Rating My CD's: My Father Was Sister Ray

27. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion -- Orange

Back in December of 1999, when I still though The City Paper was worth reading, I came across one of the inescapable Best of the Nineties records, which is to say, three of them (because our authoritative critical voice must have a multiplicty of opinion!). And one of them had Orange somewhere right in the middle.

I already had Acme, and liked it, and had heard from the former internet semi-girlfriend who got me into them (more on that later), that their earlier stuff was better. I was still too young to roll my eyes at said cliche, so I schlepped into Center City Philadelphia on the train, and picked up this silver-leafed disc at the HMV on 15th and Walnut.



At least, that's the way I'm remembering it now. Really, I don't know when exactly I picked this up. It could have been before I read that article in the City Paper, it could have been after. I could have bought it at HMV, because I was there a lot. It was three glorious stories of music, with classical on top, and I used to get my kicks just looking at the little plastic packages of awesome. This was at the CD's heyday, when every kid with a modicum of disposable income had a black case filled with discs.

Every kid except me, that is. I'd spent the 80's and half the 90's utterly bewildered by popular music, completely non-conversant in its rythms and depth, owning almost none of it. I didn't even have a CD player until 1996.  The first CD I ever owned (and sold long ago) was the Forrest Gump Soundtrack. So when I started my own collection, I literally did not know where to begin.

I mention all of this because I think JSBX was the first indie-rock band I ever listened to, and possibly the last as well, because I don't know what the hell indie-rock is. I suppose it means a band on an independent label, but I'm not even sure what that means. Atlantic Records used to be considered an independent label. Does Matador qualify anymore? Does Sub Pop?

Whatever. I loved this as soon as I heard it because the labored irony of Jon Spencer's old-school bluesman persona never fooled me for a minute. Jon Spencer didn't play this way, didn't sing this way, because he thought it was funny. He did it because he thought it was fantastic, and the over-the-topness was just a veneer to keep the critics of that uber-PC decade from calling him names. There isn't a track on here that doesn't burn as bad as anything we've come to declare awesome since.

Guitar, bass, drums, voice. Warm, crackly, crunchy, dirty, loud, Loud, LOUD. Brenda couldn't resist it, and there was no reason she should.

Grade: LL