I saw them in 83? I think for the "Under the Big Black Sun" tour in San Diego. One of the best shows I've ever seen. Also saw them in around 85 or 86 in Kalamazoo, Mi. for the "Ain't Love Grand" tour, and in Atlanta, Ga. around 93' for "Hey Zeus".
X was always one of my favorite bands. Back in the 90's, before the internet was a thing, I used to run a BBS that I named The Devil's Doorknob, after this song. Was around for a good few years but that died when everyone and their grandma got dialup internet. :/ (I still love you DOS 5.0).
"A lot of what I did in X was making fun of '70s music," says Zoom with a laugh. "I remember watching the Doobie Brothers on this Christmas rock concert. The songs were already boring and pretentious to begin with, and then they did this one where the whole band stopped and the guitar player took this solo-wheedly-wheedly-wheedly-playing lots of notes and making all these faces and shaking his hair. And he wasn't even doing anything. There were a lot of notes, but it was a real easy riff, you know? I noticed that all of these rock groups were always making these faces, trying to make it look hard but not really playing anything. So as a joke, I would play something difficult and just smile and not look at the guitar and act like it was nothing. To me, that was funny. In the beginning, most of the audience got it, but after a while, people looked at it and thought, 'Well, he isn't doing anything hard, or he wouldn't look like he was.'" from www.billyzoom.com/niceguy.html
My favourite band of all time. Shut up all you naysayers. It's quite obvious that you weren't there. They (and Slash Records) created a scene that has had few rivals, even 30 years later. Go back to your Foreigner and Boston vids. Wait, weren't they the same band?
I WAS there and you are 100% correct, they were even better than before this came out......these guys helped shape the music of the next 40 years....true originals and just effing awesome!
+Matt As opposed to the 2010s, where just about everyone routinely looks either inherently silly, or silly in selecting ridiculous crossover tracks that don't meld their style with another but simply reduce them to a bit player in a video for insert_name_of_this_month's_new_hotness_singer_or_"band"-in-the-barest-sense-of-the-term.
Best band of the eighties-criminally ignored by shitty music business and tasteless fans fed on radio pap selected by corporations (like now)..After the end of the 1960's, all the great bands were forced underground. Zero radio play ("..we're the last American band, to get played on the radio..."(from "True Love" Part2, from album "More Fun In The New World", one of the top 50 American albums of all time (never mind rag-mag "Rolling Stone"-"RS, stick to political and biographical essays). Billy Zoom makes his playing look so effortless. A hybrid of garage rock/punk, country western, rockabilly, rock N roll..(PS; "Gun Club" and "Pixies" were worthy contemporaries).🎸🎫🍺🍔🍕💋👩🏻🎤
Chris D. as Satan. Typecasting , you say? (No , I met him once , he was a very cool , nice guy in general.). 3:13 - Billy as his former boss , Gene Vincent. 3:21- Exene as Tammy Wynette . 4:20 - The Blasters !!
I'm envious. Chris D. is a genius in my opinion. I especially like his Divine Horsemen stuff. Most underappreciated artist ever. Wish I could see him in concert. There isn't much hope when you live in the southeastern United States.
WELL , NEVER SAY NEVER. BUT , I DON'T THINK HE PERFORMS MUCH , ANYMORE. I KNOW HE PUT TOGETHER A NEW VERSION OF THE FLESHEATERS THAT PLAYED OUT A BIT. THIS WAS YEARS AGO.....I saw John Bazz from The Blasters once , and he said Chris was fine , doing music again. This was around the time of "Miss Muerte". YEARS AGO.... Excuse my caps.
Really? i never remember it ever being on MTV. I only caught the New World(which is on youtube also) vid once, and Breathless vid 2 times. band didnt appear on that."The Hungry Wold" got a lot of airplay on MTV though.
@MovieMusicFun1 No, I don't remember MTV playing ANYTHING by this group much at all ( if ever at all). Though legendary today, this groupe really weren't THAT big and popular back during the 80's. That was when most people were still too busy paying attention to Micheal Jackson, Duran Duran, Madona, Sting, Def Lepard, Phill Collins, Huey Lewis, Kenny Loggins and Bon Jovi to really notice THIS group .
Music is amazing. Image (I think) is what Geffen and company wanted the masses to see. You know what? Now that I'm approaching 50, who gives a fuck? If amazing got out to the masses, in a day when DeadTV was all that we had, so what? I guess what I'm saying is now that I'm older (and hopefully wiser) as long as X got out to the peoples of Earth, those that should connect did, and bought lots of vinyl.
