She was an hyperactive half-Spanish teenager living with her grandmother in Washington DC.
He was a Brown University dropout newly arrived in town.
Both were young rebels.
Both were ambitious.

Phase 1: prelude

The fatal encounter between Cristina Martinez and Jon Spencer took place at a Jesus&Mary Chain show in 1985. Both were frequent caller at the underground hardcore-punk scene of Washington D.C.
That encounter ignited a burst of events which finally ended with Cristina at the lead of a band on her own: the Boss Hog.

Jon was already singing and playing guitar for a brand new noise band called Pussy Galore. Within three months of Pussy Galore's formation, the group had already played every Washington's rock club and felt that the capital was a "dead end" and a "loser town". Pussy Galore then decided to relocate to New York City.

Cristina moved along with the gang. At this moment she was not taking part of Pussy Galore's "experimentation". She was supposed to attend the N.Y. University Summer Film program but, shortly after, she dropped and officially joined Pussy Galore as 3rd guitarist, an instrument she barely handled (but after all we are talking about "noise"-punk).

Phase 2: Pussy Galore

The advent of Cristina Martinez among Pussy Galore crew spurred in constant, sometimes ferocious quarreling with second guitarist Julie Cafritz. Cristina put it this way: "We were both struggling at getting Jon Spencer attention. Julie because of the band, me because of sentimental reasons".

Between leaving or killing Julie Cafritz, Cristina (surprisingly) chose to leave and started collaborating with Honeymoon Killers.

Eventually Pussy Galore finally broke up over a heated dispute regarding a sum of money ($5,000), whose circumstances still remain unclear.
Jon Spencer started moonlighting in seven different bands, including The Gibson Brothers, Live Skull, and Born to Lose.

Phase 3: Boss Hog embrional

It was 1989. The advent of Boss Hog was near to come. But at the beginning the Boss Hog was an "All-Star" line up of musicians whose main interests laid elsewhere. A side project rather than a real band on its own.

This was probably consequence of Boss Hog's much accidental debut.

Cristina and Jon were advised there was a gap to fill next Saturday at CBGB ( the legendary NY rock club), due to a last minute cancellation. They had less than one week to put a band together with few time to practice. On the spur of the moment they decided the new band's name, "Boss Hog", which was taken from a biker magazine (not from the "Dukes of Hazzard" TV show, as is usually assumed). For Cristina it was going to be first show as lead singer.

The show at CBGB went right (maybe even to the surprise of Boss Hog members) and the band became an instant sensation. Still one must notice that this could have been due, at least partially, thanks to Cristina's decision to perform entirely naked!

Anyway the Boss Hog experiment was worth to continue. and the first CD was released in 1990. At this time member of the bands were Charlie Ondras and Pete Shore (from Unsane), Jerry Tell (from Honeymoon Killers) and Kurt Wolf (another survivor of Pussy Galore) plus Jon and Cristina.

People kept coming and going and jealousy and resentment begun to spread. Cristina felt it was no longer possible to maintain Boss Hog as an unstable collection of talented ego.

The "All-Star" lineup was quickly turning into "All-Star" fistfight.

Phase 4: Boss Hog maturity

At this stage two new characters entered on stage.

The first was a German factory worker named Jens Jurgensen.
His hobby was building fully functional mechanical arms in the basement of his West Berlin squat. When Pussy Galore toured Europe Jens and Jon Spencer met during the Berlin show. The German brought one of his mechanical arms and shook Jon Spencer's hand with it.
He told Jon that he was going to transfer in New York to attend the Pratt Institute of Design. The two agreed to "integrate processes,".
Jen arrived in N.Y. but his stay at Pratt was short-lived: within two months he was kicked out for vandalism, which he maintains was a simple failure of the administration to comprehend "a series of conceptual acts."

When Jon and Cristina scrapped the whole band restarting from the scratch, it was Jens to be called as the new bass player.
In Cristina's opinion, a major benefit of Jen's "buzzsaw overdrive" bass sound was that it eliminated the need for an extra guitar player, leaving "one less ego and one less person to pay."

Second character was the chatty Hollis Queens.

She was selling quartz crystals in a magic shop near N.Y.U. when she met the members of Boss Hog at a flea market.
She came to substitute the previous drummer who had converted to Buddhism.
Although she had never played the drums before, an ex-boyfriend in the N.Y. hardcore band Cro-Mags had given her a set for her birthday. More importantly, she displayed an unusually positive attitude that the group felt might be an asset. After a few practices, Hollis was in.
At this point, says Jon, Boss Hog finally began to feel "more like a band and less like an indie rock supergroup".

So this is how it all begun
If you've enough of the story
and wanna hear about the music
it's time for Discography

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Jon & Cristina

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To live your life without regret

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