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Los Angeles

One of the best 33 1/3 RPM debuts of the Eighties, a great american music album by a Californian quartet making its debut, nestled between the angry marginalization of punk and the genuine feeling of tradition. In 1980, the couple Exene Cervenka and bassist John Doe (the name given to unidentified corpses) intertwine their voices as if they were the Kantner/Slick duo, with musical propulsion provided by Billy Zoom's fifties guitar and D.J. Bonebrake's drumming.

They deliver a thrilling record, magically suspended between driving vocal melodies and the riotous sound blend typical of punk'n'roll. Former Doors member Ray Manzarek produces, and occasionally lends his mythical organ, to nine wonderful songs where the raw poetic of the alley manages not to completely bury the hope of finding some human warmth. The interwoven voices in the love story of the two outcasts in "Johnny Hit and Run Paulene", the rebellion against the most depressing side of the city of angels in the title track with the big X in flames like every tormented soul, the collapse of every ideal in "Nausea" and again the accelerated rendition of "Soul Kitchen", bequeathed by Manzarek through the doors of perception.

And above all, the track that closes the album, that "The World's A Mess, It's In My Kiss" ignited by Billy Zoom's Chuck Berry-style solos shaking his banana pompadour and made unforgettable by the constant interplay between John and Exene's voices.

The fire still smolders beneath the ashes of the blank generation.