Across ten albums and over 20 years in the game, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion have cemented a reputation as one of the loudest, coolest and most perennially badass rock’n’roll outfits on the planet. Never once changing their lineup, nor their core raison d’être of the blues being number one, theirs is a sharply dressed, down-and-dirty take on electric blues that has tackled everything from bell-bottoms to the Bush administration.
Most recently, the band paid tribute to its beloved New York City across its tenth LP, the excellently titled Freedom Tower – No Wave Dance Party 2015. The album’s central theme revealed itself as somewhat of a happy accident.
“That’s certainly how the record ended up, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the record that we set out to make in the first place,” says Jon Spencer, the figurehead and frontman of the group. “At some point, it became clear that these songs kept coming back to our home, and that made the sequencing of this record a lot easier. When we recorded, we actually recorded and mixed more songs than we would need for an album. I found myself drawn to the songs that found themselves closer to the theme of life in New York City – it really made the record come together.”
Of course, the Blues Explosion’s link to NYC is inextricable at this point – no matter where in the world they are playing, Spencer will be quick to remind the audience that what they’re hearing is “comin’ straight outta New York City”. When queried on his relationship with the Big Apple – a city he has called home for over half his life – Spencer says it’s a place that’s in a constant state of evolution. This, surprisingly, suits him just fine.
“The reasons that I moved to this city are gone, mostly,” he says. “I’ve seen a lot of landmarks, bands, musicians, dive bars, the whole deal – I’ve seen it all come and go. They still hold an important place in my heart, though – there’s a connection made in my memory that means it will never really go away. I think that I’ve changed just as much as this city, too. I arrived here in my 20s. The things I get up to now, the things that I’m involved with in New York, it’s all very different now that I’m an older man. This city has grown with me.”
It was roughly a decade ago that Spencer and The Blues Explosion released a song called ‘Hot Gossip’, the second single from their 2004 album Damage. Not only was it one of their more dramatic stylistic shifts to date (featuring a guest verse from Public Enemy’s Chuck D), it was also one of their most politically charged works; a clear and targeted attack on George W. Bush. It’s brought up here in the context of another Bush – Jeb – entering the political picture as the 2016 US election looms. This opens up a discussion on the political climate of the country – something the vocalist is still greatly dissatisfied with, albeit for different reasons than in 2004.
“First off, I honestly don’t even think that Jeb Bush will make it past nominations at this point,” Spencer begins. “The Presidential election is still a ways off – I think there’s a lot more things happening right now that are worth me getting pissed off about, both as a musician and a citizen. There was a shooting just recently in Carolina – how many times are we, as Americans, going to have to go through this? There’s so many things wrong with this. We don’t need guns. We certainly don’t need automatic weapons. We don’t need a consensus on flying the Confederate flag. It’s been a very hard year. This is something of great concern to me.”
August sees The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion return to Australia for the first time since Freedom Tower’s release, taking in several east coast shows and an appearance at the Supersense Festival at the Melbourne Arts Centre. The band has been to Australia several times over the years, but perhaps its most infamous moment remains a 1997 appearance on the ABC’s then-flagship Saturday morning music program, Recovery.
“My main memory of it was meeting Tony Cohen,” recalls Spencer. “He’s an incredible Australian producer, and he was engineering the sound outside in a mobile truck. This is a guy that I was aware of because of his work with The Birthday Party, who I was a big fan of. As far as the rest of it, my memory is sort of blurred with a YouTube clip. I wonder how much the video supplants the memory. Australia is a place that has always been nice to us, and I think that is one of the days where it was the nicest. I mean, you guys let us completely freak out on national television!”
The legend behind the performance goes that the band had been out for the entire night and kicked on directly to the ABC studios that morning.
“I… I think we’d been to bed?” says Spencer. “At least, we would have for a couple of hours, I think. Then again, we could have just wandered right in off the street.”
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s Freedom Tower – No Wave Dance Party 2015 is out now through Rocket, and they play Manning Bar on Friday August 7.
