Jon Spencer's Blues Explosion Fails To Ignite - edited

Addicted To Noise Washington correspondent Chris Nelson reports: The first of two concerts to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the new Washington, D.C.-based 9:30 Club had some genuinely fine moments, but the alternative all-star show was largely a case of the whole not measuring up to the sum of its parts. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion headlined the (Mon., Dec. 30) affair, with opening performances by Cibo Matto, Southern Culture on the Skids, and the Jesus Lizard. Between sets, freakshow entrepreneur and Lollapalooza vet Jim Rose served as master of ceremonies.

the Jesus Lizard decided to do their best Rolling Stones imitation and made the crowd sit through what seemed to be an interminable wait following the band's sound check. Once they took the stage, however, the Jesus Lizard made quick work of demolishing the audience's listlessness.

Not ten seconds into the band's first song, singer David Yow was falling over himself and the stage in a fitful fury. After that, he never let up. Yow not only dove on top of the crow numerous times; he had such a command of the kids up front that he threw his microphone into their throng, knowing he'd get it back. At one point, a repeated stage diver lay on his back atop the audience. Yow reached in and grabbed the kid's collar, pulled the stage diver's face within an inch of his own. Together, they screamed "I can swim" into the Yow's mic, the kid mirroring all of Yow's intensity.

Seemingly content to let their singer draw the attention, the rest of Jesus Lizard played unassumingly but aggressively in the background. While bassist David Wm. Sims provided the band's driving foundation, guitarist Duane Denison conjured up mountains of sound from his bank of effects pedals. Drummer Mac McNeilly seemed to operate from a bounty of stored energy that he would release in explosive increments, second by second throughout each song.

Most significantly, Yow and his band acted as a foil for the increasing kitsch that had built up during Cibo Matto's and Southern Culture on the Skids' sets. With his forever forceful, occasionally disturbing performance, Yow easily compressed the evening's amassed ironic distance, then spat it out on stage throughout his set.