"BRING THAT FUCKIN' BEAT BACK!!"
Jon Spencer commands with a boom-
ing holler, lips wrapped around the mic,
trusty scuffed guitar strapped to his
disheveled and lean twisted body drip
drip drippin' in a cold sweat. Right on
cue, funky drummer Hollis Queens goes
full-throttle and puts the goods on the
line as her beautiful bleached-blonde
Medusa dreads flail through the air like
extra-thick spaghetti whips. Top it off
with Jens Jurgensen's propulsive, thud-
ding bass lines and the fun time flood
of cosmically goofy boink-boink, plink-
plinks from the man on the organs, and
you've got the icing on the cake, Char-
lie. But you know things can only get
better and ya don't stop.
Sheepishly you ask, "Pretty please,
with a cherry on top?" and all of your
dreams come true. Genie girl Cristina
Martinez magically appears and pro-
vides the pipes, from a whisper to a
scream to low guttural growls, "Fuck...
you!" she howls, stepping back with a
giggle and a wiggle, hip-shaking hand
claps and toe taps. A lustrous lock of
brunette hair streaked with a sliver of
gold hangs over her well-scrubbed
good looks, happily revealing that gor-
geously seductive smile of hers stretch-
ing from ear-to-ear. Heat lightning is
rumbling and rising while temperatures
flare and smoke rings muffle the skies.
Look! The roof's collapsing and every-
one's laughing! We're having a party,
ya'll, and what the fuck are you doing?
Blazing trails and burning rubber like
only the very finest of well-oiled mean
machines, New York City's own Boss
Hog (named after the motorcycle mag.
not the fat slob from Dukes of Hazzard)
tears through their songs at the Great
American Music Hall in San Francisco
like no other. Internationally known on
the microphone as the purveyors of
strip-tease sleaze rock, these bad-ass
cats got it goin' on strong, grinding up
40 some odd years of blues, punk, rock,
r&b, and noise into this wondrous musi-
cal goulash. After six years, two albums,
three EPs, and various songs on compi-
lations (most recently a contribution to
Alex Crawford's documentary Porn),
they show little sign of wear and tear.
Uncompromisingly abrasive and relent-
lessly booty groove-laden, Boss Hog
packs one helluva hi-speed wallop that
leaves you begging for more! More!!
MORE!!! (Yes! Yes!! YES!!!) Stripped
down to the core and locked onto some
hyperactive primal energy, the Hog oozes with
animalistic aplomb that's so in-your-face you can
smell it. (Pucker up, kid, and lick your lips. Fess
up: you've got the flava.) Don't feed the Hogs,
they say, and you can look and damn well listen,
but keep your nasty hands to yourself. You're
gonna get yours.
"I was always a control freak when I was little,"
Cristina admits without a twitch, shoveling in
another juicy bite of turkey sloppy joe. "I was
very capricious and hard to get along with. My
mother used to pay my cousins to play with me,"
she adds. "That's how bratty I was."
Cristina, the visionary soul behind Boss Hog,
sits across from me at the world-famous Tommy's
Joynt of San Francisco, an old school sports bar
whose walls are littered with related bric-a-brac
and faded memories of yesteryear. Twenty-eight
years young with nary a wrinkle in sight, she's
impeccably outfitted in black go-go boots and
fishnet stockings, a sheer black long-sleeve top
and black unmentionables, with a deep bur-
gundy lace short skirt that clings to her hips.
We're separated by a shiny metal napkin dis-
penser, salt and pepper shakers, and two small
mustard yellow ceramic containers filled with
nose-tingling horseradish. Tommy's serves up
the kind of hearty meals that would please even
the fussiest of swashbuckling pirates. (Though
today's sloppy joe didn't quite cut it for Cristina's
discriminating taste buds.)
Whether it's on-stage rockin' out to her heart's
content, tantalizing all the awkwardly dressed
fanboys, or off-stage in some godforsaken pub,
it's readily apparent who's the boss in Boss Hog.
