When the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion came shooting out of the womb in 1992, Clinton-era optimism was just beginning to ferment. But the landscape was still lousy with fifth-wave punks miming Black Flag and the Ramones; torpid Zep and Sabbath revivalism; and studied retro garage crud that quickly diluted itself into a fashion statement. Worse yet, a bumper crop of moping, belly-button-picking indie "rock" that didn't rock (let alone roll) was about to be harvested and threshed into a new wave of pabulum for the college radio set - which should have been reason enough for even the spineless nerds in the glee club to drop out and turn on to a steady diet of Charley Patton, truck-driver crank and corn liquor.

Spencer may have been the focal point, but the other two men in this jihad, Judah Bauer and Russell Simins, posed no small threat. Simins' take-no-prisoners approach to the drums - thrashing, swinging and leaning into long locomotive rolls on the snare drum - and Bauer's thump and twang, yanked from his Telecaster with oily precision and venom - were the thermonuclear core of the reactor. Except for lack of a traditional four-string bass - Spencer's guitar, which often sounded somewhere between a vacuum cleaner and a well-tempered garbage disposal, was usually more than enough to hold down the dirtier end of the sound spectrum - the Blues Explosion was every bit a band in the classic sense. There were no extra parts. No one was replaceable.

-Mike Edison
 
On May 18th, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion will reissue the 1997 live album, Controversial Negro, that had previously only been available in Japan. The band will also reissue 1996's Now I Got Worry. Both albums will be out on Majordomo <http://www.majordomorecords.com/> /Shout! Factory and feature bonus tracks.