los angeles

X were locked out of the public eye, talking out of harmony with this hotter than hot, hectic punkabilly nausea.   The group had formed in 1977 and became a vital part of the developing punk scene, releasing a single "Adult Books" / "We're Desperate"  the next year on the local Dangerhouse label.  They moved to Slash Records for their debut album.  'Los Angeles' was recorded at Golden Sound Studios in Hollywood, California with Ray Manzarek of The Doors producing.   The sessions featured the quartet of Exene Cervenka on  vocals;  John Doe on bass and vocals;  Billy Zoom on guitar;  and D.J. Bonebrake on drums;   with Manzarek playing organ.   

Cervenka looks back:   "John [Doe] and I both came to L.A. from the East Coast. I came from Florida and he came from Baltimore. We met at this poetry workshop in Venice, California where Jim Morrison used to hang out and where the skate kids were hanging out in '76, and we hit it off immediately. And he had already met Billy [Zoom] and the band started. Like, punk was starting, the band was starting, poetry was happening. It was amazing. And in the meantime you had Fleetwood Mac, Linda Ronstadt, the Record Plant--which is a recording studio--cocaine, limousines. You know, swimming pools, movie stars, the whole thing, right? And we were part of these poverty-stricken people trying to make it as alternative beings in the universe. So it was a love/hate thing from the day we got there. And it's always been a love/hate thing."  

Doe delineates:   "X was always press-driven because we didn’t have airplay, or exposure to radio airplay, or big crowds, because no one would have us open for them. So we were press-driven and, I guess, controversial in that we have a core audience of subculture. There are two typical responses to X. It’s either, “You changed my life,” or “Who?” ... [X outlasted other bands for] all the reasons that anyone survives. A certain amount of ambition, a certain amount of talent, and determination. We like making a living playing music. I think that X had songs and musicianship that were a little apart from other bands in L.A., and maybe if they had more of the ambitions or determination or the other elements, they might have found something that was as lasting ... Punk rock was anything that wasn’t old and in the way. I don’t know who coined that phrase. There’s a line that was drawn in 1975, maybe even a little earlier. It was, “This is no longer corporate rock, this is no longer glam.” Iggy and the MC5 were doing it, but they were doing it in a little more of a vacuum. Once the New York bands started doing their thing, which was a spin-off of maybe Andy Warhol and the New York Dolls and that sort of thing, it went over to England, came around to L.A., and went to San Francisco, Boston, D.C. and a million other places. It was in the air and all those bands were punk rock bands, but punk rock wasn’t codified and it wasn’t just one sound. Maybe by 1979, or even earlier, it became more of a thing. When the hardcore scene started coming in, the bands sounded more similar to each other ... I think it was more a descendent of what Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent were doing, and maybe with the Ramones and Blondie you would have to include doo-wop bands like Darlene Love or the Ronettes. If you take Jimmy Reed and then listen to Chuck Berry, Chuck Berry took Jimmy Reed from 33 and sped it up to 45, and we took Chuck Berry and sped it up to 78. We couldn’t get airplay because punk rock was dangerous. The hair bands, or whatever you want to call that, were not dangerous because it was cartoonish, and it also played into, in my opinion, sort of a male-dominated, “Women are just playthings, an item, a possession.” Those bands got plenty of exposure, but punk rock was for real dangerous. It was openly gay, openly druggies, you can’t control me, I don’t want to play your game, f--k you. I think we saw ourselves in a timeline of, “There is rock and roll, and there were the beatniks and the drug-addled hippies like the Doors and the Rolling Stones in their ’70s phase, and OK, it’s punk rock’s turn.” There were all these bands and we pissed off the media to the point that they said, “Oh no.” The record companies were pretty fat and set in their ways and they didn’t want to know about these upstarts, so nothing happened."






http://xtheband.com/







"Los Angeles"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exs-mcKApxI




"Nausea"
from  'The Decline of Western Civilization'




"Johnny Hit and Run Paulene"  




"The World's a Mess; It's in My Kiss"  
on New Wave Theater 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjJ6m00r6pg







'Los Angeles' 
full album:




All tracks written by John Doe and Exene Cervenka except as indicated.

