Though they’ve hit the pause button, broken up, regrouped and have had some minor lineup changes throughout the years, L.A. punk band X—comprised of singer Exene Cervenka, bassist and vocalist John Doe, drummer DJ Bonebrake and guitarist Billy Zoom—has been going strong for four decades now.
Given punk rock’s penchant for chaos and its “live fast, die young” modus operandi, the group’s longevity is pretty remarkable, especially when one takes the kind of debauchery and violence prevalent in the ’70s Los Angeles punk scene made infamous by documentaries like The Decline of Western Civilization into consideration. In a number of interviews, vocalist and bassist John Doe has mentioned that he attributes the band’s legacy and ability to last to its members’ ambition and refusal to quit, but X’s set on Thursday afternoon at Summerfest’s U.S. Cellular Connection Stage proved that there’s more magic to it all than just the principle of keeping at it. The stories in X’s songs (sometimes told in a not-so-distant third person perspective) shed light on all of the complicated, problematic parts of Americanness, for better or for worse—the ugly, the recklessness, hedonism, the violence, the mundane.
The show started off with the twangy, roots-and-blues-charged “Beyond and Back” off of 1981’s Wild Gift. Exene and John’s signature ferocious yet perfectly entwined harmonies kept audience members on their feet as Billy, who cut his teeth gigging with rockabilly legends such as Gene Vincent, and DJ cruised along.
“Thanks for coming on our side... of the giant world out there,” Doe told the crowd before the band kicked into some essentials and fan favorites like the rollicking “Sex and Dying in High Society” (the equivalent of a middle finger to California’s flashy elite), the beat-poet punk shuffle “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts” and the heavy-hearted “Dancing with Tears in My Eyes.”
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The punk heavyweights followed with a couple of tracks from their debut album, such as “Los Angeles,” where Doe and Exene recount a close friend turned racist and homophobe’s final days in L.A. before she moves to London. The duo seemed to have swapped out a vulgar racial slur with the word “Christian” in this live version (“She started to hate every... Christian and Jew”), but it remains impossible to separate the line (or really the entire opening verse) from its original context.
X closed their set with “Your Phone’s Off the Hook, But You’re Not” before festival grounds staff requested that the band cut their set short due to a severe weather advisory.
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