Song of the Week: "Nausea", X

The year was 1977. The town, Los Angeles. The Eagles replaced the Beach Boys as the merchants of California culture. The Carpenters represented the new, get in the back of the Van and get mellow, sound of LA. Gary Wright represented the newest craze of music perfectly made for late night clubs and roller skating contests on Venice Beach. And the art-rock bands did their best to make rock music into an overly complicated jumble of progressions which ultimately alienated the frustrated teenager who had created rock-n-roll in the first place.

Someday in that year. Somewhere in that town. A guy who would acerbically call himself John Doe walked over to a nearby poetry reading in Santa Monica and met a recent Florida transplant of a poet named Christine Cervenka. Neither had a taste for the pop culture music of the day and they quickly started sharing their passion for something different. Later that year they would marry and form a band with rockabilly enthusiast Billy Zoom and drummer DJ Bonebreak. In keeping with his established anti-hero theme, John Doe would name the band X and Christine rechristened herself Exene. The malcontents quickly created a buzz in the small club circuit and caught the watchful eye of The Doors organist, Ray Manzarek, who would get the band a record contract and produce their first album, Los Angeles.

Recorded in January of 1980, and released a few months later, Los Angeles would not only prove to be a huge break from the music norms laid down by the top-selling acts of the day, but it was also quite different than the other California Hardcore bands like The Germs or The Circle Jerks who were also at the vanguard of a new and very important scene. Where bands like The Germs would tout their lack of musical ability as proof of their necessity in a virtuoso/Steely Dan crazy world, the members of X actually had musical talent and weren't afraid to show it. And, similarly, X was very different from their British punk comrades as well. Where British punk bands like GBH (Great Britain's Hell) relied on shock value to get their message across, X found their shock value in not being outlandish. It was all in the approach to the music. It was a message of back to basics. 

Los Angeles painted a beautifully grimy view of the world and tinseltown was the canvass. It was a world where violent rape was swept under the rug (Johnny Hit & Run Pauline), where the gritty dark-side of the city of angels turned a wide-eyed girl into a homophobic, racist who flees in fear back to her small town (Los Angeles) and where the material culture of Los Angeles is exposed as soul sucking and self abusive (Sex & Dying In High Society). In their world Los Angeles wasn't the glamour town seen on The Love Boat. It was a town that would make your soul sick. Sick, so sick, that you prop your forehead upon the sink and  say "oh Jesus Christ my head is going to crack like a bank."  Where tonight you'll fall asleep in clothes so late like a candy bar wrapped up for lunch. That's all you get to taste. Like poverty and spit. Poverty and spit. Your bloody red eyes will turn to Nausea. A dark song with a relentlessly catchy barre chord riff that moves along with purpose and confidence. A Hammond B3 organ (very, not punk) played by Manzarek pounds away at the listener. You close your eyes and realize you're talking out of harmony now. You can't remember what you said. Cut it out! You feel retarded now. You take the scissors to your head. It's Nausea. 

X broke new ground. They weren't always accepted -- by buyers, by the press or by punks -- as they failed to fit neatly into any one category. The one time I saw them -- in Sacramento, California at the Crest Theatre -- peroxide blond, pompadour sporting, silver jet Gretsch playing guitarist Billy Zoom stood stoically as a few ungrateful punks spat on him (he wasn't punk enough for them apparently) and skin heads yelled "sell-out" at John Doe and Exene Cervenka. It was quite the scene to witness.