Operation Screenshot (Films of the Eighties) W.T. Morgan's X: THE UNHEARD MUSIC (1986)

 

For more on one of America's greatest bands please visit X's official site. 

Dust Off Those Grooves (Chapter Eight)

It would be interesting to take a poll of music lovers and critics and ask the question, 'What was the high water mark lyrically on an album in the rock era?'
There have been a lot of best of lists but I don't recall ever seeing that and yet what specific album would most music lovers point to as being the lyrically, the greatest? Dylan's Blood On The Tracks, how about Tom Waits Blue Valentine? Paul Simon's first album, what about Lou Reed's New York? Wouldn't want to leave the ladies out, Patti Smith's Horses anyone, Rickie Lee Jones Pirates? Springsteen, Townes Van Zant, don't forget Paul Westerberg. Tough question and I don't have the answer but the first one that comes to my mind and the one I would nominate is Under The Big Black Sun by X.
John Doe and Exene's Cervenka's lyrical masterpiece chronically the struggles of a working-class couple going through loss, a broken marriage, alcoholism and boredom is to my eyes and ears one of the great literary achievements in rock history. As good as any novel and the fact that the words are on top of one of the great rock bands in their prime only sweetens the deal.
Under The Big Black Sun should have been a disappointment, and God knows everyone was expecting one. It was the first major label album by X who had just signed with Elektra from the indie label Slash. Major label debuts are notorious for presenting watered down versions of once great acts. Even a great album like The Replacement's Tim suffers from a bit too much production, and the battle between the indie and corporate idea of what constitutes a great album continues to this day.
X were never a typical band though and with Under The Big Black Sun they delivered their finest work. It's a work that synthesises their harder earlier punk origins with their interest in more classic American traditions like country and folk. Americana 15 years before everyone was throwing that word around, it was called Cow-punk at the time and groups like X and Lone Justice would pioneer the sound that a future generation would reap the benefits of. Much like the country-rock sound Rick Nelson, Michael Nesmith and Graham Parson's would revolutinalize in the late 60s. It was a new spin to something very old.
Under The Big Black Sun would, like their first three albums, be produced by former Doors mastermind Ray Manzarek and I'm not totally sure if he has ever gotten enough credit for these recordings. First of all the idea that a musician so associated with L.A. rock from the sixties producing a young punk band in the eighties was incredible, but Ray managed, like John Cale with The Stooges and Patti Smith, to produce X with just enough control. He never compromised their sound, but he roped it in just enough to allow its inherit subtleties to come out. Ray Manzaerk is an uncredited hero to the 2nd wave American punk movement.
X's third album kicks off with the thunderous The Hungry Wolf, and we are immediately presented with something much more complex than the average rock lyric. Recalling Exene's native American ancestory we are presented with a, 'hungry wolf' running 'endlessly with my mate'. The song, ending with the haunting refrain of 'I Roam' is dedicated to The Santee Sioux Indians and JL 'Funny Papers' Smith.
The album continues chronicling the couple's doomed relationship with Motel Room In My Bed, it's lead character going to sleep, "Soggy and forgetful, hopefully not waking up so fitfully". Exene have John have an incredible way of presenting a concrete situation, like alcoholism, in such a subtle way. The music might be in your face but the words rarely are, these are clearly two authentic poets who happen to be part of one of the great American rock bands.
The single Riding With Mary continues and it's one of X's greatest songs and gives us the first clues that Exene is going through much more than just a disintegrating relationship with John. Her beloved sister had been killed just prior to recording this, she would remember her so tenderly in the film The Unheard Music just a year after this album, and it's that death that is sparking many of Exene's most poignant lines. The song, detailing an adulterous affair, ends with this image, "on the dashboard rides a figurine. A powerless, sweet forgotten thing, so the next time you see a statue of Mary, remember my sister was in a car".
Exene's Come Back To Me follows and is dedicated to her sister Mary. If anyone has ever written a more heartbreaking and real description of a funeral and dealing with death I have never heard it. Lines like, "Flies and relations make an annoying sound" and "I built a shrine for you on the kitchen wall with flowers and Florida souvenirs. You were walking through the house last night, I knew it was you from the space in your steps" are so perfectly rendered and detailed. Notice how they aren't just souvenirs, but Florida souvenirs, and it's not just her steps but the space in between them. Anyone who has ever questioned how good rock lyrics can be should listen to this song.
