Grave Digging Heavy Trash In Amsterdam

Last night the Heavy Trash played the Paradiso in Amsterdam. The first chance I got to see Jon Spencer's new outfit live. Since Blues Explosion show could sometimes be a drag, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Last time I saw Spencer perform it was with that very Blues Explosion and I walked out before the encore. Jon Spencer clearly wasn't enjoying the Blues Explosion anymore. During the endless jams on stage they were were running out of ideas. Hardly one recognizable song was played. Even though song writing was never Spencer's strongest point but dropping them all together made the show a dragging mess of half inspired blues riffs, going nowhere basically. The show started an hour and a half later because of Henry Rollins endless rambles who played the Paradiso early that night with a spoken word show. Apparently mister Rollins likes to hear himself talk because his performance stretched well beyond the planned time. Rollins was sold out, so his machismo beefed up ranting must still have an audience. The minute Jon Spencer stepped on stage it was clear tonight would be different from the Blues Explosion show I'd seen last time around. Spencer was backed by the Sadies and partner in crime Mat Verta Ray, the other half of the Heavy Trash. The Sadies had played a lukewarm twenty minutes as an opening act. Though very capable musicians the Sadies simply miss the personality to make their retro fifties act work. Personality is what Spencer has in spades. He simply needed to step on stage, looks somewhere between a young Elvis and a Johnny Cash mean, lean & strung out on pills, to give the night that extra buzz. Jon was going acoustic, while he left the electric backing to the Sadies an Verta Ray. Clearly Spencer wanted to focus on something different, explore another side of his capabilities as a performer.

As I pointed out in the album review, the Heavy Trash is much more song based. On "Going Way Out" jams and incoherent boasting on explosive blues licks are replaced by an original take on Rockabilly songwriting. The Heavy Trash is more R&R, less Blues, more Hillbilly music, less explosion. The tighter structure of the songs elevates Jon Spencer as a live performer. On "One Of These Days" Spencer even turns out to be a mean story teller going into some heavy heavy rapping with a hard Soul edge. By paying tribute to the Godfather of Soul, Jaaaaaaaames Brown, by playing his "I Don't Mind", Spencer made it no secret what inspired his sudden attempt at stand up preaching. The show was filled with classic R&R references like this. If Elvis, Johnny Cash, Eddie Cochran or Link Wray would still be alive they could sue the hell out of mister Spencer, his show is built up out of their corner stones start to finish. He has no qualms digging their graves for some nuggets. The swiping doesn't stop at licks, riffs and lines. Spencer's got the moves and the looks of a R&R renegade. The show was even spiced up with some hot sci-fi R&R honey dancers, Go-Go dancing their way from Venus to the Paradiso. Yet Spencer has this very distinct personality that ables him to get away with his pillaging of R&R past. If last night made anything clear, Spencer is the driving force behind both of his acts. But after last night I hope he will send the Explosion to its grave for good. The Heavy Trash makes good on the promise of that band in spades.



"Way Out With The Heavy Trash" is out on Yep Roc.

Live at Paradiso in available in FLAC format at the Dime or in MP3 format through Mega Upload. There's also two mediafire links for those having trouble with megaupload, disc 1 & disc 2

"I Don't Mind (live)"

Pillaging The Trash For Nuggets

With "Going Way Out With Heavy Trash" Jon Spencer's side project Heavy Trash seems to have become the his number one concern. All though none of the Explosion's members have ever mentioned disbanding, that band seem to have hit the end of their run with 2004's "Damage". Not that's a bad thing. Even though "Damage" was an exceptionally strong album for the Blues Explosion, the band seemed to have run out of steam during the tour supporting it. Blues Explosion shows were never a straight forward affair, but during that last tour the guts and glory seemed to have gone out of it. The band looked like they were fed up with being the most promising independent Blues Trash act out there. The Blues Explosion had been the critics darlings for over ten years at that point and the creativity that was once there was fading. The Blues Explosion, who were once a guaranty for lean and mean R&R shows, for on stage jams that sucked the audience in a sleazy mud pool of greasy riffs, were going through the motions. The last show I saw I walked out on them. Their half hearted fiddling seemed listless, the Blues Explosion had become boring. They were the opposite of the exiting promise they once were.

So Jon Spencer pursuing the path he took with Heavy Trash might not be a bad thing. The first album he and Verta-Ray produced carried ten times more the exitement his Blues Explosion projects had since "Now I Got Worry". Part of that exitement stems from the songs. With the Blues Explosion writing songs have always been the band's Achilles heel. Some of the best songs the Blues Explosion, or Jon Spencer, did, were collaborations with others. On "Now I've Got Worry" there was that greasy Soul stomp "Chicken Dogg" with Rufus Thomas, on "Damage" it was "Hot Gossip" with Chuck D. The songs Jon Spencer did for Andre Williams on "Black Godfather" or the songs he did with R.L. Burnside on "An Ass Pocket Of Whiskey", were stronger, more cohesive affairs than the work he did on the Blues Explosion albums. Jon Spencer is the King of riffs, pillaging Blues history like a roving buccaneer. But somehow his albums always got stuck in soundscapes, without ever developing into solid song writing. Jon Spencer's experiments were enough to make him the critics' darling but remained too inaccessible to gain him some real recognition.

Heavy Trash seems to be a step forward in that respect. Not only is Spencer covering new grounds in his raids for riffs, his teaming with Verta-Ray and the Sadies has resulted in some actual songs. Spencer broadened his horizon by adding riffs stolen from Rockabilly acts such as Link Wray, Ernest Tubb and Eddie Cochran to his repertoire on top of the John Lee Hooker and Steve Cropper riffs he all but exhausted with the Blues Explosion. Add the song writing help from Verta-Ray and you've got a Jon Spencer that actually sounds fresh and inspired again. Heavy Trash is unmistakably a Jon Spencer project, it's got the same gusto and machismo we've grown accustomed to. In that sense his songs have always been a bit one-dimensional, but hell, sometimes its just nice to give in to that. One dimensional as it may be R&R tends to sound better when people like Spencer get their mojo working. And it has been a long time since Spencer sounded this sexy and dangerous.

Double Line
They Were Kings