On stage and in the studio, Jon Spencer has destroyed and rebuilt American roots music with such ferocity and wild abandon, that it’s hard to believe there is anything left. It’s been twenty years since The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion first pressed ‘record’, and twenty years since Spencer and his A-Team of sonic terrorists tore up the indie-rock landscape with fever and a visceral, untouchable vision of rock’n'roll that did for a new wave of blues-punk primitivists what Helen of Troy’s face did for the armada.

But make no mistake: Jon Spencer was there first. He is the original. It was his sanctified outbursts and blues-bending riffs that began the new-fangled roots rock revolution and spawned countless imitators. With Pussy Galore, he gargled with the Stones and Stooges and wrestled with industrial noise and fuzzed-out fucked-up sixties garage crud…with Blues Explosion, he drove furiously into the future with incendiary spirit built from courage, audacity, and revolt. Nothing has been the same since.

JSBX is following

JSBX is not following anyone.