X Under the Big Black Sun

Elektra 96 01501 (1982)

My earliest memory of X is seeing them play on American Bandstand one Saturday afternoon in the early eighties. I was about 12 or 13 at the time, and I think I tuned in midway through their first song (I don't remember what it was). They got a big hand from the audience, then Dick Clark came over and talked to them for a brief interview, then they played another song, which was "Motel Room in My Bed", the second song on their third album, Under the Big Black Sun. They looked scruffy and were dressed kind of raggedly, yet I remember thinking (a) they looked pretty cool and (b) there was music out there that wasn't getting played on the radio that sounded like nothing on the radio, and certainly nothing I had ever heard. This was probably the moment that I was introduced to the idea of "alternative" music.

X were a punk band from Los Angeles who had a knack for writing fast, catchy songs that owed as much to classic rock and roll (Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry) as to earlier punk pioneers like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. Their guitarist was a blond greaser named Billy Zoom who stood with his legs spread apart as wide as they would go while peeling off blistering rockabilly licks from a Gretsch guitar. Bassist John Doe shared vocal chores with his ex-wife Exene Cervenka, their harmonies violently veering in and out of tune. Their drummer was named D.J. Bonebrake. You get the idea that X were a pretty colourful crew, yet in their songs they tended towards a practical conservatism that was rare in the early, hedonistic days of punk.

Each side of the album follows a similar trajectory; open with a few angry, blasting love songs, throw in a fifties-style ballad, and close with a weary-but-wise moral. There's a sadness behind even the fiercest music on the record, as several of the songs (such as "Riding with Mary" and "Come Back to Me") were written about the death of Cervenka's sister, who perished in a car accident before the album was recorded. The production by Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek is so crisp and muscular that it sounds great even on my cheap system. The Rhino CD reissue contains bonus tracks; I haven't heard it, but I imagine it's well worth your time.

X would go through some changes both in lineup and sound during the eighties and nineties, but their first four albums remain unassailable classics, not just of punk rock but of great rock 'n' roll, period. Recently, all four original members reunited to record a live concert DVD that contains music from around the time of this album. As they say, you shoulda been there, but if you couldn't, now you (sorta) can.