With guitars, keyboards, drums, bass, and a brass section, last minute local replacements Systemaddicts are a good choice for an opening act. Their songs are driven by the beat, wedding punk attitude to a pair of horns that give the whole affair a ska twist.
The emphasis on volume makes the band sound like it’s searching for a dynamic that will result in more than the sum of its parts. The high voltage guitar allows only occasional bursts of brass and keyboards to cut through and briefly state the melody. With a new CD out this month, hopefully the recorded mix allows the keyboards and brass to be more clearly heard.
Nearing the end of their Australasian round of shows before heading to Europe for a long, grinding tour in support of last year’s Meat And Bone, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion are met with an expectant audience. Composed predominantly of 30-40 year old males with a smaller complement of slightly younger female members, all are eager to find a strategic spot to view the band.
When they come onto the stage, immediately the game is on. A lurch into pure punk is followed by a lurch into leftfield with a Hendrix-like flourish, then obscured and wrenched in a different direction by the speedy drums of Russell Simins. Without stopping for breath the band race into another sonic assault, this time with a touch of bad Kurt Weill dissonance thrown into the mix.
A change of gear is wrenched out of the chaos by some Ramones-like foolishness combined with burlesque bump and grind. Anti-music Music blurs into a suspended rhythm , lurking in the air a la ‘Crosstown Traffic’, and is followed by a growling descent into grunge that shoots out the other side in Hendrix-drenched overtones. Something like Iron Butterfly and the MC5 battling it out for dominance.
Then, from the stage: “Are You Ready?”
What follows was a series of drum drops and a tornado of sound from guitarist Judah Bauer, as an overdriven sleazy RnB riff gives way to a hand clapping rave-up and another sonic onslaught. Next up, a military drumbeat introduces another foray into a dark pocket of groove and dissonance; Hendrix reversed, Tim Buckley dug up and defiled.
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This segues into a Soul-Medicine Show and then a chromatic noise machine. Harp sounds made by Bauer squeeze their way out from the noise zone, but it doesn’t herald a visitation from the Blues – rather a blues sound-alike riff, adding to the cacophonous, Theatre of Cruelty soundscape. Like a choreographed train wreck unfolding in your ears at 4am.
Tension is created and maintained throughout the set by the determination of the musicians as they twist and turn, refusing to settle into a groove for more than a bar or two. Changing between blinks, we are in the disco from hell.
A distant cousin to a Beatles riff becomes a Chuck Berry tune twisted to infinity. Then arrives carnival spruiker Spencer to entice the audience to yell out “Blues Explosion”, only to follow with another deep grunge assault. Or is it ‘Stranger In the Night’ disguised as a Black Sabbath out-take? To paraphrase Top Of The Pops, “It hasn’t got a beat and you can’t dance to it.”
It’s a tour de noise, verging on a Stockhausen-like wall of incoherency. Is it a homage to King Crimson, a new kind of Dalek, or perhaps the ghost of Muddy Waters emerging and wreaking vengeance?
As we fall out into the night, there is an unspoken consensus. Almost impossible to rate, the gig exists in an unclassifiable space. It is the best of what it is, because you simply won’t find anything like it elsewhere.
