Search - The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion :: Now I Got Worry

Commercial Backslide

Paul Rayson | 07/04/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Orange, from 1994, had been The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's biggest seller. What they followed it up with two years later, though, almost guaranteed a commercial backslide. It still had the distorted funk of the previous album, but they'd turned up the chaos.



The extra tracks on this reissue make a kind of alternate Now I Got Worry. The more sedate grooves represent the direction that market forces would've expected after Orange. They're made up of B-sides and other songs from the Worry sessions, together with four hilarious radio adverts for the album ("let the Blues Explosion give you two kinds of love").



Money Mark had turned up here and there on Now I Got Worry as a kind of Nicky Hopkins to the Blues Explosion's Rolling Stones, especially on "Can't Stop". He's on half of the extra songs, though, and his contribution to the alternate vision of Now I Got Worry is in line with his previous work. He'd already worked with The Dust Brothers as well as the Beastie Boys, and he'd released his own album, the easy listening lo-fi funk Money's Keyboard Repair.



The liner notes describe how the Blues Explosion became close to the keyboardist when they supported a Beastie Boys arena tour, and another collaborator in fact is Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, who scratches cool samples over "Cool Vee". The previously unreleased "Roosevelt Hotel Blues", meanwhile, features both Money Mark and Beck on keyboards. It all helps make a seriously great bonus album. Now I Got Worry proper is the best, though. It's like the radio advert says, "shake it baby, shake it mama, shake it, shake it."



"But baby don't break it.""