The dirty rock'n'roll of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

In the '90s, before anyone had ever heard of the White Stripes or Black Keys, and while the indie rock crowd was enthralled by Stephen Malkmus, a genuine rock misfit turned out a memorable catalog of wild, raucous and at times tough-to-to-listen-to, trebly riff rock that could best be described as blues-punk.

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion -- led by the inimitable Jon Spencer -- was an amalgam of MC5, The Stones, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis. It was a noisy, stripped down version of rock with nothing left but the sex, swagger and loads of reverb. It was a band that paid tribute to the blues while they parodied it. That distinctive sound is captured well in the retrospective of the band, Dirty Shirt Rock 'N' Roll: The First 10 Years, a 22-track best-of that came out this week.

The Blues explosion had several ties to successful indie acts of the time -- they were on the super-cool Matador records (home of Pavement, Superchunk, Liz Phair) and Beck contributed to the song "Flavor" on the band's breakthrough '94 record Orange -- but they never advanced past being a novelty rock act. In fact it's hard to believe the band even warrants a "greatest hit." Orange was acclaimed by critics of every kind and was even picked as a top 20 album of the year by The Village Voice, but the band never enjoyed the kind of wide-spread success that future "blues" revivalists like the White Stripes would enjoy in the early aughts. It was the Blues Explosion, after all, that had made it cool to rock with just guitars and a drum (no bass necessary, thank you). In the '90s alt-rock world, they were real misfits.

For the uninitiated, the video for "Wail" from the '96 album Now I got Worry summarizes the band's aesthetic. (It was directed by Wierd Al Yankovic and references The Macarena, remember that?)

Critics of the band, even those who found Orange so refreshing, wondered about the band's lack of range. JSBE managed to keep the basic formula fresh with pure energy, but Spencer never sung a song from the heart. JSBE's songs were, after all, parody... when they were sung with conviction, it was a conviction of the pelvis. When the band released 2002's Plastic Fang a loosely thematic record that centered on horror movie motifs, particularly werewolves. The record is perhaps one of the most blistering, relentless and pure fun rock records ever made (up there with Motorhead's Ace of Spades) but the rockerati were on to new things: The White Stripes and The Strokes. No one noticed that the clowns in the JSBE had pioneered the new garage rock sound nearly a decade earlier.

To be fair, while JSBE's sound was fun and the band was whip-tight (Russell Simmons' drumming is one of the greatest forces in rock) it's easy to see how one might tire of songs about rockin', drinkin' werwolves and lap dances. It's a charge that shadowed some of Spencer's closest peers, most notably Beck, another master of postmodern music deconstruction whose best strength is irony. Beck, of course, did his best to pave over the problem with his trio of "introspective" acoustic records: Mutations, Sea Change and Modern Guilt. Spencer, though, has never put down the clown mask. In fact his most recent project, Heavy Trash, is more of the same -- ironic garage rock with an emphasis on Spencer's most camped-up Elvis-like persona.

But like Motorhead (again) or even early rock acts like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, appreciation of Spencer is not dependent on identifying with him. Actually, It's impossible to do so. It's not music for the mind but for the hips. It's pure ear candy. And the best kind, at that. That comes through well on the 22 selections on Dirty Shirt Rock'N'Roll. Nearly all the tracks are from the band's four terrific mid-career albums: Orange, Now I Got Worry, Acme and Plastic Fang. Personally, I'd recommend just getting those four albums. Each, if not full of sincerity, is thematically unified and well worth a thorough listen. There's too much good stuff that doesn't make the cut here (though the selections make sense).

So no, the Blues Explosion never played serious music. It never played the blues. How could a kid from New Hampshire know the blues, anyway? As Spencer would often say -- in revival preacher tones -- "I don't play the blues. I play rock 'n' roll." He knew what he could do. If he couldn't write a song with emotional depth, he could definitely tear up a guitar and play loud rock 'n' roll. And rock he did. Nothing more, but definitely nothing less.