X - Los Angeles - what's the best song of this somewhat underrated masterpiece?

Hard to choose, because everything is great, except imo Sex and Dying and Sugarlight, but eventually, it's the first track by an inch.

I really like Sex & Dying, this is impossible

It's always been "The World's a Mess" for Me. "Los Angeles" is great too, although the lyrics are definitely a problem, even if you're supposed to accept that they're writing in a detached third-person voice. (Has no one polled this album before?)

My runaway ego dictates that I will always be capitalizing "Me" henceforth.

Going with "Johny Hit and Run Paulene" because Billy Zoom is operating at peak Chuck Berry.

Some smooth chords
On the car radio
No hard chords
On the car radio

"Los Angeles" is great too, although the lyrics are definitely a problem, even if you're supposed to accept that they're writing in a detached third-person voice.

Agree on both counts. Read an interview with John Doe recently where he notes they changed the lyrics several years back, still "shocking" and confrontational but not quite *as* shocking.

"Has no one polled this album before?"

4 first album together:

X - Los Angeles - what's the best song of this somewhat underrated masterpiece?

Difficult to search with such a generic band name and record

(Has no one polled this album before?)

There's a poll combining this and Wild Gift with the caveat "Thanks to the Slash CD, I don't think of them as separate albums":

Los Angeles/Wild Gift

I mean:

It's Who You (mini) Poll: Best X Song from Los Angeles, Wild Gift, Under Big Black Sun & More Fun in the New World

Ah, just before I arrived. I could have broken the tie at the top.

(xpost) "She started to hate every studio exec and video gamer..."

Unheard Music

― Steve Shasta, Monday, January 14, 2008 2:52 PM (sixteen years ago)

unchanging lol

"Thanks to the Slash CD, I don't think of them as separate albums"

Wild Gift is not in the same level of greatness

Wild Gift is not in the same level of greatness

Disagree; the first three albums (and half of the fourth) are incredible and often hard to accept as the work of the same band, they were evolving so fast and trying so many things (almost all successful).

XP Yeah, it's higher!

title track ... this album has always felt thrillingly sordid. the clips of the band performing in the decline of western civilization are amazing.

Title track for me

Yeah, in hindsight i should have voted for the title track

fuck. this is hard!

Los Angeles I loooove but i weirdly, nerdily prefer the live at CBGB version

Nausea rules that riff combined with Bonebreak’s drums is so fucking sick & heavy

BUT the World’s A Mess It’s in His Kiss is one of those songs that combines all the things that X does well, it’s so nostalgic & punk & dirty & beautiful

this poll may kill me

and Jhnny Hit & Run Pauline is iconic and so disturbing but catchy i have a love hate relationship w myself singing along to it

Unheard Music for me too

A lot to choose from, but "The World's a Mess, It's in My Kiss" helped me get into the rest of the album and still remains my favorite song of theirs.

Friends warehouse pain.


My previous favorites from this album have included Nausea, the title track, and World's A Mess, but The Unheard Music has been the one I vibe the most with lately.

unheard music

but gotta be honest, first time I heard it was via this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLEQi-nHXXg

Am I wrong in thinking Manzarek foregrounds his organ more than on subsequent recordings?

nope, it's def mixed up here

Am I wrong in thinking Manzarek foregrounds his organ more than on subsequent recordings?

I don't think he even plays on the other albums, but yeah, he's all over Side Two of this one, basically turning them into a quintet. I think it works really well.

probably Nausea or The Unheard Music

somewhat underrated

People seemingly don’t talk about X as much anymore, but this album has definitely always held a place in the pantheon of punk classics — it was one of the first albums I went looking for as a teen after working my way through the bands covered on The Spaghetti Incident, haha.

For me an argument could be made for just about any track other than Soul Kitchen (still a good take on the original) or Sugarlight.

Man "Unheard Music" or "Los Angeles" or "Sex & Dyin'" or "Johnny Hit & Run Pauline"...damn this is hard

Also that Elastica/Malkmus cover is great, I've seen the movie but I don't remember them doing the song

Billy Zoom is all over this album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCsrHanqkn8

and even plays flute(!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzRwIOI5LfM

I'm trying to think of other parody covers by other bands that featured the original artists and can only come up with Mark Knopfler weirdly insisting on playing on Weird Al's version of Money for Nothing.

