Tuesday, November 25, 2008

X - Los Angeles


The first time I heard the song "Los Angeles" by X I was surprised by their unabashed use of the words "nigger" and "jew" and almost passed them off as a racist band. After all, upon a first listen the lines "she started to hate every nigger and jew, every mexican that gave her lotta shit, every homosexual and the idle rich" look pretty questionable. That's until you dig a bit deeper and realize the story singer Exene Cervenka is telling about a destrought girl trying to get out of LA in the late 70's/early 80's and how she sees the city.

That's one of the greatest things about X. Not only do they write incredibly tuneful, varied punk rock with a range of influences, drawing equally from old blues, country and rockabilly, they have the incredible storytelling quality because of Cervenka's incredible lyrics. Though they aren't as raw and straight forward as contemporaries like The Germs, The Weirdos and others from the Dangerhouse/SST/etc roster, they fit in quite well with the LA punk scene of the early 80's where everyone was a little bit different, but it all fell under the same umbrella.

Every time I listen to this record I'm overwhelmed with high school nostalgia and unlike so many records, it actually holds up in my adult life because it's simply a classic punk record.

X - Los Angeles

4 comments:

Anonymous said...
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jeshxxx said...

i clicked the link hoping to download this album becoz what i've heard of X i loooove... but it just sent me to the mediafire website!!!!

waaaaah

Stephen said...

Hey, I re-upped this one.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2r2wzytlzjn

jeshxxx said...
This comment has been removed by the author.