The first thing you see when you watch W.T. Morgan’s 1986 documentary The Unheard Music about the difficult-to-Google Los Angeles punk band X is a caption reading “PLAY THIS MUSIC LOUD.” Always good advice, of course. Morgan worked on the documentary for five solid years while the band was at its peak, and The Unheard Music emerges as a darn good document.

X was one of those bands, like the Who, where all four members contributed something essential to the music as well as the band’s persona. Exene, Doe, Zoom, and Bonebrake had distinct, interesting personalities that turned out to exhibit the quintessence of chemistry. The band was so much more than the sum of its parts. Exene’s striking vocals and John Doe’s Americana tendencies meant that X’s identity would transcend the confines of the punk movement. As you watch, there are plenty of killer live performances, so you can conduct the debate in your own mind if they were truly merely a punk band.

Because the movie was shot over such a long time, we get to see the band at different stages. Morgan’s editing strategy is a very 1980s one, which is to say there’s a fair amount of TV collage, and he doesn’t take things too seriously, which is always a help. Morgan clearly had a lot of footage to choose from, which means that there are a lot of fun bits. Doe amusingly tells of scavenging a sizable letter X from the Ex-Lax Building in Brooklyn, funny to me because I’m good friends with a family who currently lives there. Bonebrake displays his polyrhythmic skills on the vibraphone while Exene and Doe fool around with some Hank Williams ditties in a scuzzy apartment.
 

 
Ray Manzarek of the Doors, who produced X’s killer first four albums (Los Angeles, Wild Gift, Under the Big Black Sun, & More Fun in the New World) before being unceremoniously replaced by Michael Wagener for Ain’t Love Grand (big mistake), is on hand to testify to X’s unmistakable power as a live band the first time he saw them. (He also joins them onstage for a version of “Soul Kitchen.”)
 

 
There’s a terrific bit in which two interviews are intercut, from Bob Biggs of Slash Records and some stooge from MCA Records named Al Bergamo, in which the unimpeachable values and good taste of the former are contrasted with the horseshit coming out of the pie hole of the latter. Bergamo claims to find the potential for “limited sales” in X while unconvincingly feigning excitement about some forgettable band MCA had on their roster called Point Blank. Ugh.

Among other things, the movie is an interesting document of the scruffy Los Angeles of the early 1980s.

Continues after the jump…

Demonstrating for Quiet Riot, 1979. Photo: Ken Papaleo
 
As a New Yorker I’ve sometimes asked myself why Los Angeles often didn’t appear to produce as many good musical acts as its size might lead you to expect. This was in the 1990s and after, when the closest answer to “What’s L.A.‘s answer to the Pixies?” might well have been “the Red Hot Chili Peppers,” which isn’t a great answer. My indie-rock bias and physical distance from the L.A. scene aren’t the only factors that would lead me to underrate what the city has produced, another one would be time. If you jump back just a decade or two, L.A.‘s music scene was as vital as anything the country had to offer, what with Minutemen, Black Flag, the Go-Go’s, RHCP, X, and the Dickies, not to mention such hard rock stalwarts as Van Halen, Faster Pussycat, Motley Crüe, and Guns ‘n’ Roses. And that only scratches the surface, as an invigorating new photo exhibition suggests.

Opening yesterday, the Los Angeles Public Library has a remarkable exhibition dedicated to throwing open the library’s Herald Examiner archives (as well as the Gary Leonard collection) for the years 1978 to 1989. The show features iconic shots of talents as diverse as Eddie Van Halen and Eazy-E as well as countless other important vital contributors to the L.A. music scene. At its best, L.A. music possessed a theatricality and immediate legibility that other cities may have lacked. Not sure what exactly that quality was, but the word “glitz” has been used so often to describe L.A. that we’ll just go with that one. And yet glitz had nothing whatsoever to do with the trenchant and incendiary punk of Minutemen or Black Flag or Descendents. Los Angeles is 100 neighborhoods in search of a city, and its music scene reflects that too, in a good way.

The exhibition is called “From Pop to the Pit: LAPL Photo Collection Celebrates the Los Angeles Music Scene, 1978-1989,” and it can be visited at the History & Genealogy Department of the Central Library location at 630 W. 5th Street through June 28. In addition to the acts shown here, the exhibition covers such diverse musical talents as Jetboy, All, the Runaways, Burning Tree, Faster Pussycat, the Nymphs, X, and the Unforgiven.

The show features an attractive catalog that runs a very affordable $13.75 on Amazon.
 

