Play the blues, punk

Unlike almost every other form of contemporary music, blues thrives on tradition. While old school hip-hop, for example, refers to a style just over a decade old, in blues the I-IV-V chord progression remains as pertinent today as it was in Blind Lemon Jefferson’s day. Inextricably tied up in that is the question of who “owns” the tradition. Primarily developed by African-Americans, the blues provided inspiration to two generations of white rock musicians, and in some cases, offered them a convenient supply of riffs (and occasionally, entire songs) to steal.

But most rock musicians were after more than riffs. They were searching for what for lack of a better word we might call authenticity. In the 1960s, when the power of rock and roll was its newness, its oppositional stance, most bands still had a few blues covers in their repertoire, which allowed them to augment that oppositional stance with a claim to a much longer tradition. Band names are far from incidental, and it’s interesting to note how many bands turned to the blues as a way of suggesting a connection with that origin. The Rolling Stones picked their name from Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy,” Pink Floyd was assembled from the first names of two bluesmen, and the Jefferson Airplane got their title from a fictitious blues singer, Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane. Even the Lovin’ Spoonful, a band whose specialty was Top 40 pop, got their name from a line in Mississippi John Hurt’s “Coffee Blues.”

So it’s not just critical fussing to note that for most of their career the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion avoided any connection with the blues, never covering a blues standard and shunning totally the staple riffs. That’s especially striking given the Blues Explosion’s approach to the rock, soul and R&B tradition: they’ve appropriated, alluded to, and parodied everyone from Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis to Led Zeppelin, Public Enemy, and George Clinton. None of that stopped Spencer from asserting his prominence as a blues howler. Toward the end of “Flavor,” from the Blues Explosion’s 1994 album, Orange, Spencer introduces the band members, and when it comes time to introduce himself, he says “And the number one blues singer in the country...” Apparently seeing no need to give his name, Spencer instead offers his trademark shout of “Blues Explosion!” But suddenly Spencer adds, “Yeah, that’s right, we’re number one... Number one in Philadelphia, Number one in DC, Number one in Chicago...” and continues to rattle off the names of most cities in the country.

What’s interesting is that Spencer is playing on Public Enemy’s “Public Enemy No. 1” from their debut album Yo! Bum Rush the Show, in which Flavor Flav comes in with “That’s right, we’re public enemy number one in New York, public enemy number one in DC...” But Spencer’s saying something entirely different from Flavor Flav, not sampling PE, not responding to them, maybe not even making a serious claim, since he follows it with a high pitched “Sooooouuuullll,” a reference to the opening of the old “Soul Train” shows. At that point, the beat abruptly slows and neo-folkie turned alternative hip-hop star Beck comes in with a rap recorded during a phone conversation with Spencer. Whatever you might say about that pastiche of sources, one thing is clear: it’s not blues.

If the Blues Explosion hold a less than reverent attitude toward “the tradition” and have essentially ignored the blues, why did they team up with R.L. Burnside? If you believe the press releases, Burnside is one of the last remaining bluesmen with any claim to “authenticity.” Son of a Mississippi sharecropper, himself a former sharecropper and juke joint proprietor, he learned guitar from Muddy Waters, who married Burnside’s first cousin. He also played with Mississippi Fred MacDowell in the country supper circuit, and was nominated last year for two W.C. Handy awards, including “Best...