320. X, "Los Angeles"

 


Fuck yeah!  This album fucking rocks.  Arriving in April 1980 (when Christopher Cross' "Ride Like the Wind" was #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, right after "Call Me" by Blondie which, admittedly, still kicks ass), this record heralded a new dawn of American punk.  Produced by Ray Manzarek, former keyboardist for the Doors.  Maybe that's why there's a cover of "Soul Kitchen" which is about as similar to the original as a Hot Pocket is to Beef Wellington.  

Perhaps you know "Johny Hit and Run Pauline," a  catchy song "about a guy who takes an imaginary drug that allows him to have sex once an hour for 24 hours."  The title track, about a racist woman who leaves LA because of its diversity, drops the n-word and became notorious for doing so.  But really, there are no bad songs on this classic album.  ("Sex and Drugs in High Society" is my favorite, though.)

TOTALLY (OR MOSTLY) UNRELATED CONTENT: Last night we watched the Woodstock 99 documentary on HBO and HOLY SHIT that festival was even more of a nightmare than I ever imagined.  I mean, we all heard the news trickling out about how it turned into a near-riot and there were fires and kids breaking stuff, to reference the Limp Bizkit song, but I guess I never knew what a shitty job of planning the organizers did.  It was like 100 degrees and bottled water was $4 a bottle and the free water was hard to access and there were a bunch of meatheads and they scheduled Limp Bikzit, Korn, and Metallica back to back?  I mean, what did you think was going to happen?  But it was so, so much worse than that.  Definitely worth watching.  (Also, I heard it will be discussed on "TV on the Radio" on BFF.fm, this Sunday, so check that out for sure!)

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Yes of course!

Comments

  1. StephenJuly 27, 2021 at 6:24 PM

    Very fun seeing them at Stern Grove Sunday. Even if we were a thousand feet away on a sandy, unstable hillside.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TKJuly 28, 2021 at 8:19 AM

      Oh yeah! That must have been cool. I just looked up the setlist and it looks amazing.

      https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/x/2021/stern-grove-san-francisco-ca-1b8f3da0.html

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

103. De La Soul, "Three Feet High And Rising"

Image
  Sorry for the service interruption!  Monday I had, like, work stuff to do and yesterday I was picking my wife up at the airport and they lost her bag and we had to file a claim about that and by the time I got home it was well into my Work Hours and you know, I'm just sorry.  (This was tail end of quite a journey for my wife that found her taking off in Ireland and landing in Newark, New Jersey, and then sitting in a plane for almost three hours and then the flight just getting cancelled and then staying in the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Newark, NJ [not recommended, she says] and then getting on a flight to SFO at 6:30 am and finally getting back here a solid 14 hours later than expected.) Speaking of the greater New York City metropolitan area, a group of kids from Amityville, Long Island, got together in 1988 and started making songs and released this album, one of the best in hip hop or any other genre, in 1989.  De La have been called the "Beatles of hip hop"
Read more

3. Joni Mitchell, "Blue"

Image
  Do you want the good news or the meh news first?  The good news is that this album is better than the other Joni Mitchell albums we've seen , or at least better for me.  I hated one of them and barely tolerated the other, so I was not expecting to like this, and after three listens yesterday, it was not as bad as I'd feared it would be.  The meh news?  I still don't love Joni Mitchell and I don't particularly like this album. Obviously, since it's the number 3 out of the Top 500 albums ever made, a lot of people feel differently.  Pitchfork called it "possibly the most gutting break-up album ever made," which may be true, who knows, but if it is it's about breaking up with a whole series of dudes, from Graham Nash to James Taylor to some guy named Carey.  (In Pitchfork's estimation, this is the 86th best album of the 1970s, so not exactly in number 3 overall territory). One thing that bugs me is Joni Mitchell's voice, which I find kind of g
Read more

1. Marvin Gaye, "What’s Going On"

Image
  500 albums later and we're out of albums.  This album was number 6 on the last iteration of the Rolling Stone list and has now moved up to number 1 (displacing Sgt. Pepper , which was the last album to hold that spot).  I think it's a lovely album with maybe three absolutely incredible songs, a fair amount of average-to-good, and some not great songs.  I'm not a voter and will never be a voter but I just don't think this is the best album of all time. In fact, I would be perfectly fine with this list if they just sawed off the top 3 and left the rest as is: 1. Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life 2. Beatles, Abbey Road 3. Nirvana, Nevermind 4. Fleetwood Mac, Rumours And so forth.  But let's take this album on its own merits. The first of the three absolute bangers is the title track, "What's Going On," the scene-setter for the rest of the album, a loose concept album that's told from the point of view of a Vietnam vet returning to a country th
Read more