Dream Syndicate, ca. 1982. Photo: Dean Musgrove
 

Minutemen, 1983. Photo: James Ruebsamen
 

The Go-Gos, 1981. Photo: Anne Knudsen
 
More after the jump…

 
Since its inception in 1985, the Farm Aid benefit concert has become an annual event (there have been 27 of them so far). It might surprise you to learn that Los Angeles punk pioneers X played the first two. As John Doe was always one of the more countrified punk artists, maybe it isn’t that surprising after all.

The clip below comes from their second appearance, which indeed occurred exactly 28 years ago, on July 4, 1986, in Manor, Texas. “4th of July,” which was written by Dave Alvin of The Blasters, hadn’t been released yet, it would appear on See How We Are, which would come out in 1987.

It’s been a rough year for Exene, what with her incoherent online ramblings causing such an uproar and leading to questions about her mental state, so it’s nice to remember her in better times.
 

 
Thank you Annie Zaleski!

What the fuck happened to this woman?

X’s Exene Cervenka seems more than a tad confused these days, based on the evidence of her rambling, paranoiac and just plain stupid YouTube channel and the fact that she’s now referring to the killings in Santa Barbara over the weekend as being a “hoax” on her Twitter feed—it’s a “gun control” ruse, don’tcha know?

Cervenka’s First Amendment right to make a complete and utter fucking laughingstock out of herself is indisputable—last time I checked, this was still America—but I can’t imagine that the other members of X think this is all that hilariously funny. (Consider what having to tour with this hillbilly nincompoop must be like, always wanting to listen to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage on the radio).

Some of her fans seem unwilling to believe Cervenka could be this big of a fuckwit and are sticking up for her, saying this must be some kind of Andy Kaufman-esque “performance art.” Bullshit, she’s just an ugly human being. Fuck you, Exene. People died and you’re spreading batshit crazy conspiracy theories on the level of Alex Jones. You should be ashamed of yourself, lady, but these days, you don’t even seem acquainted enough with reality itself to fully comprehend why.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
X marks the Conspiracy Theory: Exene Cervenka, the new Alex Jones?

Thank you Rich Lindsay!

 
Donnaland Vintage Variety has announced that an “ECLECTIC 4-day VINTAGE & ANTIQUE sale” will be held in Santa Ana, CA this week. Among the items offered include some fantastic vintage jewelry, a really, really cool old Dutch bicycle, and, interestingly, set lists and posters from the legendary and seminal L.A. punk band X, original artwork by that band’s co-lead singer Exene Cervenka, and even some guitars of hers. And indeed, though this is a multi-family sale, it turns out the majority of the items are Cervenka’s. The sale’s inventory page features this quote from the woman herself:

Calling all Betty Crocker Punk Rockers!!! 100 years of Americana needs good home. Treasured memories of the past can live on in your hands! Like a small inheritance, but without the squabbling with siblings!

I got a good chuckle out of “Betty Crocker Punk Rockers.”

The address of the sale will be made public on Wednesday, February 12, 2014, and the sale itself begins on Thursday the 13th at noon. This Rickenbacker guitar shown below is really making me wish I was in the Santa Ana area. The bike’s not too shabby, either.
 

1955 Rickenbacker Combo 600
 

Electra bicycle, made in Amsterdam
 

Early ‘60s amp-in-case Sivertone guitar. RIDICULOUSLY cool.
 

Assorted posters, many for X, plus an X set list
 

 

 

A ton of cool vintage jewelry
 

”Greek Tragedy,” original artwork by Exene Cervenka
 

A metric shitload of knives. Um, OK.
 
A brief and far from complete primer for those who don’t know: X were by far one of the greatest bands to emerge from L.A.’s early punk scene. Their first three LPs, the independent Los Angeles and Wild Gift, plus the major label debut Under the Big Black Sun, all remain essential. Cervenka and the band’s bassist (also her then-husband) John Doe sang gripping harmonic dual leads that are still capable of haunting the dreams of the unsuspecting. The band later took a rootsward turn that, in addition to being pretty damn good musically (see especially See How We Are and its single “4th of July”), foreshadowed the emergence of Alt-Country. They’ve periodically reunited, and continue to tour. The anthemic “Los Angeles,” from their debut LP, is exemplary of their early sound.
 

 
And just because it’s just too damn fun, here’s a 1983 Letterman appearance, wherein they sing Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Breathless,” from the Richard Gere remake of the 1960 Jean-Luc Godard film by that title. The interview segment is great, don’t skip ahead to the song!
 

 
A mighty grateful tip of the hat to Swag for alerting me to this.

 
Shit, another legend bites the dust.

