X Whatever Happened To the Punk Band? Los Angeles, More Fun In he New World, Wild gift

X: Whatever happened to hte punk rock group founded in LA?

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While Hair Metal is often synonymous with Los Angeles, the city also had a flourishing punk scene that was made up of groups including the Plugs, Alley Cats, the Screamers, the Germs and today’s topic X. While they were far from the first punk band in LA, X would go on to become one of the most resilient bands over the last 4 decades. Frontwomen Exene Cervenka would tell Loudersound “We didn’t disgrace Los Angeles, that’s for sure, We are a soundtrack to Los Angeles, and that is a big deal.”Today, let’s explore the history of X."
3 of the 4 musicians from the band would hail from Illinois & It’s purely a coincidence since they didn’t know each other as young kids. Bassist and co-vocalist John Doe would find his way to LA sometime in the 70’s via Illinois, Maryland, and New York & Doe saw LA as a place to reinvent himself. He was a fan of old cinema and the novelists that emerged from the City so it only made sense to migrate there.
Meanwhile guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Billy Zoom was living in LA starting in the 60’s and served as a session musician. He would reveal to Rolling Stone he grew. Ambivalent to the music scene revealing “all the bullshit that popped into the Seventies, all those over-produced, super-processed, over-sensitive, ‘we’re so arty’ arena bands,” He also saw the LA music scene as being dead and was hungry for something new and raw.
coincidentally enough Zoom and Doe would place ads in the local paper the Recycler the same week looking for other like minded musicians. The pair would eventually meet up and form a band.

Future X vocalist Exene Cervenka would also hail from Illinois but move to florida at the age of 13. She would tell the Oklahoma Gazette “That was the early ’60s, and girls couldn’t even play baseball,” “I lived out in the middle of nowhere in the country, so there was no chance [of starting a band. Everything was in your mind, and it was all about imagining things" Cervenka would take a liking to writing and poetry. It would be that interest that caused her to hitch a ride with only $80 in her pocket across the country to LA at the age of 20 Cervenka would take up a job at Beyond Baroque Foundation in Venice, It was at an open mic night for poets at her place of work where she met future bandmate and husband John Doe.
She would recall to Rolling Stone “I was just sitting there and he came down and sat next to me, We were talking and he said, ‘You wanna go next door to the jazz place and get a drink?’ So we did that and he told me about punk.” The pair would soon started dated Doe and started attending the band’s rehearsals bringing the song “I’m Coming Over”. Cervenka would admit that she never initially dreamed of joining a band whenshe moved out to LA.
Drummer DJ bonebreak would join round out the lineup.. By 1978 the classic lineup of X was born. LA served as the perfect backdrop for the the group with Doe telling Loudersound “Hollywood was in real decline, The Tennessee Williams in me said: ‘Yes! The perfect moment!’ Be in the heart of the beast when it’s all falling to pieces."
Fueled by alcohol, the band’s sound would rely heavily on rockabilly type guitar hooks. They would release their first single Adult Books on label Dangerouhouse & it was soon after that htey caught the attention of former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek who read about the band in a local paper attended one of the group’s shows at the Whisky A Go Go, the old stomping ground for his band. It was during that performance the band even performed a blistering cover of the Doors song soul kitchen. Impressed, Manzarek not only wanted to produce the band, but get them signed to a major label. Ge would tell he mercury news “I saw them and I just fell in love,”They were amazing. About the fourth song into the show they’re just wailing on something.
“My wife Dorothy said to me, ‘Do you recognize that one?’ I said, ‘Honey, I don’t know any of these songs.’ She said, ‘No, no, no listen carefully.’ I said, ‘Oh my god, it’s ‘Soul Kitchen!’ They were doing ‘Soul Kitchen’ at a thousand miles per hour.”
Manzurek tried to get the band signed to the Doors old label Elektra Records, but was unsuccessful a