Bill Freind

Department of English
University of Washington
williamf@u.washington.edu

 

R.L. Burnside, A Ass Pocket Full of Whiskey, Matador, 1996.

Jon Spenser Blues Explosion, Now I Got Worry, Matador/Capitol, 1997.

 

Unlike almost every other form of contemporary music, blues thrives on tradition. While old school hip-hop, for example, refers to a style just over a decade old, in blues the I-IV-V chord progression remains as pertinent today as it was in Blind Lemon Jefferson’s day. Inextricably tied up in that is the question of who “owns” the tradition. Primarily developed by African-Americans, the blues provided inspiration to two generations of white rock musicians, and in some cases, offered them a convenient supply of riffs (and occasionally, entire songs) to steal.

 

But most rock musicians were after more than riffs. They were searching for what for lack of a better word we might call authenticity. In the 1960s, when the power of rock and roll was its newness, its oppositional stance, most bands still had a few blues covers in their repertoire, which allowed them to augment that oppositional stance with a claim to a much longer tradition. Band names are far from incidental, and it’s interesting to note how many bands turned to the blues as a way of suggesting a connection with that origin. The Rolling Stones picked their name from Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy,” Pink Floyd was assembled from the first names of two bluesmen, and the Jefferson Airplane got their title from a fictitious blues singer, Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane. Even the Lovin’ Spoonful, a band whose specialty was Top 40 pop, got their name from a line in Mississippi John Hurt’s “Coffee Blues.”

 

So it’s not just critical fussing to note that for most of their career the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion avoided any connection with the blues, never covering a blues standard and shunning totally the staple riffs. That’s especially striking given the Blues Explosion’s approach to the rock, soul and R&B tradition: they’ve appropriated, alluded to, and parodied everyone from Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis to Led Zeppelin, Public Enemy, and George Clinton. None of that stopped Spencer from asserting his prominence as a blues howler. Toward the end of “Flavor,” from the Blues Explosion’s 1994 album, Orange, Spencer introduces the band members, and when it comes time to introduce himself, he says “And the number one blues singer in the country…” Apparently seeing no need to give his name, Spencer instead offers his trademark shout of “Blues Explosion!” But suddenly Spencer adds, “Yeah, that’s right, we’re number one… Number one in Philadelphia, Number one in DC, Number one in Chicago…” and continues to rattle off the names of most cities in the country.

 

What’s interesting is that Spencer is playing on Public Enemy’s “Public Enemy No. 1” from their debut album Yo! Bum Rush the Show, in which Flavor Flav comes in with “That’s right, we’re public enemy number one in New York, public enemy number one in DC…” But Spencer’s saying something entirely different from Flavor Flav, not sampling PE, not responding to them, maybe not even making a serious claim, since he follows it with a high pitched “Sooooouuuullll,” a reference to the opening of the old “Soul Train” shows. At that point, the beat abruptly slows and neo-folkie turned alternative hip-hop star Beck comes in with a rap recorded during a phone conversation with Spencer. Whatever you might say about that pastiche of sources, one thing is clear: it’s not blues.

 

If the Blues Explosion hold a less than reverent attitude toward “the tradition” and have essentially ignored the blues, why did they team up with R.L. Burnside? If you believe the press releases, Burnside is one of the last remaining bluesmen with any claim to “authenticity.” Son of a Mississippi sharecropper, himself a former sharecropper and juke joint proprietor, he learned guitar from Muddy Waters, who married Burnside’s first cousin. He also played with Mississippi Fred MacDowell in the country supper circuit, and was nominated last year for two W.C. Handy awards, including “Best Traditional Blues Singer.”

 

After enlisting Burnside as an opening act on their last tour, the Blues Explosion backed up Burnside on his last album, A Ass Pocket Full of Whiskey (Matador). Burnside certainly wasn’t drawn to the Blues Explosion because of their feel for the blues: he notes, “when I first heard ’em, I thought they were into some other kind of country-western style.”[1] The idea was the Blues Explosion’s: Spencer has said that part of his intention in picking Burnside as an opener was to introduce Burnside, and the blues as a whole, to a new generation of listeners, and Ass Pocket clearly operates on the same principle. It’s nothing new for white, blues-influenced rock bands to search out older black blues musicians. Both Canned Heat and Bonnie Raitt sought out John Lee Hooker, Keith Richards has worked with Chuck Berry, and U2 (!) did an odd collaboration with B.B. King. Those meetings served a dual purpose, affording the bluesmen exposure to a much larger audience, while offering the younger musicians an opportunity to prove that they too “had the blues.” The bluesmen always had the advantage, since the younger musicians were trying to play the music of their idols.

