X
Wild Gift

The best rock band from Los Angeles in the '80s? Easily said: X.

Ray Manzarek also noticed them after hearing them live and wanted to produce the band's first album: "Los Angeles." We find him at the helm again in this second chapter, recorded just over a year after the first. Perhaps the tracklist is even more aggressive than "Los Angeles": while there, thanks to Manzarek's organ interventions, there were a couple of slightly slower tracks, here there is no respite. X's lineup and intent confirmed: Billy Zoom's rockabilly guitar, Dj Bonebrake's driving drums, and Exene Cervenka and John Doe's vocals constantly chasing each other, like Jefferson Airplane a decade earlier. The difference is that while Grace Slick and her associates sang hopeful for a new season of love, here, with more of a bored than angry attitude, Exene and John, who were then husband and wife, tell stories of outcasts, the vicious, the defeated.
And the refrains often hit hard: "We're desperate, get used to it."
Always defined as the quintessential punk band, in reality, already in this album X show all their interest in '50s and '60s rock'n'roll, which will then be the base for their subsequent albums, where X will also rediscover certain '70s traditionalism. If, as mentioned, rockabilly is Billy Zoom's main love, try listening to the guitar on the opening "The Once Over Twice", or on "In This House That I Call Home", or on "Beyond And Back". There is even a beguine, "Adult Books", a Steppenwolf-like piece such as "Universal Corner", and a surfer, "Year 1".
Of course, there are also punk anthems: "We're Desperate", which was their first 45 for Dangerhouse, is re-recorded here, "When Our Love Passed Out The Couch", and "Back To The Base".
The song I adore the most is "White Girl", fundamentally a ballad sung by John Doe, with Exene's counterpoint: a magnificent verse, a bridge that calls for the hook, an unforgettable chorus, one of those you find yourself singing alone in the morning on the way to work. In other words, perfection.
In 1981, it was Album of the Year for Rolling Stone, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, while for The Village Voice it was second only to "Sandinista." In the 2003 list of the greatest 500 albums of all time published by Rolling Stone, it ranks at number 334. What a damned position. For me, it's among the hundred albums to save from the universal flood.
"Then I died a thousand times, maybe you don't, but I do"
Originally released by Slash, it was reissued in 2003 by Rhino, with seven added tracks (a couple of live tracks and some alternate takes).