Boxing Day blues

I was scrounging through my banker's boxes, looking for pictures of The High Strung, when I came across my CDs from The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion gig at Babylon on July 19, 2004. I thought most of the shots had been posted at Birdman Sound or on here, but it turns out that apart from a few lo-res photos at pennyblackmusic.com, and a single snap way back in 2005, nothing had seen the light of day. That's just plain silly.

Explosive Explosion action!



"Would someone please return the photographer to the upright position?"



That's too far!



Much better.





Sometimes a man must testify.



Spencer works the audience.



"Yeeeeeeeah!



Off course he came back later with Matt Verta-Ray and The Sadies as Heavy Trash. The band released Jukebox Explosion, a singles collection, on In The Red in October.

Rockabilly recyclers

Jon Spencer has been twisting music around since his days in Pussy Galore - he messed with blues rock in his Blues Explosion and now he's doing the same thing in Heavy Trash with Speedball Baby guitarist Matt Verta-Ray. He could probably do a lot of the stuff he did on stage at Babylon Friday night with the Blues Explosion. A big part of his appeal are his moves and vocal mannerisms, none of which have changed since his main outfit played a show in the same place a while back, and like that show the crowd ate it up.
Before Heavy Trash hit the stage, The Sadies - who have been backing Spencer and Verta-Ray on this part of their tour - warmed the audience up with a dozen of their own tunes.

Dallas Good, much the same as he left us.



His brother Travis shouts it out.



The aforementioned Mike "Snake" Belitsky.



Good and Sean Dean, the hirsute half of The Sadies.



Sadies action!







After the shortest Sadies set in recorded history, Dallas introduced Heavy Trash and the group segued directly into the Heavy Trash part of the program.



Jon Spencer - likely going "Uh-huh!"





Matt Verta-Ray - I have some pictures of him at Bluesfest 2003 laying around somewhere.







Spencer gets on down.



"My lawyer has just reminded me that there's one thing I have to do ... can you say 'YEAH!!!'"



Of course The Sadies were doing their thing while this was going on - Dallas played harmonica and piano in addition to his usual Telecaster wizardry.



Travis again ...



Trash action!







Spencer had the crowd "Get down!" during HT's surprisingly long encore (10 songs? 11?). For the most part, they did. In addition to the standard issue bigger versions reached by clicking on the appropriate picture, I also made up this half-assed panorama shot.



"You're gonna look pretty funny up there all by yourself."



A great end to a superstrong bill.

Bluegrass'n'billy

A nice eclectic show from self-proclaimed "Bluegrass Madmen" The D'Rangers; The Sadies, playing the shortest set from them that I've ever witnessed; and Heavy Trash's strutting take on rockabilly.

Three of the D*Rangers (not shown, their fiddler and washtub bassist).



Two of the Sadies (not shown, one brother and one Snake).



And the core of Heavy Trash - Matt Verta-Ray and Jon Spencer (not shown, The Sadies working as their band).



Good fun from all three bands. More later.