“GUEST OVERVIEW: Russell Simins is best known for his work with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion which gained him a reputation as one of the best drummers around. Throughout his long career, Simins has performed and recorded with many artists including Tom Waits, Yoko Ono, DJ Shadow, Luscious Jackson, Cibo Matto, Beck, Ween, Chuck D, Fred Schneider (B-52’s) and most recently, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs (to name but a few) and he has produced albums, remixed songs and written music for and/or with such artists as Luscious Jackson, Cibo Matto, Duran Duran, Stereolab, Dan “the Automator” Nakamura (Gorillaz) and Karen O. Most recently he devotes most of his time as producer/writer/drummer/guitarist to his new band, SERVICE, which he co-founded with his wife Jilly Weiss, the renowned singer of the Indianapolis band We Are Hex”
The albums feature an extensive number of contributors including Cristina Martinez, Hollis Queens, Bob Bert, Dee Pop, Marco Butcher, Jeffery Evans, Mickey Finn, Marcellus Hall, Larry Hardy, Don Howland, Richard Kern, Dan Kroha, Lydia Lunch, Jack Martin, Ryan Skeleton Boy, Jerry Teel, Jim Thirlwell, Jim Waters, Jerry Williams and many others (full list is on Rob Kennedy’s facebook page).
“Rob Kennedy is the man and u need to order this cause it is simply amazing……the man , the myth , the legend , the comedy of Rob Kennedy ….Beautiful art work, everything is put together perfect and without Rob doing what he does?….u guys wouldn’t listen to half of what u listen to today if it wasn’t for him….so get your credit cards out and pay tribute to one of the truest musicians to grace us from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and is still making music today for us….u definitely won’t regret getting it…support your musicians!” – Thomas Mace
“The first six minutes of Baby Driver are pure bliss, neatly establishing the basic premise of Edgar Wright’s rollicking genre pastiche, while also functioning as a stand-alone blast of rubber-on-road, needle-on-vinyl movie magic. It’s a heist sequence that unfolds in real time, without dialogue, and from the perspective of Ansel Elgort’s tinnitus-afflicted getaway driver, who cues up and boogies to the garage-rock swagger of The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion while his associates knock off a bank.” – avclub.com
“Baby sits back, cranks up “Bellbottoms” by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and air guitars his way through the sequence while the others rob a bank and exit in a hurry. That’s when things really get going as Baby steps on the gas and maneuvers away from the cops with heart-pounding, exhilarating polish. It’s a car chase for the ages.” – NYDailyNews
“The first time we see Baby in action, he’s sitting in his red Subaru, lip-syncing to Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s ‘Bellbottoms’.” – GamesRadar+
“But it was an obscure track called Bellbottoms by the American alt-rock band the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion that Wright first heard in 1995 that inspired him to dream up a car chase sequence. It is only right then that the raucous jam holds the honor of topping a soundtrack of 30 kick-ass curated songs that provides an turbo-charged adrenaline rush for the ears.” – WhereToWatch
“The idea for this movie is as old as ‘Orange’” Wright said in an interview. “I was either 20 or 21 and I had just moved to London. I was working on my first movie I ever made. I was completely broke. I think I had a cassette of ‘Orange’ that I had copied off of someone else, maybe my brother. I listened to ‘Bellbottoms’ all the time. I just started to visualize this car chase. I’d think, ‘This would be the perfect car chase song in a movie, but what’s the movie?’” – The York Dispatch
“Here’s the funny thing — I had made a movie, but I don’t think I would ever have dared say that I was a film director,” says Wright, whose other directing credits include Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. “I had made A Fistful of Fingers. I moved to London to edit it, and I was living in Wood Green, in North London, and trying to figure out what the next step was. I had a duped audio cassette of the Orange album — apologies to Jon Spencer — and I used to sit in my bedroom, listening to this album over and over. I started to imagine this car chase that was set to that song. I didn’t even have the character yet, but the structure of the car chase, and the bank robbery at the start of the movie, is extremely similar to what I came up with 22 years ago.”
