A Year of Blind Spots: Los Angeles

Los Angeles

X

1980

Like the name of the band: it really is this simple.

It was as simple as starting a punk band in Los Angeles in the late '70s even though both of your singers can't really sing. It was as simple as getting minor coverage in a niche music newsletter and having Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek getting blown away by the lyrics that he reads there, so much so that he hightails it to his old haunt, the Whisky a Go Go, where he walks in an hears the punk band he came to see playing a fucking Doors song, "Soul Kitchen," but all revved up and with new life pouring forth, like it's fate, like Manzarek was meant to be here, to hear this band play this song and set this particular punk rock mechanism moving on its fated path. It was as simple as Manzarek securing a handshake deal to produce the first album.

It was as simple as playing punk that is both accessible and not. It was as simple as infusing rockabilly into the punk that was just about ready to leave its nascent stage. It was as simple as playing loud and fast but also coherently, and making it catchy too, and adding flair by being smart enough to have the classic rock legend who is producing your album also playing some of his keyboards, which are instantly recognizable and give you something to hold on to if you happen to need it, and then trusting the audience to "get it," to understand that there is value in these voices—Exene Cervenka and John Doe sharing vocal duties—even if they are far from classical trained singers.

It was as simple as making that one eternal song, a song that has power and a hook and also mise-en-scène, a song of a time and a place, quite vividly, and it's as simple as making that song the title track of your first album, obviously. It's as simple as that song having the power to soundtrack anything, including a skateboarding video game, of course, and so of fucking course there's another Tony Hawk moment of recognition, something that happens to me once a year it feels like, when I, listening to Los Angeles by X for the first time, snap to attention and say "holy shit I know this one" and know instantly why I know, because it's the same reason every fucking time.

It was simple. Or at least it feels like it's simple. X, from their name down to their guitar-bashing, make it seem like the simplest thing in the goddamn world. But maybe it's not so simple. Maybe I'm just thankful that life's various complexities led us all here, to right now, to me listening to this perfect album. Maybe by calling it "simple," I can pretend that a thousand things could not have gone wrong at any moment. So: it's simple. Listen to Los Angeles by X. Very simple, yes.