 

But Ass Pocket differs fundamentally from those collaborations. Because explicit blues influence is almost completely absent from contemporary rock, the Burnside-Blues Explosion meeting occurs on more neutral territory. At times it succeeds wonderfully. “Goin’ Down South” combines Burnside’s hypnotic groove with the Blues Explosion’s driving rhythms, and the cover of John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie Chillen” is a strong uptempo rocker in which Burnside takes the lead vocals and Spencer follows each verse with “You got to boogie.” Throughout the album Spencer and Burnside show an exceptional chemistry, developing call and response pairings in which neither overwhelms the other.

 

But the album sometimes repeats the same problems previously seen with attempts to introduce the blues to a new audience. One problem is stylistic. Burnside favors a bassless trio of two guitars and drums with the emphasis on vocals and lead guitar; the drums and rhythm guitar are clearly there for support. While the Blues Explosion also are a trio without a bass guitar, the drums and second guitar are much more prominent, while the vocals are slightly lower in the mix. That difference is evident on “Shake ’em On Down,” which Burnside first released on his 1994 album Too Bad Jim (Fat Possum). The original version is spare, repeating musical phrases until the song acquires an almost trance-like quality. With the Blues Explosion, Burnside’s guitar fades behind Russell Simins’ drums. (Fans of psychoanalysis might be interested to note that Simins was replacing Burnside’s usual drummers: son Calvin and grandson Cedric.) The combination of the heavy percussion and harmonica–which Burnside usually avoids on his albums–introduces an unmistakable resemblance to Led Zeppelin’s cover of the blues standard “When the Levee Breaks.” While the Blues Explosion thrives on self-reflexive musical allusions, this resemblance seems unintentional. It’s a powerful version, but there’s a striking irony when a meeting between a Mississippi bluesman and one of the most original bands on the indie scene wind up sounding like a 25-year-old hard rock version of the blues.

 

At times, a certain stageyness creeps in that seems to play on the worst stereotypes of the blues. The cover of the album features a drawing which depicts two blonde women wearing Daisy Duke cutoffs with bottles of whiskey secured in the pockets of their shorts. Burnside crouches between and in front of them, a leather belt looped in his hand. The cover was reportedly the idea of Matthew Johnson from Fat Possum Records (Burnside’s label), and Burnside, his guitarist Kenny Brown, and the Blues Explosion are said to hate it. But a similarly stagey moment comes up in “The Criminal Inside Me” when in the middle of the song Spencer asks Burnside for “forty nickels for a bag of potato chips.” Burnside replies “You don’t get outta my face quick, I’m gonna kick your ass you son of a bitch.” Spencer asks again and Burnside says “I’ll tell you what, you don’t get outta here and make it fast, I’m gonna put my foot right up your ass.” The exchange sounds like a canned version of “the dozens,” which is particularly disappointing since both Spencer and Burnside have both avoided that kind of theatrical mugging throughout their careers.

 

* * * 

It’s no accident that the first song on each of the last three Blues Explosion albums opens with a false start. The band seems bent on questioning the boundaries of the song, interrupting riffs, incorporating unexpected stops and abrupt endings. When the unity of the song is called into question, other elements can enter. One of those elements is chance. Spencer says many Blues Explosion songs come out of accidents in the studio: “If something was fucking up, or something weird happened, or something suggested itself, Jim [Waters, producer of Now I Got Worry] and I usually just went with it. Accidents play a big role in the making of Blues Explosion records.”

 

What also enters is a brief and selective history of rock, soul, and R&B. Their approach is not the same as hip-hop sampling, although it certainly comes out of it. More often than not, hip-hop samples are not easily identifiable, but Spencer’s vocal references are usually fairly obvious.[2] It’s worth emphasizing that most (though not all) of his borrowings come from the musicians he cites as influences. In “Water Main,” from their self-titled album (Caroline), Spencer takes advantage of a break in the song to say “Thank yuh.” It’s an unmistakable nod to Elvis (as is his black hair combed back into the beginnings of a pompadour and his low, slurred vocals). But why is he thanking us in the middle of a song recorded in a studio where there is no audience who could have applauded? It’s clearly satire, but the Blues Explosion aren’t a novelty band and, strangely, the Elvis reference seems appropriate, even coherent: it fits in the song. That’s why the Blues Explosion aren’t merely reducible to irony. Their music is simply too electrifying; somehow their driving guitars and relentless percussion keep the disparate elements from flying apart.