Going with "Johny Hit and Run Paulene" because Billy Zoom is operating at peak Chuck Berry.

"Soul Kitchen (still a good take on the original)"

I would say it's not a cover, but a totaly new (and great) song, sharing only the same lyrics

this is hard, re-listening for the millionth time for insight.

damn i love this band and this album so much.

i wish i coulda been there at the time, i dont even know how an audience could digest this stuff—that unique vocal attack, the beautifully real lyrics, and that new old sound and structure.

when i go back thru the first 3 albums, which is rarely these days, i STILL feel “man, no one deserved anything this good as usa lurched into the reagan years.”

What are people's problems with More Fun...? There's a couple posts itt stopping short of praise, or just citing half of it. Sure, it's a little longer and more commercial than the prior three, but it's still banger after banger IMHO.

I have no problems with More Fun In The New World, it's after that the rot sets in a bit, not that I hate the next 2 albums, they both have songs I like but the production doesn't suit them at all

More Fun in the New World sounds like X imitating themselves and failing. The songs sound like they wrote them for a Rent-style musical about "L.A. punk rockers struggling with life and love".

The cover of "Breathless" is great, but just about everything else isn't. And I say this as someone who loves Billy Zoom, and guitar solos — Billy Zoom's guitar solo on "True Love" is fucking gross.

johnny hit & run or the world’s a mess

I used to flinch from "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts" -- too goddamn reactionary and pointing the way to the Ameri-indie/roots comeback of 1985. Now I tolerate its groove and its defensiveness; it's clear they know they're losing.

I used to flinch from "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts" -- too goddamn reactionary and pointing the way to the Ameri-indie/roots comeback of 1985. Now I tolerate its groove and its defensiveness; it's clear they know they're losing.

Dave Alvin should have set them straight before they let that song get to tape. "American Music" > "I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts" all day every day.

More Fun is wall to wall great, y'all are crazy, even the missteps work somehow

they weren’t the last murkin band on the radio because they didnt really make it to radio.

eh maybe fourth of july i guess

I was too young. I heard "4th of July" for the first time on The Sopranos. Good song!

i rly got onto x as utbbs was going. mfitnw was good, and i thought x were probly the best band in usa right then rly.

but maybe i could see how it was going? or decided after— “already in decline”?

yeah i think the latter i couldnt see shit then and dont even try now

it was the "Wild Thing" single that came after More Fun that made me think "hmm idk abt this"

ha i totally repressed that

"The World's a Mess, It's In My Kiss" or "Los Angeles"

Also love "Soul Kitchen"

The Wild Thing single did make it onto the AOR radio stations in my area for a bit that summer. It did not catch on, but it was clearly getting pushed.

and "Burning House of Love" got a push

"Wild Thing" got them into the movies and then sporting events because of a sports movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNCEFn7E34s

“wild thing” cover is also the current theme song for the pro wrestler jon moxley. it’s great imo. gets the people goin

"Wild Thing" was a non-album single (very rare in America! we don't do that here!) and I never heard it at the time. When I heard it in Major League (a movie my dad liked, so we saw it on video more than once) I assumed it was Joan Jett or something.

wild thing is fun but a far cry from what they were doing on los angeles. their cover of breathless is so much better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94-bNXPbZag

Breathless was the first X song I ever heard, it was on a movie soundtrack and I remember waiting for the credits at the end to see who it was by

Major League?

"Breathless" was on the soundtrack to the Richard Gere remake of the Godard movie. (Better than the original, fuiud.) The movie also makes excellent use of King Sunny Ade.

Major League must have had X doing "Wild Thing."

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

had a moment yesterday with “the unheard music” so making sure it gets a vote

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

as someone who has been listening to this album since 1982 this looks about right, team Unheard Music 4eva

Yeah make sense, in a way

would not have guessed in a million years that the Major League "Wild Thing" was X

it made my heart sink.

it made everything— uh something meaning sus that rhymes w groovy.

woozy?

groove-free?

that wins

ILX poster wins?