X hits the Spot

Listening to this week’s Personality Crisis (via the RSS feed of course), Jon Kincaid played a long long set of music from X. Dang, I love this band and I love that show. He played a bunch of their songs, and yet didn’t hit my favorite – “The Phone is Off the Hook (but You’re Not)”.

I think that Punk: Attitude documentary I watched on IFC was pretty shameful in spending 40 minutes on London punk, 40 minutes on New York punk, and like 2 and half on California punk. At least half of the bands I really care about from the scene are Cali bands – X, Dead Kennedys, Circle Jerks, Black Flag, (really old) Suicidal Tendencies, etc. I know the director was actually a player in the NY punk scene and has loyalties that way, but jeez.

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Dave Slusher is a blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, author, science fiction fan and father. Member of the Podcast Hall of Fame class of 2022.

6 thoughts on “X hits the Spot”

  1. Hey dude-I saw X in a club in Tucson called Tumbleweeds-could fit 100 people in there max. Awesome show of course.I’m very receptive to your complaint about regional bias, but if it is in terms of influence Cal punk wasn’t nearly as influential on other punk as much as it was on alt country/ Americana. Besides NY/London has always been a circle jerk vacuum, so par for the course.

    You didn’t mention the Minutemen, Blasters, Rank & File, or the Plimsouls on your list.All good stuff though.

    Just listened to WREK via stream. Good stuff.

  2. I have some Rank and File, but none of these bands (even the Minutemen) influenced me as much as the ones I named. The fact that I feel this way about Cali punk might indeed be because I do love the cowpunk.

    If you listen to that same Personality Crisis show from the WREK archive, the last few songs are live Minutemen from when they played the WREK studios, almost exactly 20 years ago.

  3. One of the great observations from the recent Ramones doc (End Of The World) was one of them (Joey I think) noting that the first time they toured through the West Coast there was no scene to speak of, just people gathering at their shows. But the second time there was EVERYTHING, including most of the bands you mention. All those bands had sprouted up in their wake.

    Ohhh, 10 years since the Minutemen show at WREK, I’ll flag that on the WREK website and point to Personality Crisis.

  4. bought the X anthology “make the music go bang” a few months ago and picked up “unclogged” at a free CD giveaway. one of the sweetest sites a father can have: watching your teenage sons start banging head-bobbing to “Los Angeles”…

  5. Has anyone heard any of the new John Doe? If so, any good? I miss my copy of Yes LA, clear vinyl with green print on it. I think it also had the avengers,Alley Cats, Dickies,The Bags,in addition to X’s Los Angeles-one of their best.

    Fun times those. Got into a fight with the keyboard player from the Pedestrians(a Tucson band), which later became Green On Red, during a Go Go’s show. Alas, we both got the bum’s rush from the venue and laughed about it on the sidewalk. The source of our friction was a long drawn, who was more punk kind of thing.

    I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts-great mantra for an era.

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