Your Phone’s Off The Hook, But You’re Not

X los angeles

Occasionally, while driving through L.A. with X’s debut, acting as the soundtrack, I wonder just what Los Angeles would have been like, musically speaking, back during the band’s early-mid Eighties peak. Besides X you had the cross-pollination of The Blasters, Dave Alvin, the Knitters, the whole Paisley Underground ‘movement’, not to mention a young Dwight Yoakam hustling in the Hollywood rock clubs – opening up for punk bands – because Nashville wouldn’t touch him. Certainly sounds like an interesting place to be.

Local Scene: This Spring X will be embarking on their “31st Anniversary Tour” featuring all original members (John Doe/Billy Zoom/Exene Cervenka/DJ Bonebrake) April 10th @ The Music Box @ the Fonda / Doors: 8 pm / $27 / On Sale 2/9

++ Click here, and scroll down, for some X videos from the Unheard Music DVD..

Download:
MP3: X :: Adult Books (Demo)
MP3: X :: Your Phone’s Off The Hook, But You’re Not
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Amazon: X – Los Angeles

+ Download your music through eMusic’s 25 Free MP3 offer.
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From Unheard Music – X plays “Soul Kitchen” live w/ Ray Manzarek interview.

8 thoughts on “Your Phone’s Off The Hook, But You’re Not

  1. great post ! when I first moved out here from a small town in Texas 7 years ago, a girl I was seeing at the time [I move fast], huge X fan, let me borrow this cd along with WILD GIFT, and UNDER THE BIG BLACK SUN. And I believe it was the 2nd or 3rd week of being in LA, but hearing those records, and the place I was living, getting lost in LA the first week I moved, I understood what LA was ‘neath the hollywood neon lights.’

  2. Fantastic post. A friend just turned me on to this site and this confirms that he was damn right. Can’t wait to catch them on tour . . . I hope they get further South then just Dallas!

  3. For me X was and still is the greatest band to ever come out of the U.S.A. and is right up there with The Clash for greatest band of all time.

    I grew up in L.A. in the eighties I can tell you that if you wanted to hear X or The Blasters you had to listen to KROQ or 91X and pray that they’d play something in between bouts of Depeche Mode, etc. Usually it was “Blue Spark” or “The Hungry Wolf” but every now and then you’d get a DJ like Moscow Eddie (Danny Elfman) or even The Poorman playing something like “The Unheard Music.”

    I was too young to be ‘allowed’ into the punk clubs where X played and far to young to drive there, so I had to wait a few years before I ever got to see them live. And they were far better than I ever could have hoped. Still are.

  4. Yo AD- Its Mardi Gras day and no New Orleans music? shame shame. I’ve been rockin out to Dr. John, Fess, Eddie Bo, Galactic, Rebirth, etc. all day. You’re slackin man.

  5. “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts” is probably the single greatest recording produced in the 1980s. A blast furnace of brutally honest, balls out rock ‘n’ roll. The sad part is that, if anything, the lyrical concerns are even truer today than they were 20+ years ago when it was released.

    “I hear the radio is finally gonna play new music … you know … the British Invasion.” Nothin’ but net.

  6. I lived in LA from 1980 to 1984. I was 21-25 and worked as a cocktail waitress at the Starwood, a now-defunct Hollywood club where X were frequent headliners. To this day they are my all-time favorite band ever. I must have seen them 30 or 40 times and they were always unbelievably exciting. It was a great punk scene at the time in LA–not only the bands you mentioned but also the Germs, the Circle Jerks, the Adolescents, the Go-Gos (yes they started out punk!), Black Flag, as well as more power pop oriented groups like the Plimsouls, the Motels and Oingo Boingo (Danny Elfman’s old band). I have had a crush on John Doe for 28 years (love his solo folk stuff, too) and how can you not admire Exene, a supremely ugly woman who somehow married two of the most gorgeous and talented guys on earth, Doe and Viggo Mortenson.

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