My Top 1000 Songs #508: Los Angeles

 [I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

I tend to favor some of X's later albums (particularly 1982's Under The Big Black Sun), as they broadened their initial punk chops with anthemic rock & roll. Still, 1980's Los Angeles remains a stunning debut, blending punk energy with Billy Zoom's more traditional rockabilly-infused riffs and the dynamic interplay between vocalists. John Doe & Exene Cervenka. And the thrilling, enduringly visceral title track in particular offers one of those "holy shit, this is something I've been waiting to hear forever!" rock & roll moments. As a distinctly non-Los Angeles (the city) kinda guy myself, the song conjures a mythical, right-in-the-middle-of-it ethos, something so pivotal that, all these years later, I will NEVER visit Southern California without instinctively singing to myself, "She had to get out!"

Live 2017 (BTW, just saw them last week, and they're (almost) as solid and riveting as when I first saw them a few decades back):