Friday, October 20, 2023

The X Files

 

X - The Hungry Wolf


Fresh from YMO, we're gonna switch letters now.

Today's 40th anniversary honorees -- I've wanted to cover them since forever -- just need one.

Considered by many the greatest Punk band ever to exist, if you're looking for ballads you've definitely come to the wrong place.

One of the flagship bands of the Los Angeles Punk scene, they boiled up out of that environment in the early 1980s to become one of the topmost groups of any kind at the time.

What's so unusual about X? Where do we begin? For starters the chick harmony singer often sings one note for a whole verse. And the guitar player is an artillery-wielding monster dyed platinum blonde.

They all go by funny pseudonyms, in keeping with the X brand too!

Anyway this show is a really fantastic introduction to the X-o-verse, taped 40 years ago tonight in Chicago and sourced here from what could be the WXRT-FM pre-broadcast reels.


X
Park West
Chicago, Illinois USA
10.20.1983

01 introduction
02 Motel Room In My Bed
03 We're Having Much More Fun
04 In This House That I Call Home
05 Make the Music Go Bang
06 White Girl
07 True Love, Pt. #2
08 Beyond and Back
09 The Hungry Wolf
10 Poor Girl
11 Riding with Mary
12 Year One
13 Some Other Time
14 Breathless
15 Johnny Hit and Run Pauline
16 The Once Over Twice
17 Sugarlight
18 Because I Do
19 How I (Learned My Lesson)
20 Soul Kitchen

Total time: 58:15

John Doe - guitar & vocals
Exene Cervenka - vocals & percussion
Billy Zoom - guitar
DJ Bonebrake - drums

pre-FM capture of indeterminate origin
declipped & retracked -- with applause at the end of Track 09 reconstructed -- by EN, October 2023
451 MB FLAC/direct link


The striking thing about this performance is how fast the hour goes: it's usually -- if not always -- the sign of a positive entertainment experience when it whizzes by like it does here.

Anyway this X-ercise will be the last one before next Wednesday, which, in addition to being my 57th birthday, is the 10th anniversary of this page!--J.

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