Billy Zoom, a long-time rockabilly fanatic, was warming up before the session by playing in the style associated with one of country music's most influential guitarists, Merle Travis, and John Doe and Exene, who are husband and wife, said they had been listening to a lot of hard-core country-andwestern music by the likes of Hank Williams. There is a new flavor in some of X's new songs, a kind of countryand-western lilt that meshes surprisingly well with the band's driving punk intensity and jazzy swing. The time-consuming recording techniques that most established rock bands use (recording just bass and drums first and then slowly adding the other instruments and voices a layer at a time) are not for X. On a recent evening, the four members of X - Exene on vocals, John Doe on bass and vocals, Billy Zoom on guitar, and Don Bonebrake on drums - were playing hard and fast in the studio, recording take after take and then listening and choosing the most supercharged performances. X is enjoying a bigger beer budget, and the band is getting a crisper sound, but little else has changed. Manzarek, who was the organist with the most important Los Angeles rock band of the 60's, the Doors, and who offered to work with X when every major record label had rejected them and they were debating whether to sign with Slash.
This year, X is working in a state-of-the-art studio. ''Wild Gift'' was finished in a few weeks and released to almost unanimous critical praise it was named pop album of the year by both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. But Los Angeles punk's major success story is X, who are working on ''Under the Big Black Sun,'' their first Elektra album, in a Los Angeles studio.Ī year ago, the members of X and their producer, Ray Manzarek, were recording their second Slash album, ''Wild Gift,'' in a small, inexpensive West Hollywood studio. Other indications include the success of Penelope Spheeris's feature film about Los Angeles punk, ''The Decline of Western Civilization,'' which will be shown at the Bleecker Street Cinema next Sunday, and national tours by Los Angeles punk bands such as Fear, who will be at the Peppermint Lounge on Sunday. X on Elektra, Slash trysting with Warners, and Fear hobnobbing with John Belushi are among the most noticeable indications that Los Angeles punk is no longer an in-group phenomenon. Reporters have been hot on Fear's heels because several of the members had become close friends with the late John Belushi. So far they have chosen ''The Blasters,'' the first album from one of Los Angeles' most popular club bands, but turned down ''The Record,'' the outrageously raunchy, musically sophisticated debut album from the veteran Los Angeles punk band Fear. Warners will be distributing specific Slash albums of their own choosing. Not to be outdone, Slash negotiated a distribution deal with Warner Bros. Earlier this year, X left Slash and became the first Los Angeles punk band to sign a major-label recording deal, with Elektra Records. X, one of the bands that got its start in 1977 at the now-defunct Masque, has made two critically acclaimed albums for Slash, with total sales approaching 150,000. Slash magazine is no longer publishing, but its offshoot, Slash Records, has become one of America's most successful independent labels. In fact, it has changed a great deal in the last year, but not precisely in the way the first Slash editorial envisioned. The Los Angeles punk scene has changed a great deal since then. May the punks set this rat-infested industry on fire.
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''Curiosity regarding what looks like a possible rebirth of true rebel music, hope in its eventual victory over the bland products professional pop stars have been feeding us. ''This publication was born out of curiosity and out of hope,'' an editorial in the first issue of Slash proclaimed. Inspired by the Ramones and by the first Sex Pistols and Clash singles from England, a small and diverse group of Los Angeles residents began putting together their own punk bands, patronizing punk shows in a stark, sleazy Hollywood nightclub called the Masque, and publishing Slash, the city's first punk-rock magazine. LOS ANGELES FIVE years ago, in 1977, punk rock gained a foothold in Los Angeles.
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