 

What might be at work is the logical culmination of the punk attempt to deflate the overblown stature of the self-indulgent, egocentric Rock Star. The difficulty of that project can be seen in frontmen such as Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, REM’s Michael Stipe, and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, all of whom claim to be (and perhaps are) uncomfortable with the trappings of stardom, and yet remain some of the most famous and well-paid singers in the world. Sonic Youth said kill yr. idols, but they never gave any hint of how that’s possible: Morrison, Hendrix, Presley, and Lennon have all been buried for years, but none shows any sign of dying in the near future.

 

Spencer redirects the punk project, recognizing that there’s already something intrinsically absurd about the narcissistic preening of Elvis, James Brown, and Jerry Lee Lewis. After all, you have to laugh when JB sings “Sometimes I feel so good–Good God!–I wanna jump back, I wanna kiss myself.” But Spencer also understands that James Brown pulls it off, and that the willingness to risk absurdity is the mark of every godhead frontman. He revels in his self-consciously ersatz stardom; in one exemplary moment he says, “This is the part of the record when I want everyone to put their hands in the air and kiss my ass, ’cause your girlfriend still loves me.” Somehow the Blues Explosion manages to combine parody with imitation without sliding exclusively into either camp; they’re both riveting and hysterically funny. That ironic distance also gives them one of the most original sounds in contemporary music.

 

On each new Blues Explosion release the band expands its list of musical references, and Now I Got Worry is no exception. If A Ass Pocket Full of Whiskey shows R.L. Burnside edging toward the Blues Explosion’s camp, Now I Got Worry (Matador/Capitol) proves that Burnside has also left his mark on the Blues Explosion. “Skunk,” the first song on the album, introduces an element previously absent from Blues Explosion albums: the slide guitar, which recurs on songs such as “Love All of Me” and “Rocketship,” (which with some modifications could be a Burnside song). From its title, “R.L. Got Soul” would seem to be an explicit tribute to Burnside, especially since the band claims it’s based on Burnside’s “Snake Drive.” But the song sounds a lot more like a quasi-hip-hop instrumental than a blues tribute. Maybe that’s because Spencer originally heard “Snake Drive” as covered by Tav Falco’s Panther Burns, an eighties band who had their own idiosyncratic approach to roots music. Maybe that’s just the Blues Explosion saluting Burnside on their own terms.

 

“Chicken Dog” features the vocals of soul singer Rufus Thomas, a man who symbolizes two of the traditions which have most shaped the Blues Explosion. His song “Bear Cat” was the first hit for the now legendary Sun Records, the label which would later issue recordings by Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins. Later, Thomas recorded for Stax Records, which was arguably the most important soul label throughout the 1960s and ’70s. The Blues Explosion’s debt to Stax is unmistakable: when they signed with Matador Records, the contract stipulated that each member of the band would receive the complete boxed set edition of the Stax singles. The song’s title combines two of his hits: “Funky Chicken” and “Walking the Dog.” The chorus “It’s just as easy as falling off a log/ Everybody’s doing the Chicken Dog” seems like a retro take on the dance craze songs in which Thomas specialized (although, since Thomas, who is now 79, wrote the lyrics, they may be completely free of any intentionally retro qualities). One of the most interesting elements of the song is a break lifted from Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way,” a borrowing which seems especially appropriate since Lenny was clearly parroting Jimi Hendrix when he wrote the song. Will the Blues Explosion succeed in introducing performers like Thomas and Burnside to an entirely new audience? That’s possible, especially since Now I Got Worry is the first album released by Matador since Capitol Records acquired 49 percent of the label, a deal which ensures that Blues Explosion releases will enjoy a much wider distribution. If another generation of suburban kids turns toward Mississippi and Chicago for inspiration, they might be doing it with a healthy dose of irony.

 

Notes

 

1 John Lewis, “Bastards of the Blues: Jon Spencer’s Illegitimate Spawn,” Option, September 1996, p. 70.

 

2 The exception here is in some Top 40 rap, such as MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This,” which borrowed Rick James’ “Super Freak,” and Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby,” which sampled Queen’s “Under Pressure.”