Side A
1. "Your Phone's Off the Hook, But You're Not"     2:25
2. "Johnny Hit and Run Paulene"     2:50
3. "Soul Kitchen"   John Densmore, Robbie Krieger, Ray Manzarek; Jim Morrison 2:25
4. "Nausea"     3:40
5. "Sugarlight"     2:28
Side B
6. "Los Angeles"     2:25
7. "Sex and Dying in High Society"     2:15
8. "The Unheard Music"     4:49 
9. "The World's a Mess; It's in My Kiss"     4:43

bonus tracks 
"I'm Coming Over" (Demo version) – 1:24
"Adult Books" (Dangerhouse Rough Mix version) – 3:21
"Delta 88" (Demo version) – 1:28
"Cyrano de Berger's Back" (Rehearsal) – 3:01
"Los Angeles" (Dangerhouse version) – 2:14

'X: The Unheard Music' documentary

more fun in the new world

X moved to a major label and brought old and new styles into their musical stew for this ambitious amalgamation of rockabilly, funk, and punk.  Having established themselves as the most visible of bands in the L.A. punk scene with three amazing albums ('Los Angeles', 'Wild Gift', and 'Under the Big Black Sun') on independent Slash Records, the group secured a deal with Elektra Records.

The band returned to the studio with Ray Manzarek, who had produced their first three albums.  The sessions for 'More Fun in the New World' took place at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles and featured Billy Zoom on guitar; D. J. Bonebrake on drums and percussion; Exene Cervenka on vocals; and John X. Doe on vocals and bass.  

The album is characterized by an embrace of a more commercial sound that borrows from older forms.  Doe explains:    "Sure, we're a part of the past--everybody is. Five years ago, when we were starting out, we had to reject that to be ourselves, to come up with the X sound. Cutting myself off from the past at the beginning freed me to be myself...You let it back in, because it's great music, and it has just as much soul as the music you created when you threw it all away. You get to a point where you're so conscious of your own sound, so confident, that you can incorporate something else into it...Humor keeps rock 'n' roll from getting overbearing and morbid and completely sobering.  Yeah, you have to write about the unhappy parts of your life, but you have to balance that out with fun. Unfortunately, after the hardcore bands took over punk, that humor got lost...I always thought that the point of punk was coping with bullshit, and humor is an important part of that. That's why I changed my name to John Doe--not to be a rock star or to be taken seriously, but because I thought it was funny, like it was funny Declan McManus changed his name to Elvis Costello. I always thought punk had a certain amount of John Waters in it--the insanity, the goofy clothes, the song titles like `Our Love Passed Out on the Couch.'"

Cervenka says:   "The first two got tons of critical acclaim and then it dropped off on the third one and then by the fourth one it was like, 'Okay, X put out a record. Okay, fine.' ...It's definitely the best work X did. However, you've got to be careful when it's about you not to take it too much to heart, because if you believe all the good stuff then you have to believe all the bad stuff. And I know I'm not a horrible person, and I know I'm not a terrible artist. I also don't believe that I'm the greatest genius who ever wrote music since the Doors, or whatever else you want to make up. I think I'm somewhere in the middle of what I do, you know. I don't think a lot of people do what I do, but you can't let reviews drive you forward. And that's really tough, you know. It's tough not want to know what people are saying, but it's better not to sometimes. Although I've gotten some good constructive criticism out of some of those reviews...It's meeting the right people at the right point in history in the right city. It's almost like being dropped in with pinpoint precision into a situation and location that you couldn't even wish for, you know. You couldn't even make it up, so you just always have this sense of overwhelming gratitude."

Zoom considers:    "The worst-sounding album we made was the fourth album! ...And that was a shame too, because that had some really good songs on it. That just sounds like it was cut in somebody's garage. In fact, you know - ...When we finished that, Clay and Ray went off to Hawaii together...And I was left to do the mastering. And I took it to - I didn't like the place we'd been getting mastered, so I took it to Bernie Grundman... He's a real famous mastering engineer. He's one of the top mastering engineers ...I took it to Bernie, he started listening to the tape, and he kinda turned some dials and he says, "Where'd you guys do this?" And I said, "At Cherokee." And he said, "Cherokee what?" "Cherokee Young." "Cherokee Studios on Fairfax?" I said, "Yeah." And he says, "Oh, what - that little demo annex off on the side?" I said, "No, in the big room." And he said, "You did this in the big room at Cherokee?" I said, "Yes." He said, "On the A-range?"' I said, "Yeah." "You recorded and mixed this in the big room on the A-range?" I said, "Yeah! Why?" And he said, "Uh, nothing."...I said, "No! What? Why do you ask?" He said, "I, I - it's not my place to say anything." And I said, "Come on, come on. Just between you and me. Please, I just wanna hear your feelings about it." And he said, "Well, I don't want to say anything, but you know, I thought you guys did this in your garage or something. It just doesn't sound like a professional recording. We'll try to pump it up as much as we can, but...." And then Clay got promoted to - he ended up being our tour manager...The problem with the tapes is that they were recorded poorly. So no. If you take something and record it poorly, you can remix it and remix it and remix it and remix it, and it might get a LITTLE better...Because he didn't know what the knobs did. He didn't turn most of them because he didn't know what they were for. And he didn't understand how to mic us, I guess. And Ray basically didn't know the difference...I like Ray, but the main fault I had with Ray is that he was oblivious to the fact that Clay was incompetent. So I used to fault him for that...I can't help thinking that my career might have gone better had it been recorded better...I think it's a shame that we didn't really get it on tape. I think we were much better live than we were on record."

