There comes a time when nothing else but a brain-hammering session with Pussy Galore‘s 1989 album Dial M For Motherfucker will do. And not just to clear the house of your so-called friends who’ve been sloshing cheap wine on your expensive new carpet all night. (Although it might work for that, too.) Jon Spencer, the man who shocked and awed the world with the noisiest band in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, went on to form three more exhilarating combos: Boss Hog (with his wife Cristina Martinez), Heavy Trash (his most recent band) and, of course, the stunning Blues Explosion, whose recent career-spanning compendium, Dirty Shirt Rock ‘N’ Roll (Majordomo), tells you plenty about the DNA of the man in charge. (The label is reissuing expanded versions of out-of-print Blues Explosion albums Now I Got Worry and Controversial Negro this week.) Spencer is guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.
Spencer: I really got into Alex Chilton‘s stuff through Tav Falco’s Panther Burns. Alex was in that band and played on probably the first four or five albums. Tav Falco combined funk and the blues, kind of like the Cramps and the Gun Club. People would ask me where the Blues Explosion was coming from, and there was a history there with those kinds of bands. The first Panther Burns record I heard was Behind The Magnolia Curtain, just a really, really great record. And there’s a lot of clues in there. Most of the Panther Burns records are all covers. So, like, what’s this crazy song? And then you could see who wrote it and find a record by that artist. I’ve met Tav, and I think he’s living in Vienna now. He’s either teaching high-school English or he’s teaching the tango.
Video after the jump.
