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LA punk legends X: ‘The violence didn’t bother me as much as the spitting!’
They chronicled 1980s Los Angeles as a nihilist nightmare and became a key voice in the city. Releasing their final album, they recall the wild parties – and rocky romances
Having succumbed to LA’s siren call, Cervenka found work at venerated Venice Beach arts space Beyond Baroque where, at a poetry workshop, she sat beside fellow new arrival Doe, who’d decided this was where to find “kindred spirits”. Welcoming aboard “Buddha-like” drummer DJ Bonebrake, X played parties and friends’ basements, where – alongside contemporaries the Screamers, Black Randy and the Metrosquad, the Weirdos and Germs – they inaugurated LA’s punk-rock scene. “We loved Chuck Berry and Eddie Cochran,” Doe says, “the imagery, the economy of the storytelling, the truthfulness.” Manzarek recognised within these new wave Los Angelenos a similar poetic menace to his own group, and produced their 28-minute debut album.
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