Typically an album will have a very specific break between side A and B. Different sounds or themes will be approached but here X again shows that they were never typical as Under The Big Black Sun and Because I Do both share an alcoholic haze of confusion and regret. The last lign on side one, "Mary's dead, Good morning Midnight" lends intself perfectly to the opening, "I am a black and white ghost in a black and invisible dress", of side 2.
Throughout the album, even though they are exceptional, the lyrics never over shadow the music. This is, after all, a rock record and it's a great one. Bonebrake and Doe were really coming into their own as a rhythm section. Bonebrake is a huge jazz, and specifically Lionel Hampton, fan and his drumming is uncommonly controlled for a punk group. It is also savage and loud, just tribal enough for Hungry Wolf and tender enough for Please Come Back To Me, exceptional work. Billy Zoom was astonishing in all of his work with X, early Rockabilly was and is his biggest influence and he continually gives the band some of the most incendiary fret work imaginable. He makes it seem effortless also, you never feel like he is pushing it or trying to impress. His riffs are deceptively simple and always powerful.
The album's themes of adultery and loss continue with Blue Spark and the only cover on the album, Dancing With Tears In My Eyes. The Leadbelly quote on the inner sleeve is particularly chilling, ending with a thought that will resonate with any music lover filled with something dark, "that's to show how music can bring you back.....if you ain't too far gone".
The album closes with three of X's most legendary songs. Three songs that would take the band to a spiritual place that few have ventured to. These are that Darkness on The Edge of Town that Springsteen sang of and that Badlands that Malick filmed.
First up is Real Child Of Hell, an exhausting rehearsal was filmed for The Unheard Music, and its idea of possession being the cause of a relationship breaking down is an astonishing one for rock. The real child of hell that the song presents is not only inside John Doe and Exene Cervenka but ultimately the fan wanting Exene's dress and much more. It's an indictment not only of themselves but the people they are confessing to, and if you haven't figured it out by now Under The Big Black Sun is a confession.
The ferocious two minute How I Learned My Lesson is what lyric sheets were made for with lines like, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so I never want to see you again", becoming a blur underneath the incredibly fast and frantic music.
The album ends with the finest song John Doe and Exene Cervenka ever wrote, and musically the finest song X ever performed. I don't say that lightly either, The Have Nots is one of the great songs in American music and I would hold it up against anything that Guthrie, Dylan, Springsteen or Reed ever wrote. Our sage ends with the couple separated and they are both at bars, just after work, drinking themselves into a much needed oblivion. It's a sympathetic chronicle and indictment of the American dream gone wrong, The Replacements would later cover similar ground in Here Comes A Regular as well as Th Manic Street Preachers in the astonishing Design For Life. It's a subject many authors and filmmakers have covered but it's not something you see in Rock music a lot. Correlating the life of a rock band with a dead end job with "the game that moves as you play" is one of X's most chilling moments. It's fitting that the original lyric sheet goes on longer than the song with a listing of bars to visit, hide and ultimately fade away completely in.
Under The Big Black Sun was awarded five stars by Rolling Stone and was near the top of nearly every critics poll in 1982. It was a defining moment for X and one which they would never top. They would record one more album with Manzarek, the brilliantly scattered More Fun In The New World. The remainder of their catalogue all suffers from over-production but still feature some of the most sublimely brilliant American music ever recorded. They would never scale the despairing heights of Under The Big Black Sun again but would provide a lovely sequel of sorts in 1987's See How We Are, in which the by now divorced John Doe and Exene Cervenka would lament, "the bars we keep between us".
25 years later Under The Big Black Sun is still relevant, still without peer and I'm pleased to report still available. Rhino had a wonderful re-release of it out, remastered with bonus tracks and in depth notes. Even though that will never sound as good as much worn and loved vinyl copy, I urge anyone who might be reading to get this currently available cd. It might make you re-think those best of lists that are released each year, it might make you remember a lost love or at the very least it will remind you that we all have something inside that needs exorcising.....if we're not too far gone.