(Tony Danza is incorrect, fooh.) Cristina glows
with a refreshingly disarming candor and guilty
optimism that finds her laughing at her own
ridiculous jokes, her glamorous presence marked
Boss Hog
STORY BY NOEL TOLENTINO PHOTOGRAPH BY BRYCE KANIGHTS
by an unflinching mannerism that radiates with
grace and confidence, the kind of energy that
makes jaws drop and throws your average bas-
tard for a loop-to-loop. "I work really hard at not
being annoyed by my own insecurities, telling
myself I'm a good person," she injects with a
laugh. "Being in a band makes things so much
easier, like a battle with my insecurities." Add a
lot of years of elbow grease and persistence and
boom! Bye-bye mindless day job.
One myth that continues to haunt Boss Hog is
that it's just a Jon Spencer side project, he of the
celebrated Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and for-
mer ringleader of the legendary splatter-blues
noise-damaged Pussy Galore of the late 80's, a
band that she, too, was involved with. Things
couldn't be farther from the truth; Jon just works
double overtime. Speculating on the rip-roaring
tumultuous days of Pussy Galore versus the cur
rent days of Boss Hog, one might even find the
stage a little too small for two strong personali
ties. "That was a big problem then," Cristina
explains. "[Pussy Galore] was supposed to be
Jon's thing and when I was in the band-and this
is completely my own interpretation-I think I
detracted from that. He wanted to be the sole
focus of the band. Then when Boss Hog
started, it was under the pretense that I
be the focus of the band. He went into
the band knowing what his position was
so it wasn't a problem. Certainly, I don't
have a problem with it."
Cristina and Jon met about ten years
ago at a Jesus and Mary Chain show
and have been mentally married ever
since. (The lovebirds legally tied the
knot in 1991, and a year later made it
official in a Catholic church in Spain.)
"Isn't that punk rock and beautiful?"
she asks with a knowing smirk. "When
they make our Sid & Nancy movie after
we kill each other in a couple of years,
the beginning will be at a Jesus and
Mary Chain concert. Wouldn't that make
a lovely made-for-TV movie?"
As the true reigning Queen and King
of rock 'n' roll, people often try to find
fault with all their gung-ho efforts, the
couple and various cohorts being the
center of much gossip and scrutiny. It's
no news that the Blues Explosion is fre-
quently criticized as being post-modern
art-rock appropriators. Even to this day.
Pussy Galore, who cleverly fused the
boozy-blues of Rolling Stones with the
industrial din of Einstürzende Neubau-
ten, is still labeled as the band made.
up of rich kids from Brown University,
which Cristina straight-up denies. "I
don't really understand or care about
that. I come from a dirt-poor, blue-col-
lar working class family," she says. Neil
Haggerty, John Hamill, Bob Bert, all of
them weren't well-off. Jon, however, did
attend Brown, but I don't know if that
should invalidate what he or anybody
else does." Shrugging off such sense-
less criticism, she adds, "No matter rich
or poor you are, you have the same
personal problems: love, alienation,
frustration, not being understood-
things that transcend economics."
Even still, Cristina is faced with the
question: "To be nude or not to be
nude?" The days when Cristina posed
nude on the covers for the Drinkin',
Lechin', & Lyin' (in which she crudely
modeled herself after Playboy's "Party
Jokes girl, Femlin) and Cold Hands (a
significantly more sophisticated nude
that inadvertently parodied a Cindy
Crawford ad for Halston) are a thing of
the past, though she expresses no
qualms about it. "If you look at the con-
tent of the records as well as the covers,
you'll see a very natural sophistication. I
think the covers always reflect the con-
tent really well," she says with much pride. It's
that particular inclination towards both glamour
and trash that's made Boss Hog what they are,
the best of both fuckin' worlds. Their latest self-
titled release is yet another collision course
exercise in the wham, bam, fuck you, ma'am
approach, swerving through a myriad of musical
styles with an added touch of silk, an aspect par-
ticularly evident in their previous offering, Girl+.
"Everything is much smoother and rounder now,
which is not to say that the passion isn't there or
that the delivery is a velvet glove sound," she
explains. And you know, she's goddamn right.
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