On the surface Dick Clark looked about as hip as Dick Nixon and as a kid I thought Clark was somewhat dubious as a purveyor of youth culture, but over the years I’ve come to appreciate his massive contribution to rock history, particularly when he went out on the limb and booked edgy acts on American bandstand, including Pink Floyd Public Image, Captain Beefheart, Bubble Puppy, Love, and X.

Here’s something I’d never seen before and I think it demonstrates just how on top of the rock scene Clark could be. Pink Floyd on American Bandstand
 

 
Curator of all things weird and wonderful in the world of rock and roll, Mick Stadium, has done it again by unearthing this video of X performing “Blue Spark” on the Jerry Lewis telethon in 1982.
 

 
John Doe and Exene Cervenka shilling for their latest album, 1987’s “See How We Are,” on syndicated TV show The Record Guide. This almost looks like a SCTV parody.

John and Exene were divorced in 1985 but seem to have maintained a great working relationship over the years. In this clip, they are clearly still quite fond of each other even as they are assaulted by cheesy video effects and a dumb as fuck off-screen interviewer.

“See How We Are” was their first album without the beatific Billy Zoom.
 

 
Sad news as Brendan Mullen, founder of LA’s pioneering punk rock cub The Masque, passed away earlier today from a stroke.  Here’s what Variety had to say about this absolutely essential Angeleno (by way of Scotland):

Mullen emigrated from London to Los Angeles in 1973.  He created the Masque—a dank, soon graffiti-scarred 10,000-foot space at 1655 N. Cherokee, behind and beneath the Pussycat adult theater on Hollywood Boulevard—in June 1977 as a low-rent rehearsal space for local musicians.  (Mullen himself played drums in his own punk lounge act, the Satintones.)

It quickly morphed into the principal performance venue for the city’s then-nascent punk scene, mounting its first show by the Skulls on Aug. 18, 1977.  It served as a stage and a hangout for an honor roll of first-generation punk groups: the Germs, X, the Go-Go’s, the Screamers, the Flesh Eaters, the Weirdos, the Alleycats, the Plugz, the Bags.

The freewheeling Masque, where the charming and oft-acerbic Mullen hosted the proceedings, was a magnet for the antipathy of local merchants and daily scrutiny by police, fire, and licensing officials, and was soon cited by city authorities for various licensing violations.

Closed and reopened more than once, it moved to another space on Santa Monica Boulevard before shuttering permanently in February 1979.

Mullen is seen in the abandoned Cherokee Avenue club in W.T. Morgan’s 1986 documentary about X, “The Unheard Music.”

From 1981-92, Mullen booked shows at the Sunset Boulevard bar Club Lingerie.  His diverse shows included sets by talent ranging from veteran R&B, blues, and rock ‘n’ roll acts to hip-hoppers and avant garde rockers.  He also mounted dates at the downtown Variety Arts Center in the late ‘80s, and stage managed some of the L.A. Weekly’s music awards shows.

In recent years, Mullen prolifically chronicled the history of L.A. punk, and, not incidentally, his own role in the scene.

His books included “We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk” (2001, with Marc Spitz); “Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs” (2002, with Don Bolles and Adam Parfrey); and the photo history “Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley” (2007).  He also authored the Jane’s Addiction oral history “Whores” (2005).

Mullen is survived by his longtime companion Kateri Butler.

 
Beyond the above clip from The Decline of Western Civilization, there’s not much of Mullen online, but, as a nod to his significance, there’s probably no better day than today to share as well my second favorite video of all time (after this one).  It’s from The Unheard Music.  In it, X rips through The Doors’ Soul Kitchen with some onstage help from Ray Manzarek. 

Whatever your thoughts may be on Manzarek and The Doors (and believe me, my own thoughts on the matter have ranged wildly over the years), I return to this “torch-passing” clip over and over again.  Sure, it reminds me that no matter how many times I saw X as a kid, it was still never enough—could never be enough.

But it also tethers me to a moment in LA time I was privileged enough to have witnessed up close (too close, sometimes, depending on the act and the stage).

A moment that felt, in clips like this one, intensely connected to some larger arc of history.  Even on our most receptive days, those moments of connection to a place and time can be a hard thing to muster.  Indirectly or not, Mr. Mullen provided me with some of mine. 

My thoughts are with Kateri Butler and the family of Brendan Mullen.

 
Brendan Mullen In Swindle Magazine

Bonus: The Weirdos do Helium Bar

In Variety: Club Promoter Brendan Mullen Dies

In the LAT: Local Punk Champion, Masque Founder Brendan Mullen Dies

(with thanks to Ian Raikow)