In my review of the re-released reissue of X’s Under The Big Black Sun I asserted that it, their third, is X’s best album. In the liner notes of the remastered reissue of their next record, More Fun in the New World, noted Los Angeles journalist and music writer Kristine McKenna says this one is their best. Who am I to argue with Kristine McKenna, eh? So I won’t. In fact, for a long time, More Fun was my favorite X record, too, and there’s a definite case to be made.
This album is the one that got X onto Late Night with David Letterman when it was released by Elektra in 1983. They did two songs, a steaming version of “Hot House” with bassist John Doe on lead vocal, and Exene Cervenka leading on an absolutely smoking cover of Otis Blackwell’s “Breathless,” originally recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis. “Hot House” has never been among my favorite X songs, but it’s a lot better in the slightly faster live version than the studio take, and Doe wrote a smashing couplet for the chorus that makes the song instantly memorable: “The whole world loves a sad song it don’t have to sing.” And the searing tones Billy Zoom pulls out of his silver Gretsch on this one are mind-blowing.
*More Fun has lots of excellent songs on it, some with more uplifting themes than you’ll find on their first three. Their purest pop song to date, “Poor Girl,” is just flat-out fun and danceable, with yet another superb line nestled amidst a bunch of memorable lyrics: “Take what she gives you / don’t cry when you kiss her.” The following track “Make The Music Go Bang” is a big roaring freight train of a rock song as well as a loving homage to the punk bands and fans that made up the scene that gave birth to X. Also put in this category “We’re Having Much More Fun,” a hilarious celebration of life on the road, passing mostly invisibly through town after town full of sleeping suburbanites: “We’ll crawl through your back yard, and whack your yapping dog!” The aforementioned “Breathless” is one of Exene’s finest moments on record, and it also features some of the best of her and Doe’s duet singing and a chance for Billy Zoom to totally rock out.
“Devil Doll” is another flat-out rocker, a lovingly raucous love song about Exene, her “rags and bones and battered shoes.” “I See Red” is a humorous and head-spinning rave-up with machine gun lyrics about romantic strife, in a pure punk setting.
One of the best tracks and the most unusual are a pair: Exene’s “True Love” and the band’s “True Love Pt. #2.” The former is an up-tempo rocker on the the way falling in love can ruin your life: “True love is the devil’s crowbar” is the repeated refrain. The latter is a funk-influenced studio jam from the recording of Part 1, that starts out with John and Exene trading verbal riffs on that refrain: “True love is the devil’s bombshell … chokehold … quicksand … door knob …” Then it turns into a call and response on the titles of old songs, from folk to blues to early rock and roll: “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” “Burning Love,” “Skip To My Lou,” “I’ve Been Working On The Railroad.”
X had always engaged in social commentary, right from the title song of its first album Los Angeles. But things get more explicit on More Fun, with two songs that are specific indictments of Reagan-era economic and foreign policies making this more than just another punk album. The first is “The New World.” You’ll notice that the first two tracks were blended to form the album’s title, one political commentary, the other a reflection of the musician’s life (which, not coincidentally, gave the writers the opportunity to observe the effects of contemporary politics on people all over the country). “Honest to goodness, the bars weren’t open this morning / they must’ve been voting for a new president or something,” “The New World” begins. Its repeated chorus of “It was better before, before they voted for what’s-his-name; this was supposed to be the New World,” leaves little doubt about their political feelings. On top of all that, it’s a damn catchy song.
Then smack in the middle of the record (actually ending Side One on the vinyl version) is “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts,” a withering look at life in America in the mid-‘80s, from the banal and corrupt music business to the cynical and corrupt political side that gave us proxy wars in Central America and the Iran-Contra affair. The “bad thoughts” the singer must not think include ones about each tax-payer’s participation in that corruption:
I’m guilty of murder of innocent men, / innocent women, innocent children, thousands of ’em. / My planes, my guns, my money, my soldiers / my blood on my hands, it’s all my fault …
The second half of the album is weighted down with a couple of songs – “Painting The Town Blue” and “Drunk In My Past” – that (to me, anyway) prefigure the tone of their next album, the odd and mostly boring Ain’t Love Grand! That leaves “Devil Doll” and “I See Red” to do a lot of heavy lifting, and it’s why I see Big Black Sun as the better album.
The bonus material on the reissue includes remixed demos of “Poor Girl,” “True Love Pt. #2,” “Devil Doll” and “Bad Thoughts.” The latter is my favorite, mostly because it doesn’t fade out but plays the whole studio jam at the end of the song, which goes on just long enough. The package has expanded liner notes, lots of period photos, and lyrics.
Even though it has its low spots, this is an excellent album, and the last good one X did before Billy Zoom left the group. Once again, kudos to Real Gone for putting it back in circulation.
(Elektra, 1983; Real Gone, 2014)
