Jon Spencer – NYtimes.com: The Insider | Jon Spencer (PRESS, US)

Culture | By CHRISTINE MUHLKE | August 10, 2010, 4:42 pm

After a six-year hiatus, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion — the stripped-down blues-rock outfit that put sweat on the brow of the Lower East Side in the ’90s — is back in its leather-panted garage-stomp glory, reissuing key albums like “Extra Width” and releasing the compilation “Dirty Shirt Rock (En Roll: The First Ten Years).” At a recent performance at the Pitchfork Music Festival, Spencer, the guitarist Judah Bauer (who also plays with Cat Power’s Dirty Delta Blues Band) and the drummer Russell Simins showed the skinny-jeans crowd where skinny pants came from as Spencer whipped up the audience wearing rubber-coated denim on a 95-degree day. Still hot after all these years. Here, Spencer shares his insider picks.

Name: Jon Spencer

Age: 45

Occupation: Rock ‘n’ roll

Home base: Manhattan

Music venue: Bowery Ballroom

Favorite concert: Blues Explosion at Osheaga Festival, Montreal

Music: The soundtrack to “Bullitt” by Lalo Schifrin

Record store: Academy

Equipment: Like what? Is this a sexual question? Ludlow Guitar shop and Main Drag Music.

Provisions: Seltzer, seltzer, seltzer.

Restaurant: Most recently visited: the Meatball Shop on Stanton Street.

Drink: Red wine

Last call: I’m in bed by then.

For gifts: Union Square Wine

Retail standbys: The Strand, Ludlow Guitar Shop.

Pants: Shorts right now. Damn, it’s hot! For Pitchfork, I wore rubberized denim pants that were custom-made (maybe 10 years ago) by Agatha (http://www.agathaleather.net/), formerly of Ludlow Street. Agatha moved to L.A. in the early aughties. For a while her sister ran the New York business, but that shop is now long gone.

Hair/grooming: Lotsa grease!

Momentary style obsessions: Tracey Walter in “Repo Man.”

Reading material: “Blood Meridian,” by Cormac McCarthy.

Art pick: Cosmic Comics, Forbidden Planet.

Museum: Madison Square Post Office

Movie: “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”

Vacation destination: Campanario de Badajoz, Extremadura, Spain.

Something you are looking forward to this fall: Cool weather.

Jon Spencer’s Neighborhood: maps.google.com