The Great Gigs of my Life: X in Nashville

The first time I saw X was on the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon sometime in the mid 80s. Now that might seem an odd place to be introduced to punk rock but I'll never forget how my 11 year old mind reacted to seeing Exene Cervenka for the first time. I don't remember what song they were playing but the sight of Exene looking like some sort of crazed homeless goddess screaming into the microphone and a very perplexed Jerry Lewis offering half-hearted applause left an indelible impression on me.
A few years later I saw a show on cable called Women In Rock which would introduce me to several people that would go on affect me profoundly including Maria Mckee and Patti Smith. The show was most memorable though for re-introducing this strange creature known as Exene to me. Being interviewed she came across as so intelligent and you could detect the poet inside her in these short clips, the brief on stage shots showed the crazed woman I remembered from the telethon though and I was hooked. This strange Sister Hyde like figure that would emerge on stage as opposed to the shy soft-spoken pretty lady would serve as a perfect symbol for the band X.
I soon bought my first X album, I was 15 or so at the time and the massive double lp Live at The Whisky collection was a perfect introduction. The songs were wild sounding slices of crazed rockabilly punctuated by some of the most poetic American lyrics ever written. Exene and John Doe's haunting harmonizing placed on top of Billy Zoom's slashing guitar work and the thundering DJ Bonebrake on drums has very few peers. X were like like group before and no one since has come close to duplicating their sound.
X soon became one of my favorite bands and I devoured their early records especially the first four (Los Angeles, Wild Gift, Under The Big Black Sun, and More Fun In The New World). The remaining records with and then without Billy Zoom would have moments of greatness but suffered from over-production. X in the 80s were, along with The Replacements, THE band that should have made it but something never clicked with the public at large. It's forgotten just how much X were critically acclaimed, they came right at the tail end of Rolling Stone's days as a quality magazine and that publication's reviews of the early records are exceptionally well written and thought out.
X had developed such a huge cult following that a film was actually made about them called The Unheard Music, one of the best music documentaries ever made. It also showcased a band desperate to sell records but not compromise. When all was said and done they didn't do either.
This is all a long winded introduction to remembering two live shows I saw. It seems important though to note just how respected X were in the 80s and how much they meant to their fans. This all had changed when X initially returned to the scene in 1993.
The album that marked their return in 1993 was titled, oddly enough, Hey Zeus. Long out of print and virtually ignored today by fans and the band itself it was actually a strong, slightly overworked, album that stands up all these years later. Their was a real excitement for me when that album was released and then it was announced that X would return to the road. I couldn't figure out why Hey Zeus was all but ignored. It wasn't that the critical reception was poor, it was non-existent. Perhaps it was too close to the 80s for their legacy to be appreciated. I always thought it was because true punk never really broke, sometime in the early 90s record companies figured out how to market something resembling punk, but it had no poetry and groups like X and The Replacements were buried.
I saw X twice on their Hey Zeus tour, once towards the beginning and once towards the end. The experience of those two nights was almost like seeing two different bands. The first show at Bogarts at Cincinnati was one of the most exciting shows I had ever seen. I was right in front of the stage on John Doe's side and the opening Burning House Of Love seemed to shake Boagart's walls and it brought tears to me eyes. The band gave a tight, confident show drawing heavily on Hey Zeus as well as their previous See How We Are album. Guitarist Tony Wilkinson provided a sharp and substantial counterpoint to the still missing in action Billy Zoom. Bonebrake is still one of the best drummers I have ever seen, bringing a jazz inspired intensity to his playing that kept the always chaotic Doe and Cervenka grounded. John Doe was beautiful, like Sam Shepard as a rock star. Doe's voice is one of the most underrated in rock history and you have to see them live to really understand how great of a singer this guy is. Exene was magnificent to see live, sexy and crazed singing like she was being possessed by some ancient Native American spirit sent for revenge. The words pouring out of her like she had no choice in the matter and then in between songs slinking back shyly becoming that withdrawn young girl again.
Hey Zeus had just been released and during this show X seemed like that same hopeful band that had been in seen in the Unheard Music. They looked excited, like they thought they were finally going to take over the world.
I met John Doe after the show and he was incredibly friendly and autographed his first solo album for me. I didn't have the nerve to speak to Exene thinking I would say something stupid like 'you changed my life'.
Later that year I heard they were coming to Nashville to play a show. Hey Zeus had already disappeared and their 'comeback' hadn't happened. The club is Nashville was smaller and grimier than Bogarts. The stage was just a few feet off the ground and there was no barricade so literally you could get within inches of the band as they played. I was next to the barely elevated stage and when X hit the stage they looked like a different band. They seemed to have aged ten years, John Doe hadn't shaved and Exene looked depressed and possibly drunk.
They changed their opening number from Burning House of Love to the savage Once Over Twice. The playing was more chaotic, Bonebrake was even playing more like he had early on in their career. Every number, even the slower ones, seemed slashed out and the band looked disgusted. The show was one of the most disastrous I have ever seen with the band looking like they could fall apart at any moment, disastrous and absolutely spellbinding. If punk rock ever actually existed then it reared its most authentic head that night in that small Nashville club.
Just before leaving their stage Exene announced, spitting sarcasm, that they were going to do their biggest hit. X then launched into a beyond brutal Back To The Base and the sight of Exene screaming "I'm the king of rock and roll, if you don't like it you can lump it' will never leave me. The house lights came up and the band looked savaged and done. Exene handed me the set list she had been standing on and they were gone.
X disappeared after that for most of the 90s. The decade that they had done so much to inspire ignored them and destroyed all of the youthful energy they had always carried with them.
Several years ago the great Rhino records began to re-issue their astonishing back catalogue, lovingly remastered with bonus tracks and doting liner notes. Their importance finally noticed and they hit the road again, this time with Billy Zoom. The show I saw in Lexington a few years ago was probably one of the best I had ever seen but it also disheartening. With no new music to promote they just smoked through their first four perfect albums and ignored the later flawed ones. It was too easy, I was no longer seeing a band getting ready to take over the world. They had become like that characters in their greatest song, The Have Nots, 'the working class' just playing 'the game that moves as you play'.
It's just a legacy now, a beautiful and important one that most would trade their lives for but they were worth more. Two of the greatest and most authentically American songwriters are all but hidden from view, in their place resides just another great band and a generation who refused to believe music had the ability to change things. I have moments I'd like to go back to, I'd like to see them again in that little Nashville club, I'd like to replay that moment right before youth began to escape not only them but me. If I could have that moment back when Exene handed me that set list I'd say something like, 'don't worry, it wasn't you who blew it. You did everything right.' Perhaps I would even tell her she changed my life, either way I wouldn't remain silent.