X - Los Angeles

I have their "New World" CD which is fucking great. I've been meaning to pick up their others someday. Really like them.

That one's good, but you're in for a treat if you haven't heard the others. It's smack dab in the middle in terms of quality.

Los Angeles and Wild Gift are usually considered the classics (and Under the Big Black Sun, to a lesser degree), and I can't disagree with that appraisal. Los Angeles is the first of theirs that I heard, and I can't get enough of it. But I absolutely love See How We Are, which is too often overlooked.

It was a completely different band by then, not just in the sense that Billy Zoom was out, but that their writing was almost entirely removed from their punk rock roots. There are some fantastic songs on their previous album, Ain't Love Grand, but the overstated 80s production and the weaker moments pin it as transitional (along with their abysmal cover of "Wild Thing"). All of this stuff comes on stronger on the Live at the Whiskey album ("Around My Heart" and "Burning House of Love" are vastly improved).

See How We Are is when the band managed to make a more mainstream sound work for them. It's a more "professional" (for lack of a better word) album: Exene hits the notes, the guitars are layered, and the synths are polite and unobtrusive. But goddamn, those songs. Especially those lyrics. The band that seemed to revel in the dark and dirty side of their hometown on their first few albums widened their scope to both embrace and curse that side, to find love in it, and even to articulate the politics of it. Dave Alvin's sole writing contribution to the group, "4th of July" is practically the band's "Born to Run" and may be my favorite song of theirs, period.

Since getting back with Billy Zoom in the past few years (which at least removed the taste of most of the post-SHWA albums), it sounds like they've stayed away from playing anything later than More Fun in the New World, which is really a shame. The early fast stuff is amazing, but they're really underestimating the quality of their mid- and late-80s material.

Yeah, they've got a recent live show that popped up on DirecTV's Channel 101 (or whateverTF it's called), and while it was surprisingly good (I'm not usually big on reunions), the choice of material was limited to the early stuff. Deference to Zoom, I suppose, but it's true that "Burning House of Love" is a great live number, and "4th of July" a real classic, and they're sadly missed.

I love Zoom, by the way, but I'm a little sorry the only times I saw X was while he was still with them: Tony Gilkyson's a great guitarist, and the "Sunset Strip" album is a terrific showcase for his playing; I'd have enjoyed seeing the band with him.

As for Los Angeles, that was one of the half-dozen or so albums that my 12-year-old nephew asked for last Christmas, and it delighted me to oblige (the others included T. Rex "Electric Warrior", Bob Dylan "Bringing It All Back Home", Buzzcocks "Singles Going Steady" and the first "Nuggets" collection).

I love Los Angeles. Hearing it for the first time was nearly as startling as first hearing The Ramones in '76. X is also at the core of Penelope Spheeris' terrific documentary film The Decline of Western Civilization.

And maybe the greatest bargain of the CD age: when Los Angeles was first released on CD, it was paired on a single disk with the second (and even better) album, Wild Gift. I think they're only available as singles now, but with bonus stuff added.