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The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
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Album: The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: Orange
# Song Title   Time
1)    Bellbottoms More Info... 0:05
2)    Ditch More Info... 0:02
3)    Dang More Info... 0:02
4)    Very Rare More Info... 0:03
5)    Sweat More Info... 0:03
6)    Cowboy More Info... 0:03
7)    Orange More Info... 0:03
8)    Brenda More Info... 0:03
9)    Dissect More Info... 0:02
10)    Blues X Man More Info... 0:03
11)    Full Grown More Info... 0:03
12)    Flavor More Info... 0:06
13)    Greyhound More Info... 0:04
 
Album: The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: Orange
# Song Title   Time
1)    Bellbottoms More Info... 0:05
2)    Ditch More Info... 0:02
3)    Dang More Info... 0:02
4)    Very Rare More Info... 0:03
5)    Sweat More Info... 0:03
6)    Cowboy More Info... 0:03
7)    Orange More Info... 0:03
8)    Brenda More Info... 0:03
9)    Dissect More Info... 0:02
10)    Blues X Man More Info... 0:03
11)    Full Grown More Info... 0:03
12)    Flavor More Info... 0:06
13)    Greyhound More Info... 0:04
 
Product Description
Product Details
Performer Notes
  • This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
  • The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: Jon Spencer, Russell Simins, Judah Bauer.
  • Recorded at Waterworks Studios, New York, New York between 1993 & 1994.
  • In the aftermath of Extra Width's success, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion were drawing large crowds virtually everywhere they played. It both gratified them and made them suspicious. The track "Afro" on the previous album provided a clue as to the forthcoming no man's land JBSE would raucously explore. Orange is almost entirely new sonic terrain -- but it keeps the trio's trademark sweaty, musical terrorism and hedonistic rage up front. "Bellbottoms" kicks it off with a distorted two-chord guitar vamp, juxtaposed against strings worthy of the Love Unlimited Orchestra in full dramatic swell. Drummer Russell Simins meets Spencer and Judah Bauer's guitars with cracking snares and breaking beats, rolling them out like staccato machine-gun fire yet perfectly on the one. The sound feels like electricity actively coursing through the spine. Funk, hypnotic thrashing white-boy blues, and punk fistfight one another for dominance in a careening frenetic dance number that shakes the very foundations of rock & roll while defining its spirit. This is the liftoff point through the bravado of James Brown, the self-destructive gospelized pill-fueled hellish visions of Jerry Lee Lewis, the sheer exaggerated funk of blaxploitation soundtracks, and Saturday-night knife-fight juke-joint blues. "Ditch" melds the burn-it-down boogie of R.L. Burnside, the sloppy vibe of Exile-era Rolling Stones, the Cramps' demonic swagger, the rhythmic attack of the Meters, and the overdriven volume of the Stooges live. "Blues X Man" marries 12-bar back-country roadhouse blues and back-alley back-seat eros to Lower East Side boasting about the Blues Explosion's musical virility. It begins sparse and skeletal before adding a female backing chorus and DJ turntablism, turning traditionalism upside down and scraping country and city down to their nubs in order to make everything bleed. "Greyhound," the set's final track, rocks hip-hop drums and '70s rock guitars on stun that riff hypnotically and knottily; two-note vamps substitute for solos before the entire thing morphs into pure breakbeat cacophony and smears turntable scratches across the mix as it crashes out the door. Orange is the most commercially successful set JBSE ever turned in, but that's beside the point. In the 21st century, it sounds every bit as messed up, necessary, and frenzied as it did in 1993. ~ Thom Jurek
Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (12/29/94-1/12/95, p.181) - "...With second guitarist Judah Bauer and drummer Russell Simins...[Spencer] wails fractured postmodern bluesoid stuff that's as weird, fun and spooky as original blues-dripping rockabilly."

Entertainment Weekly (11/25/94, p.77) - "...New Yorker Spencer and his two bandmates jam like it's blues night in the psych ward....The resulting cross between rock and insanity can be thrilling in its fervency..."

- Rating: B

Q (10/94, p.126) - 3 Stars - Good - "...Blues Explosion manage to work on entertaining, lurching variations on the power trio format with Spencer himself exhibiting a hectoring deference to both Mark E. Smith and Jerry Lee Lewis..."

Alternative Press (12/94, p.86) - "...ORANGE is an ambitious, well-executed release that shows growth while still shaking some action..."

Option (3-4/95, p.135) - "...the third official Blues Explosion album peppers its scrungy, bar-based blues with funk, rockabilly, disco, Stax soul, several Elvis shudders, a bit o'white noise, and Beck's infamous phoned-in guest rap....More importantly, it works..."

Village Voice (2/28/95) - Ranked #16 in the Village Voice's 1994 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll.

Billboard (p.36) - "Fast, punky and laced with nods to the sounds of the '70s..."

Mojo (Publisher) (p.58) - Ranked #68 in Mojo's "100 Modern Classics" -- "Beefheart, Stax, James Brown: all get stomped under the Cuban heel of Russell Simins' monster beat."

Mojo (Publisher) (p.112) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "ORANGE was the blues as heard from the streets of Manhattan, post-Public Enemy, punk rock and all that other New York noise."

NME (Magazine) (12/24/94, p.22) - Ranked #16 in NME's list of the `Top 50 Albums Of 1994.'

Pitchfork (Website) - "The Blues Explosion were honest, organic experimenters -- fusing tons of different styles into their musical assault without compromising their ferocity or making any of it sound forced."

Record Collector (magazine) (p.94) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[The] balance of rough with smooth, the comic with the deadly serious, was perfect."
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