Perennial L.A. punk-rockers, X, are touring the West Coast right now, before heading to Europe to join Pearl Jam this summer. Now celebrating their 35th anniversary as a band, X is the last musical group out of the iconic “class of ’77,” which featured such greats as The Ramones, The Clash and The Sex Pistols, who remain intact and touring! This tour will take them to the Crystal Ballroom in Portland on May 11 and the Showbox in Seattle on May 12.
Begat in ’77, X still has all their original members — Singer Exene Cervenka, John Doe on guitar, Billy Zoom on bass and D.J. Bonebreak on drums. Their hard driving country punk sound complete with two and three-part harmony has no rivals. The vocals of Exene and John Doe are compatibly resonant, suitably angry, and lovely to listen to. Their live shows force audiences to dance. Nothing intentional, mind you, it’s just listening to their music, your feet take on a mind of their own. It’s been awhile since X toured and no one knows if they ever will again. This is your chance and may be your last chance. If any of you punk rock lovers haven’t seen X and want a taste of what started it all, I beseech you to get your little punk rock butts up off your sofa and head down to see them. I promise you will not be disappointed.
It’s sometimes easy to forget that punk was an American invention and export that began not with angry underclass youths, but girls who wrote poetry. Exene moved to LA in 1976 at the age of 20 and met John Doe at a poetry workshop in Venice. They formed X a year later. Like Patti Smith songs, the lyrics of Xs songs read like poems. The debut album “Los Angeles” came out in 1980, and the title song to this day remains the best rock song written about the city somehow capturing the weird alienation of the place. Both Exene and John Doe moved to LA from the east coast, and like many transplants (myself included), must have been struck by landscape so disorienting to new arrivals. “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene”, “Sex and Dying in High Society”, “Sugarlight” — X songs are like polaroids of the time and place, imagery of sex and death and longing. The writer director Paul Schrader wrote the screen play for Taxi Driver in the mid 70s while living in Los Angeles during a period of despair over the breakup of his marriage. That’s the feeling X has for me. Its filled with energy and observation and darkness present in those bleached out Californian vistas.
