Get out your calculator slide ruleNo matter which way you fold and bend, turn
Boy you never gonna top us
You're never gonna beat us
Can you dig my band?!
Takin' orders from a higher power
Ladies and gentlemen
I got a bad feeling, but right now
It feels so good.
I don't know what exactly Jon Spencer is selling, but I'm buying.
If his next album is a single track detailing the location of a secret cult gathering where he'll scream into a microphone hooked up to a set of Marshall stacks and preach the Gospel of arsenic-laced Kool-Aid as a herd of ghost-faced robe-donned sinners fight for the first cup of death, you better fucking believe I'm high-tailing my sorry ass to join him in the promised land.
The man's a huckster for sure, a dirty son of a bitch playing some angle, trying to fuck me over somehow someway for some reason, just like he did with every Pussy Galore album that I eat up with reckless abandon and a joyless misery that purifies my soul just as it withers it away, but goddammit all to hell my wallet is still wide fucking open.
I'm a macaroni man stick like spaghetti
Snap crackle in the rock and roll heat
This is rock 'n roll. This is pure fucking soul. This is everything anybody will ever need ever. THIS MAN WILL SAVE YOU. THIS MAN, THIS HERO, THIS GOD AMONGST MEN WILL LEAD YOU ASTRAY AND TURN YOU INTO A BELIEVER OF THAT HOLIEST OF GOODS THAT THE LORD HIMSELF WOULD FALL PREY TO IF HIS DIVINE BODY WAS EVER BROUGHT DOWN INTO THE PRESENCE OF THIS PROPHET, NAY, THIS SAVIOR, THIS SAVIOR OF ROCK 'N ROLL, OF MUSIC, OF THE GOOD OF YOU AND I AND EVERYBODY ELSE LOST IN THIS GOD FORSAKEN EXISTENCE WE CALL THE STOPPING POINT. THIS IS IT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. THIS IS WHERE IT ALL BEGINS AND ENDS. RAISE YOUR HANDS AND BE HEALED.
I got the blues alright
I feel so bad
People, we gotta get on up
And shut this down
Cuz it ain't right
And I know I know
That there's something better
Out there
Cuz baby, I love you
And see the sky outside open up
And everything turn blue.
This is not just what rock music has been missing--this is what life has been missing. We could ALL learn something from Jon Spencer.
Give me some of your stink
I'm gonna put my stink over your stink
Get that sweet stink
Ain't gonna help ya, ain't gonna help ya at all
You got that fat lip baby let's have a ball.
Let's have a fucking BALL. Let's overlap our fucking STINKS and let it all just fucking HAPPEN. Why overthink it? We've all got our stink, and our whole fucking lives are spent just trying to lay it down on another person and get ourselves high off the sweet sweet stench of it all. Did Jesus tell you that? No. Jon Spencer told you that. Now tell me that isn't more fucking PROFOUND and REAL than anything you can conjure up out of the Gospels. I fucking dare you.
Good evening ladies and gentleman, it is an honor to be here tonight with you everybody.
I wanna say hello and welcome to the party.
We are Blues Explosion and wanna play some rock 'n' roll.
Now ladies and gentleman this is not the devil's music but it feels like the devil’s time.
We are not in the service of the devil but sometimes I feel his sick breath on my behind.
Said I feel so bad sometimes.
I wanna sing about it in my song, I want everybody, I said I want everybody…
I want someone to help me with these blues
I'm gonna hang up my rock 'n' roll shoes
Take one in the head and one off the wrist
Won't you help me, please help me Miss...
These words were written in 2004. 2004. On the ninth track of the album. It took fifty years for somebody to come out and describe rock 'n roll, to truly put into words what all this shit is about, why anybody cares, why anybody bothers to keep punching out those chords day in and day out, why it's still fucking here when people were calling it dead before the fucking Beatles were out of their Huggies, and this man has the balls to call it our with a grandiose GOOD EVENING LADIES AND GENTLEMEN two-thirds of the way through the record. If that don't convince you he's the end-all source of wisdom in this world I don't know what will.
There is a devil. There is a devil in us all. The devil in me sure as fuck isn't a red guy with a pitchfork, and if that's your devil than you have more issues than Jon Spencer could even begin to deal with. But it's in us. It takes a different form every time, it affects us all in its own sick fucking way, but it's there. And playing rock 'n roll is about as close as you can get to the fucker without succumbing to him.
That's all rock 'n roll really is in the end, isn't it? Tip toeing the line between you and the devil, and dragging anybody around you just as fucking close to that line as you'll dare to get. Some people take that extra step and get sucked down over the edge, God only fucking knows how many bodies are littered down at the bottom of that trench, but that fear, that irrational chance taken staring down the face of pure evil and pain and agony lying not so deep within you is what makes it all okay, it's what keeps you from bowing down and snapping and just roaring out in acceptance of the torment within us all, or even worse, giving it a different name, turning it into a red fucker with a pitchfork, or denying it all together, and in the process denying yourself, denying everything about you, rejecting your fucking humanity for a false sense of stability and reconciliation that screams out day after day "THEY'RE THE BAD ONES, NOT ME, I HAVE JESUS FUCKING CHRIST IN MY SOUL, THE DEVIL CAN DO NO HARM TO ME."
Well guess what. I have Jon Spencer in my soul. And he could kick your soul's ass any fucking day of the week.
Get up and greet the brand new day
Feelin' so good
Everything's comin' up our way
Baby, you got on that favorite dress of mine
You lookin' so good now baby
Oh I can see everything
In all that mess with the sunshine
You're so fine, more than fine
The smile in my eye
I said you're blowin' my mind.
Don't complicate things. It doesn't get much deeper than this. Enjoy it all for what it is.
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