with industrial noise and fuzzed-out fucked-up sixties garage crud… with Blues Explosion he drove furiously into the future with incendiary spirit built from courage, audacity, and revolt. Nothing has been the same since.