More than two decades on, Wright has finally brought that idea to the big screen in a film which also features a cameo from Spencer himself. “I became friendly with him after Hot Fuzz,” says the director. “He’s also in the movie right at the end. I don’t want to give away what he plays, because it would tell you what happens at the very end, but Jon Spencer appears, basically, in the final scene of the movie, which was great.” – Entertainment Weekly
“The idea for “Baby Driver” came to Wright 22 years ago while he was repeatedly listening to “Bellbottoms,” by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. “I started to visualize this car chase, but I didn’t know what the rest of the story was,” he says. “I’m very inspired by music and tend to conjure up scenes inspired by songs. Usually it’s with songs that don’t already have a significant visual image that goes with them. You wouldn’t listen to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ and say, ‘I’ve got a great idea for this!’ because there already is one.”” – Variety
““Bellbottoms” – The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
One of the first songs Wright chose. “When I was Ansel’s age and making movies was a pipe dream, I would listen to this and visualize a car chase,” recalls Wright. Now, it scores the opening sequence — a (dazzling) car chase.” – Billboard
“Baby (Ansel Elgort) revs and swerves his cherry-bright Subaru in time to Bellbottoms, by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – the first in a near-unbroken string of songs Baby cues up as an on-the-hoof soundtrack.” – The Telegraph
“You might already know this, but the new movie Baby Driver opens with an absolutely virtuosic broad-daylight Atlanta car chase set to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s deathless romp “Bellbottoms.” If this isn’t enough to convince you to see this movie, then you and I are not the same. Wright cuts the car chase so that all the big moments arrive at big moments in the song, and by the time it ends, you’re left panting.” – SPIN
When Wright started fanatically listening to the lead track off the band’s “Orange” album in 1995, the British writer-director had a vision that has culminated, more than two decades later, with his new film, “Baby Driver.”” – The Salt Lake Tribune
“How Edgar Wright, Danger Mouse and choreographer Ryan Heffington gave ‘Baby Driver’ its perfect groove” – Los Angeles Times
I just started visualizing a car chase. I didn’t really know what the movie was, I just knew that that would be a great car chase song. — Edgar Wright on the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Bellbottoms”
The seed for “Baby Driver” was planted through music, specifically, the 1995 song “Bellbottoms” by blues-punk band the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. The director heard the song on cassette in his early 20s and has been obsessed ever since.
“I just started visualizing a car chase,” Wright says on the phone from London. “I didn’t really know what the movie was, I just knew that that would be a great car chase song.”
Over the years, as he made “Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz,” “The World’s End” and other movies that attracted devoted fans, the idea started to take shape.” – LA Times
“Rarely, however, does one find oneself having these thoughts as often as one does during Baby Driver, from its high-octane opener to the tune of Bellbottoms by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, to our hero’s comeuppance and romantic reunion at the close. It is, without doubt, one of the most remarkable heist movies ever made.” – Varsity
“How ‘Bellbottoms’ led to ‘Baby Driver,’ a quasi-musical on wheels” – Daily Herald
“The idea for this movie is as old as ‘Orange’” Wright said in an interview. “I was either 20 or 21 and I had just moved to London. I was working on my first movie I ever made. I was completely broke. I think I had a cassette of ‘Orange’ that I had copied off of someone else, maybe my brother. I listened to ‘Bellbottoms’ all the time. I just started to visualize this car chase. I’d think, ‘This would be the perfect car chase song in a movie, but what’s the movie?’” – Daily Herald
“Indeed, the film opens with an explicit nod to its small-screen dry run, with Elgort lip-synching to Bellbottoms (“fabulous, most groovy”) by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion while his cohorts rob a bank.” – The Guardian
“The first getaway, set to “Bellbottoms” by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, is choreographed by Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) with a precision to match anything in La La Land.” – Rolling Stone
“How a New York band inspired ‘Baby Driver’ 20 years ago” – New York Post
“You might already know this, but the new movie Baby Driver opens with an absolutely virtuosic broad-daylight Atlanta car chase set to the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s deathless romp “Bellbottoms.” If this isn’t enough to convince you to see this movie, then you and I are not the same. Wright cuts the car chase so that all the big moments arrive at big moments in the song, and by the time it ends, you’re left panting. It’s a trick that Wright pulls again and again in the movie, setting all of its scenes to great old pop and funk and instrumental tracks.” – NY Post
“‘Baby Driver’: How Edgar Wright Staged the Crime Movie’s Musical Action Scenes” – Rolling Stone
“”Bellbottoms,” The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (1995)
I mean, that song was never not going to be in the movie. It all starts there, with that weird moment of synesthesia – it wasn’t even “Oh, I know this will be the opening of a movie.” It was just something that appeared to me when I heard the song. But over the years, I had this sequence, and I knew it was the germ of something but I didn’t know what.
Then I thought: What if the getaway driver is listening to that track? Suddenly, it was the starting point for some sort of diegetic action-musical … taking what I love about the movies of Tarantino and John Landis and Scorsese and putting it into one full movie. Or American Graffitti, which is really the first diegetic musical. It’s one of the first movies I can think of where the pop soundtrack really isn’t a score – it’s all coming from whatever people are listening to onscreen.”
“The Fabulous, Most Groovy: Director Edgar Wright’s Favourite Albums” – The Quietus
“This album pretty much inspired a whole movie of mine.
It means a lot to me – very special, very influential. I was hearing it as it came out. I’d just moved to London. I think I’d seen them on The Word doing ‘Afro’, which is an amazing TV appearance
If this album just had ‘Bellbottoms’ on it would still be a corker. ‘Bellbottoms’ is pretty much the greatest opening track of any rock album ever – an insistent and stirring widescreen opening. There’s a string quartet playing on it and it sounds immense…
“Not only does ‘Bellbottoms’ open Baby Driver, but Jon is in the movie. Wait till you see ‘Bellbottoms’ in the movie. It’s nuts.” – The Quietus
NEW Russell Simins interview on Joseph Arthur & his Technicolor Dreamcast.
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