I went to see X with a friend Saturday night. I used to listen to them a lot 25-30 years ago but less so since. I read a comment the other week, “Still one of the tightest bands out there, and one of the most underrated bands of all time. Their first 4 albums are legendary.” I couldn’t agree more. Some music ages well and some doesn’t. Case in point: I liked The Damned a lot when I was twenty. Their music suited me at the time. I remember the phrase, “Mindless, directionless energy” on one of their album jackets. For the most part it was. A 20-year-old needs a few hours of mindless, directionless energy every week. At 46, two hours of mindless, directionless energy is two hours I’ll never get back. While I still enjoy the same Damned songs that I did 25+ years ago – although maybe just one or two a sitting now instead of an entire album – the music itself is meant to be played by young people. I can appreciate it from a distance as an older person but I can’t throw myself into it – nevermind physically, I mean psychologically. I saw The Damned play on Colin Ferguson’s show a few years ago. In his intro Ferguson commented – on hearing their music as a youth – that “I loved punk rock because it sounded like a fight. And that made me feel happy.” I could relate. However, while the song they played was great in the original, they looked and sounded like they were playing at a young person’s game. That was not the case with X last weekend. They were just as smart and funny and good-natured and serious as I remember their music being thirty years ago. Did Johnny Cash sound silly singing the same songs at age 65 as he did when he was 35? (X is more Jerry Lee Lewis than Johnny Cash but I think the “ages well” analogy holds.) Few musicians can play a song when with the energy and perspective of a 25-year-old then play it thirty years later and have it sound just as good – perhaps with a bit less energy but with perspective which makes it richer not aged. They do. I’m really glad I went to their show.
Anyhow, without further ado, they opened their set with “The Phone’s Off the Hook (But You’re Not” (old video):
I’m blanking on the second song but “White Girl” followed not long thereafter. (This an old video. Former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek produced the album.):
They didn’t play “The Have Nots” but it’s a great song:
A few more good links:
- Brief interview with Ray Manzarek and playing “Soul Kitchen”
- Dick Clark interview on American Bandstand (1982)
- “Poor Girl”
- “Motel Room in My Bed”
- Billy Zoom Tribute Silver Jet guitar
From an interview with Billy Zoom in OC Weekly fifteen years ago:
“A lot of what I did in X was making fun of ’70s music,” says Zoom with a laugh.”I remember watching the Doobie Brothers on this Christmas rock concert. The songs were already boring and pretentious to begin with, and then they did this one where the whole band stopped and the guitar player took this solo-wheedly-wheedly-wheedly-playing lots of notes and making all these faces and shaking his hair. And he wasn’t even doing anything. There were a lot of notes, but it was a real easy riff, you know? I noticed that all of these rock groups were always making these faces, trying to make it look hard but not really playing anything. So as a joke, I would play something difficult and just smile and not look at the guitar and act like it was nothing. To me, that was funny. In the beginning, most of the audience got it, but after a while, people looked at it and thought, ‘Well, he isn’t doing anything hard, or he wouldn’t look like he was.'”
He did that Saturday night. My friend said he’s done it for as long as he’s seen them play – thirty plus years.