Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – RaveMagazine.com.au: Inteview (PRESS, AUSTRALIA)

Tuesday, 21 December 2010

Some 15 years ago, JON SPENCER admits he bitched and moaned about the shitty state of rock & roll – he was an “angry” man. Older and wiser these days, he’s come to realise complaining rarely fixes anything – raising the bar in the quality stakes is the only solution, he advises BIRDIE.

“I guess I was a bit angry,” Spencer laughs. “I’ve come to relax a bit and I’ve learned to understand the fact that I can take the bad things from rock & roll and stake a claim of my own in this music. I can embrace the good elements of rock and expand on that. There used to be a lot of lousy rock & roll bands around, and I think there still are – just completely unimaginative and lazy. I came to realise that I could use that as a catalyst to really shake people up with my own band, to set fire to this music. I wanted to make people believe in rock again, and even more passionately so.”

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s third and most essential album Orange successfully did just that. It’s no surprise, then, as Spencer himself claims, that the album was recently re-issued, getting old-school fans excited all over again and rekindling the spark within the band itself.

“In the beginning of our career, we did three albums in a row very quickly,” says the frontman. “We were in some kind of hurry, we were definitely in a rush to get our music out there, even if we weren’t sure exactly what we were trying to get out there. Actually, I think we made an album every year – ’92, ’93 and ’94. That’s when Orange happened. During that time we were still developing as a band and figuring out our position in the scheme of things. We were trying to work out how we could contribute to the sound of rock & roll and a whole other bunch of things that new bands go through. Around the time Orange came around, we were becoming more focused and clear and it all dialed in. I believe that we reached the height of our power with Orange and it definitely defined the sound of the band too. Orange represents the finest distillation of this band.”

And while the Blues Explosion went full-throttle in its first five years of formation, Spencer claims the last 10 years have been somewhat the opposite, leading the band members to take a break and focus on other musical projects. However, thanks to the reissue of Orange, which will lead to an Australian tour, Spencer claims the spark has well and truly been reignited.

“After the 2005 Big Day Out we wanted to have a rest and I was interested in different kinds of music and working with different musicians,” he says. “We’ve been a band for a long time now and we’ve moved a lot slower in the last 10 years than the first five. Because we’ve had a lot of reissues and the albums are coming back out as newly-expanded deluxe versions, we’ve figured now’s a good time as any to get back to playing.”