The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Orange

Gray clouds that tend to blacken. It's about to rain. The quiet atmosphere awaits an explosion of lightning in a nocturnal deluge. Actually, no. The rain doesn't quite fit. So I imagine a fog, gray like the cover. But it would leave us with a stylized Milan, something... not entirely detestable. Better to draw a full summer in its daytime clarity. Well yes, I choose iced tea, I choose mosquitoes, as I put on my headphones. I hate this city! Full speed ahead west. Figuratively speaking, there is roadwork. I need to find the right spaces, I want to drive fast. The traffic lights multiply. I turn. To join the ring road. Click play. Yeah, ha ha. Like that time, yeah, baby

To catch the whole, New York City

Blues explosion!

The temperature rises exponentially. The Beastie Boys scream together with the back seats. Bellbottoms

Bellbottoms... Yeah!

If it weren't for them being replaced by Elvis, the holograms of the band Cibo Matto, and you don’t even have time to…

Tell 'em

Sit back

Just watch 'em

Gotta have bellbottoms

...bellbottoms everywhere. Why are Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi moshing? I have to talk to someone about this. I head back to the city. A gas station, perfect, just what I was looking for. I roll down the window. “Did you know that 'Orange' is from 1994, but it doesn’t seem like it. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion is a trio, but they don't even have a bassist in the lineup, yet they’re like a punk orchestra on parole. There's so much in them... yet they’re rock, but not just... not just, you know...,” how much do I owe?”...but I haven't even talked about the fact they sometimes remind one of the Beastie Boys, Cibo Matto (on acid) or maybe not, and yet there's more, it seems like a jam session in an underground club, there's energy, you see, they have an anarchistic destructive streak, only they’re not just one genre, and yet in the end, you hear only one, you understand?...”Go to hell!!”... He understood, so I go back on the road with "Ditch". Down on by the street

Down on Ludlow street

Avenue A, B, C, D

Get it all for you

Everything explodes. Or rather, it should happen, instead, it's just my head traveling in blues dissonances. While the buildings get covered with graffiti. Everyone plays the saxophone and everyone is everywhere. A supermarket, but isn't that the mayor? “Hey mayor, I voted for you!!!”, the mayor intent on selling stuff greets me with the middle finger, “Go to hell!”. He understood. Now the heat is definitely unbearable. Let's look each other in the eyes. Let's talk about it.

In 1994 the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion literally explode. "Orange" bursts with its blues charge grafted with so much more. Their previous album “Extra Width” is only a year old, but they’ve already burned it out, not because it’s bad, but because... well, really, just listen to the first track. "Bellbottoms" doesn't have a conventional structure, it’s a kind of pseudo-instrumental dissonance between a paranoid bass, suggestive saxophones, and funky strings... where Joe Spencer's amphetamine voice shouts monologues made of sex and explosions, but seems out of place, yet at the same time, becomes indispensable and lovable, right? New York City!!! The rest? The remaining compositions are shorter and slightly more squared, yet each one has something different. Rhythm, voice, and an uncommon ability to do irrational things at the moment you least expect it and only afterwards you understand it was the right thing to do. I mention "Sweat" and listen to it for the umpteenth time. It’s done (in the ambiguous sense of the term) of a freaked-out bass and one screaming, New York City! The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion doesn't care about anything else, and at that moment, there isn't anything else for them. The words are a ploy to do another line on their clandestine blues amusement park. And when he shouts ‘Baby, baby, you sure like to fuck

[Fuck!]’? It’s almost as if in a seedy pub, with seedy people, but in a moment of clarity, he sees a stripper pass in front of him. Then maybe it was an undercover bouncer, it happens to get confused, in such a seedy little place...

HEY!

Yeah, ha ha ha ha ha!!!

A phone booth blows up. We find ourselves on the ground, and as if nothing happened, we dial the right number. "We’re on a mission from BLUES!"