X: Los Angeles

Yes, people, we had our own version of Ramones on the West Coast. Not that we can’t have both, but instead of hanging out in Queens and doing whatever one does there with three chords, we had X, who took that formula, mixed in a little cowpunk attitude, some boy-girl harmonies and named their damned album after my hometown. How could I resist? Granted, the band was started by a couple midwestern transplants in John Doe and Execs Cervenka, but the whole city were pretty much transplants back then, including my folks who moved to LA in the 60s from NYC.

This album feels almost like punk infrastructure. The girders on which the genre was built. A kind of simple, repetitive churn of guitars and yelps. Not entirely different than early B-52s. A band that wasn’t always the more candy-coated version of itself – but that 50s biker-sounding music that really chugged. Mixed with occasional clipped “Johnny B. Goode” riffs. Music to do motorcycle burnouts to. So analog and organic and human. The whole endeavor doesn’t have the hermetic feel of a dude sitting in a dim room with a pen and pad pouring his heart out, but more so a group getting together in a studio counting it off and just going. Even when producer (and Doors dude), Ray Manzarek, has the audacity to stick his dumb organ in the middle of song, “Nausea.” Which otherwise would have been something off Danzig. I really don’t like The Doors.

I think what drew me to this album as a young person was just how cool it sounded. It’s weird, after seeing John Doe at McCabe’s in the 80s doing his more country-ish solo stuff, that he was ever a young person. I always envision him as Tom Waits for some reason. Even this, an album he made at 27, sounded like something made by a more grizzled veteran. Which I guess makes sense since I was listening to it as a young teen when I made my way to it. He was in his thirties at that point, which probably seemed ancient to me at the time. But it really was a foundational album for a kid who would go on to never really get into hardcore, but certainly appreciated the more melodic punk end of the spectrum. Even though this would be considered pretty straight forward rock n roll in retrospect, it was American punk with a brain. And it holds up 45 years on.