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Jon Spencer Blues Explosion Battle Zombie Squares in ‘Bag of Bones’ Video

jon spencer blues explosion, bag of bones

It’s hard to know when to start and stop quoting a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion song. The band’s titular leader is a born frontman — a consummate alpha male whose every lyric seems to drip with swagger and muscle. He’s the brash American stud counterpart to Nick Cave’s brooding Australian lecher, and a single like “Bag of Bones” drops a tattoo-worthy nugget every 10 seconds. Exhibit A: “Don’t got to wait for Halloween to scream and wail!” Exhibit B: “I’m an old bag of bones but beleeeeve I get down, come on!” Exhibit C: “There’s a shortcut to hell through the discotheque!”

There’s a little James Brown in the man as well, as he shouts “Pick it up-pa!” between spirited lamentations about there being too many squares and too much mediocrity in the world. This is not fair-weather rock ‘n’ roll — this stuff demands that you shake what your mama gave you into all that’s left of your corporeal being is, indeed, a bag of bones. Music video directors Lucy Dyson and Joseph Jensen clearly understood this in assembling the freaky clip above, a mishmash of collage, cartoon, and film that’s as wild and colorful as the song it accompanies. “Bag of Bones” hails from 2012’s Meat and Bone, the John Spencer Blues Explosion’s first album of new material in eight years.