My Top 1000 Songs #322: Under The Big Black Sun
I've always had tremendous affection for X, though I can't say there are a lot of songs in their repertoire deeply embedded in my brain and/or heart--more like a catalog of music I'm happy to crank up when the mood strikes. But I'm partial to the title track from their third album, 1982's Under The Big Black Sun. It does a great job of bridging their earlier punk days with their later, slightly more traditional yet no less energetic rock & roll, led by a reliably infectious and riveting rockabilly-fueled guitar hook from Billy Zoom. Vocally, it's the kind of X song I dig, Exene handling most of the vocals but joined by some fine harmonizing from John Doe in selected spots. Frankly, it just sounds great, a can't-miss rock song, though it's the guitar riffs that keep me coming back decade after decade.
It's also one of those songs where I've never quite figured out the lyrics, and over the years I've gotten in the habit of singing along with my own made-up gibberish (which I tend to prefer to the supposedly "accurate" lyrics I see online). Still, a few lines dug in their hooks and for whatever reasons have stuck with me. The opening line--"What I did on my vacation... for the last 10 years"--has always struck me as particularly funny and simultaneously bleak, setting the stage for the intimations of drinking and smoking and sordid extra-marital encounters that follow.
Live in 2015, the same tour (I think) when I last saw them play:
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