169
September 1983
X
More Fun in the New World
4.75 out of 5
Highlights:
We’re Having Much More Fun
True Love
Poor Girl
Make the Music Go Bang
Breathless
I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts
Devil Doll
True Love Pt. 2
We’re Having Much More Fun
True Love
Poor Girl
Make the Music Go Bang
Breathless
I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts
Devil Doll
True Love Pt. 2
It’s no secret that I love X. I bought Wild Gift in 1980 because it was listed as one of the best of the year and that name and cover just called out to me. I name checked that album in Throttle Back Sparky’s song “Joey Enough”. I have documented elsewhere seeing them at the House of Blues in 99 after volunteering to be in a stranger’s minion and coming home to discover that they were playing. My father loved Wild Gift, too and made me buy Under the Big Black Sun when it came out (he didn’t like it as much as WG). X is all over my life. I did a commercial with John Cervenka and was awestruck(he is Exene’s brother). I can pinpoint markers and memories with just about every X album of the era. Too much for this space.
The girl who lived in the dorm across the hall from me was also an X fan and she bought this the week it came out. I don’t recall her reaction. Mine was ecstasy.
This is the capper to the quadrilogy that was X’s Manzarek era, raw, stripped and vital.
It’s their most cohesive piece. While it’s not as immediate as Gift or even Los Angeles, it carries the assured maturity that can be found on Black Sun, an album shrouded in death as it was made in the shadow of Exene’s sister’s death. It’s almost unfair for me to try to analyze this album through unbiased eyes, I think it’s terrific.
Billy Zoom’s magic guitar work on “True Love” puts most of the glam metal rockers to shame.
For many it’s the one with “Breathless” on it. Sure. That’s here. But so is “Poor Girl”, perhaps the best example of the band at its most poetic and raw.
And, “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts”, with its band name-checking, is what inspired my song in the first place. In their case it’s a lamentation on the division in our country, Reaganism, war, and how the best music, the music of the people, the roots, the punk rock, the political voices and statements, will never get played on the radio in the shadow of bouncy synth-dance crap. It might be their best track.
The girl who lived in the dorm across the hall from me was also an X fan and she bought this the week it came out. I don’t recall her reaction. Mine was ecstasy.
This is the capper to the quadrilogy that was X’s Manzarek era, raw, stripped and vital.
It’s their most cohesive piece. While it’s not as immediate as Gift or even Los Angeles, it carries the assured maturity that can be found on Black Sun, an album shrouded in death as it was made in the shadow of Exene’s sister’s death. It’s almost unfair for me to try to analyze this album through unbiased eyes, I think it’s terrific.
Billy Zoom’s magic guitar work on “True Love” puts most of the glam metal rockers to shame.
For many it’s the one with “Breathless” on it. Sure. That’s here. But so is “Poor Girl”, perhaps the best example of the band at its most poetic and raw.
And, “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts”, with its band name-checking, is what inspired my song in the first place. In their case it’s a lamentation on the division in our country, Reaganism, war, and how the best music, the music of the people, the roots, the punk rock, the political voices and statements, will never get played on the radio in the shadow of bouncy synth-dance crap. It might be their best track.
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