I had no idea that it had been 14 years since X’s Under the Big Black Sun was last reissued (along with most of their catalog, on the Rhino imprint) with bonus live tracks, remastering and improved CD packaging. But it has been that long, and the last reissue is long out of print, so how nice that Real Gone Music stepped up to the plate and put out this platter once again for Record Store Day 2014.
I started to call X the best American band since the ‘60s, but that may be a bit of an overstatement. After all, you still have to contend with Los Lobos and The Blasters, both of which coincidentally came out of the roots-punk scene in Los Angeles in the late 1970s. (OK, now you know my biases.)
Now, some publication called Rolling Stone ranked X’s first two albums Los Angeles and Wild Gift as among the 500 best albums ever made, but for my money this one is where they reached their peak. For a couple of reasons (aside from Ray Manzarek’s improved production, although nobody every really succeeded in capturing the full magic of this band in the studio).
First, they break out of the punk ghetto and explore their musical roots, including the tribal thunder of the opener “The Hungry Wolf,” the romantic swamp pop of “Come Back To Me,” the punkish rockabilly of the title song and “How I (Learned My Lesson),” Tin-Pan Alley pop via Leadbelly in “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes,” and country in the barroom homage of the closer, “The Have Nots.” Of course there are some straight punk songs too, including the wailing “Real Child of Hell” and singer Exene Cervenka’s paean to adultery, “Because I Do.”
Second, the quality of writing on these songs is at times astounding. Most of the songs on the album sprang from Exene’s trauma following the death in a car crash of her sister two years earlier, about the time their first album was released. “Riding With Mary” tells of her married sister’s affair and alludes to her death. That romantic swamp pop setting of “Come Back To Me” masks the fact that it’s abut Exene’s heartsickness at her sister’s loss, but when you listen to the lyrics, their subject becomes clear:
Gifts and flowers lay upon the lid / of pink silk above your face. / Tears make a river of diamonds in the dark. / Our daddy breaks down at the funeral home…
Over the 20 years or so since I discovered this album, the title song “Under The Big Black Sun” has become one of my all-time favorites. Partly for Billy Zoom’s country-influenced guitar lines mixed with power chords, and drummer D.J. Bonebrake’s propulsive yet melodic playing. But especially for the lyrics, written and sung together by Exene and bassist John Doe. After the directness and minimalist lines of “Come Back To Me,” it’s packed with oblique references and Catholic imagery courtesy of Exene’s upbringing; and it’s replete with lines that reflect the rigors of years on the road playing rock and roll and the emotional toll of such intimate family matters as death and adultery. (Doe and Cervenka were married from 1980 to 1985.) The final two verses deal first with emotional estrangement and grief, then move into mythic territory:
At my desk as you’re sleeping / as the big deal of Death / kills me and starts leaving / everybody asks me how I’m doing / I’m doing everything alone / rave on, children and try to sleep.
Larks must sing grave deep melodies / happy they that die. / The sly brown fox pulled up a glass / pulled up a chair / and yanked out my hair. / When I tried to sit I fell down / when I woke up he was gone.”
And then they kick right into the near-hardcore punk of “Because I Do,” in which Exene confesses how hard it is to remain faithful. The chorus is superb: “What kind of fool am I? I am the married kind. The kind that said ‘I do.’ Forever searching for someone new.” And the stripped-down verses are even better. “I am the ghost of all my dreams,” she wails. “To me it’s all pretend. I pretend I’m alive or just not dead.” And, in beautifully off-kilter harmony with Doe, “My nights are numbered. They don’t count for nothing. I’m not a fool, I’m just a bride.”
Then how about “How I (Learned My Lesson),” a song of romantic longing and frustration that’s set in a church instead of a bar. The protagonist is a lovelorn woman who appears to have had a fling with the preacher and raises a ruckus when he refuses to acknowledge her in public. Among the outstanding lyrics: “But he’s just an old flame. I’ll never want him again. And again. And again.” Musically it’s a glorious rocking mishmash of old-school punk, power pop, country and especially rockabilly, with Exene and John singing call-and-response lines in the chorus.
“The Have Nots” bears the marks of John Doe’s songwriting, the kind of rootsy country-tinged alternative rock that he’s specialized in over several solo albums since the early ’90s. It’s an homage to working people trying to find the bottom step of a ladder that “keeps getting higher and higher” in “the game that moves as you play.” And it’s also an homage to the kind of working class bar that they seem to have spent a lot of time in, with the names of dozens of them included, from Jocko’s Rocketship to Lucy’s Wisconsin Rendezvous. Doe once said in an interview that using a bar’s name in a song was a good way to get a free drink the next time you dropped by.
The bonus material on this CD is a mixed bag. Probably the best is the single version of the Jerry Lee Lewis classic “Breathless” which would appear on their next album More Fun in the New World and which apparently was used in a Richard Gere movie. There’s also the single version of “Riding With Mary” and live versions of “How I (Learned My Lesson)” and “Universal Corner” from their second album Wild Gift. Plus a goof on Marty Robbins’s “El Paso” paired with an instrumental mix of “Because I Do.”
Here’s a very MTV video of “The Hungry Wolf,” which casts the band as some kind of blend of punk, goth and New Wave — which, fair enough. Enjoy. And truly, if you don’t have this album, go find a record store that still has a copy of this reissue. It’s a classic.
(Elektra, 1982; Real Gone, 2014)
