The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion set at the Bowlie Weekender, Camber Sands, Sussex, UK with Sodastream, AC Acoustics, Sleater Kinney, The Divine Comedy, Looper, Camera Obscura, Vic Godard, “mystery guests”, The Pastels and The Flaming Lips on 24 April 1999.
NME review (1 May 1999):
“The hot rock has arrived. Despite the intensive drugs/alcohol/clean pjamas/pure evil door searches, true malevolence has slipped into this paradise, and it’s name is The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. After sightings of grown women carrying Hello Kitty handbags and a ‘boy’ clutching a teddy bear, these men are badly needed to deprogramme the masses. And it works – with every flutter of Spencer’s switchblade eyelashes, every twitch of his Lurex trousers, you can feel pleasant docility being melted and recast into something splendidly nasty. You just know Spencer (who surely believes chalets are for Aspen, sugar) would like to nuke this backwater bootcamp, and whether dispensing compulsory EST with ‘Afro’, rampaging dead-eyed through ‘Two Kinds Of Love’ or calling us “laydeez and gentlemen”, he treats us with thrilling contempt. And, hell, someone needed to.”