Despite the more commercial sound of the album, 'More Fun in the New World' only charted at number eighty six in the US.  The lack of commercial success took its toll on Zoom, who left the band:   "In places like overseas in England, punk was the big, big thing, you know. It was the big trend. It's like there was Elvis and then there were the Beatles and then there was David Bowie and then there was punk. And that was kind of accepted everywhere except here. It was just not allowed on the radio. I mean, we sold records really well in Southern California, and in the key markets of major cities where there was a punk scene. I think in L.A., we probably sold as many records in the same amount of time as somebody like Phil Collins, but the difference is Phil Collins was selling records in Peoria and we weren't. But the Ramones would put a record out, it would sell 100,000. X would put a record out, it would sell 100,000. The Ramones would put another record out, it would sell 100,000. None of us ever really broke that 100,000 mark, and it's not enough to make any money...You see, the part that people miss is that I originally left X because I couldn't make a living out of it and I was getting too old to play for free and sleep on peoples' couches and drive a 20-year-old car and not have a bank account, you know? You reach a point where - by the time I left the band, I was about to turn 38 which is for all practical purposes almost 40, and I had never had a checking account or a credit card, I was driving a truck that was 27 years old, I lived in a little crummy apartment and I thought, "You know?" And the punk thing was over and I was panicked. I figured, "It's downhill from here. I can't hang around." So I found my way out."

 'More Fun in the New World' was their last album with Zoom and the last album produced by Manzarek.  








https://xtheband.com/






The New World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyk7voFXO_s



I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROalDBiTJpk



True Love Pt. #2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPpH-GPgfoM










'More Fun in the New World' 
full album:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUsA76rGzYk


1. The New World - 0:00
2. We're Having Much More Fun - 3:27
3. True Love - 6:36
4. Poor Girl - 8:51
5. Make The Music Go Bang - 11:45
6. Breathless - 14:51
7. I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts - 17:09
8. Devil Doll - 21:24
9. Painting The Town Blue - 24:32
10. Hot House - 27:52
11. Drunk In My Past - 30:51
12. I See Red - 33:45
13. True Love Pt. #2 - 36:48

wild gift

X came back faster, harder, and stronger with this tightly wrapped package of punked out rockabilly, blues, pop, latin grooves, surf rock, and hardcore. Many of the songs on 'Wild Gift' were written earlier and were part of their live set for years; so that when they got in the studio to record them they were well-rehearsed. John Doe and Exene Cervenka trade off vocals with cheeky humor and gritty howls while Billy Zoom's guitar licks and DJ Bonebrake's drumming make everything swing through thirteen tales of love, lust, desperation, and dedication in just thirty three minutes. The album sold very well for an indie release, leading to a major label deal, and was named 'Album of the Year' by Rolling Stone.





https://xtheband.com/

The punk classic 'We're Desperate' was originally the B-side to their first single on Dangerhouse Records in 1978 before they made the move to Slash Records. This live version is from the Penelope Spheeris documentary 'Decline of Western Civilization' about the Los Angeles punk scene.

"I play too hard when I ought to go to sleep

They pick on me because I really got the beat

Some people give me the creeps"

'White Girl' is allegedly about John Doe's affair with Germs bassist Lorna Doom.

"I'll replace your drunk old man

Sit in the parking lot and hold your hand"

The tale of marital strife 'Beyond and Back' got its title from a bible tract.

"I'll go somewhere else

I'll move to the couch

It's darker in the dark

It's darker in the day"

'The Once Over Twice' deals with bitterness over sexual mindgames with a singer from another band.

"I died a thousand times

Maybe you don't but I do

Got a hole in my heart

Size of my heart"

'Wild Gift'
full album:





All tracks written by John Doe and Exene Cervenka.


Side one
"The Once Over Twice" – 2:31
"We're Desperate" – 2:00
"Adult Books" – 3:19
"Universal Corner" – 4:33
"I'm Coming Over" – 1:14
"It's Who You Know" – 2:17
Side two
"In This House That I Call Home" – 3:34
"Some Other Time" – 2:17
"White Girl" – 3:27
"Beyond and Back" – 2:49
"Back 2 the Base" – 1:33
"When Our Love Passed Out on the Couch" – 1:57
"Year 1" – 1:18