Notes

The following originally appeared in the GRAND JUNCTION FREE PRESS:

Like some unholy rubber monster from a Japanese daikaiju movie, punk rock of the late 1970s and early ’80s was a chaotic, multi-headed creature. 

Sprouting from one wire-hoisted vinyl neck were the pop stars — bands like the United States’ Ramones, Britain’s Buzzcocks and Ireland’s Undertones, whose notion of punk was bubblegum pop played at blistering speed on buzzsaw guitars.  Bobbing violently next to them were the political bands like the Clash and Stiff Little Fingers, who saw in punk rock’s populist ethos a platform for their anti-racist, anti-imperialist jeremiads.   And then there were the nihilists, the punks whose sloppily played pogo rock and boozy, self-destructive lifestyle were inspired by the pessimistic puke-in-public shenanigans of the Sex Pistols.

The latter camp represented the punk rock that struck the loudest chord in the United States, especially on the west coast.  The spirit of late-1970s American youth was typified by director Jon Landis’ cinematic celebration of inarticulate anarchy, ANIMAL HOUSE, which grossed more than 60-million stateside dollars.  Simultaneously, the rise of skateboard culture in California set the seedy club stage for bands like the Germs and Henry Rollins’ Black Flag, whose  songs like “Lexicon Devil,” “TV Party” and “Six Pack” glorified anomie and apathy in 4/4 time.

But standing out amidst the believe-in-nothing bands that burst onto L.A.’s late-’70s music scene was one group that not only rejected their fellow punkers’ easy indifference, but did so with uncharacteristic instrumental virtuosity and a nod to pop music’s past.  X, the Los Angeles-based quartet formed by married couple John Doe and Exene Cervenka, was unlike any other California punk band in almost every way.  Eschewing the juvenile profanity of Black Flag in favor of a lyrical poetry that had more to do with Rimbaud and Kerouac than Rotten and Vicious, and substituting the rhythmic precision of rockabilly guitarist Billy Zoom’s amped-up fretwork and classically-trained drummer D.J. Bonebrake’s pounding gallop for the discordant din of their peers, X started to develop a devoted following almost as soon as they formed in 1977. 

And they set themselves apart again three years later when they enlisted ex-Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek to produce their first album, LOS ANGELES, for the independent label Slash Records.  Manzarek would go on to helm three more long-players for X, becoming almost a fifth member by supplying sinewy organ to songs like “The World’s a Mess (It’s in My Kiss)” and their adrenalized cover of the Doors’ “Soul Kitchen.”

Although X signed with Elektra Records in 1982, saw their music videos placed in high rotation on MTV and even secured a gig on Jerry Lewis’ Muscular Dystrophy telethon(!), they never managed to escape the ghetto of critical adulation.  Doe and Cervenka divorced in the late 1980s (with Cervenka later remarrying LORD OF THE RINGS actor Viggo Mortensen), but X never officially broke up, and the band still performs sporadically.

We’ll talk about X’s incendiary career again in this space.  I hope you can join us when we further examine a band whose “unheard music” still excites almost 30 years after its recording.