Is it just me or is there a similarity between Exene and Julie Brown (she of "Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun" and "Earth Girls Are Easy" fame) ?? Their faces and stature seems more than a little alike to me...
I thought this video was somekinda joke. X sounds like they are trying to play funk or something ( maybe they had been hanging out with Anthony and Flea too much)
Flea & Anthony were still in high school when X played the Greek Theatre in L.A. and Mudd Club in NYC. Flea was in Was Not Was then joined Fear briefly. Anthony had barely thought about being in a band at that point. He was a driver at a place called Computer Camera and delivered coffee and film to the labs. Those two teenagers worshiped X.
Exene is the worst lead singer...ever. John Doe would have been far better by himself.... She's like some fan who gets up onstage at a gig to kinda whine into the mic and blandly jerk back and forth....Doe should have done leads...or get a real lead singer..
+!mrdunn brucvald Well, maybe she's no Pavarotti, but I DO like the way she says "zip gun" "Brutus" and "catbox" here. She also had a hand in the songwriting don't forget.
.....Harsh, but the truth. I forget that Americans like fantasy, and shy away from it...... Exene makes Johnny Rotten sound like Luciano Pavarotti!! Her stage 'charisma' makes Joan Baez look like Lady Gaga.....
Going out on a limb here. Going to presume you are still very young. You really had to be there. Of course Exene is tone deaf. However, for some reason when people saw X live the "atonal harmonies" were quite magical. Against the backdrop of a steady back beat by DJ Bonebreak, Billy Zoom's rockabilly influenced guitar work & John's clean bass & singing, Exene's "whining" was quite beautiful as it wove against the rest of the band. Of course the lyrics were always phenomenal as John & Exene were very serious about their poetry. There is a reason they were popular in L.A. and had a big following. Why did Ray Manzarek relish his time producing them? He was a very wealthy world famous musician from a truly legendary band who was paid a mere pittance by Slash Records to produce X. Manzarek got involved because he dug the music. There was something there. I can understand why some people don't get it. Exene could never control her pitch or tone. That's not what it was all about though. X was great live back in the day. I totally understand why some people don't get it from listening to recordings or watching old videos. To be fair, lots of standard session type musicians were absolutely baffled by the popularity of X. Also the LA Times chief music critic Robert Hilburn loved X & consistently gave them rave reviews & featured them on the Sunday magazine color covers of the special entertainment supplements. Hilburn's support truly helped X. Electrifying live act & fun to watch. Peace :)
I had the biggest crush on Exene in 1985 and so did my first g-friend who wanted to be just like her and I didn't discourage her.
X is timeless. One of my favorite bands.
LOVE THIS SONG
This song is amazing
I remember watching this on Night Tracks when I was a teenager. Great memory.
Yeah, they always played this on Night Tracks. Great X tune !
Man, I wish I'd been a teenager at this time, just to enjoy this great beat and energy.
BEST. BAND. EVER.
Why aren't they in the R&R Hall of Fame?
This is great. Party tune. Why have I missed this.?
greasergrrl Right after The Ramones
I still have this!! On Cassette!!!
Dang have never seen a video!
Only live! ;)
"Whoa whoa Black Betty!"
Billy Zoom on guitar and DJ Bonebreak on drums, you gotta like it. X
62' Ford Fairlane was my first car!
bought this on vinyl for 2 bucks and havent been the same ever since i listened to it
I saw X at the ICE HOUSE in ESCONDIDO in 84,what a show!!!!
I saw them in 83? I think for the "Under the Big Black Sun" tour in San Diego. One of the best shows I've ever seen. Also saw them in around 85 or 86 in Kalamazoo, Mi. for the "Ain't Love Grand" tour, and in Atlanta, Ga. around 93' for "Hey Zeus".
living in San Marcos and i chickened out on going because i couldn't get anyone to go with me. hope it was a good show. lol
When my nerves are feeling frazzled, I listen to X and I feel better.
EXene, you sing tooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much well!
love this band
I was hoping they were going to play this live last night in santa cruz , but they didn't It was a really good show.
Such a great groove.
X was always one of my favorite bands. Back in the 90's, before the internet was a thing, I used to run a BBS that I named The Devil's Doorknob, after this song. Was around for a good few years but that died when everyone and their grandma got dialup internet. :/ (I still love you DOS 5.0).
yeah, I saw this tour....1984, Starry Night Portland.
Lucky enough to have seen them live at "First Avenue/Mpls", 1985🎫💋😎🎸
I remember seeing this on Goodnight L.A. on KABC back in 1983.
the intro riff is Long Train Running
Steve Cumming I thought the same thing.
"A lot of what I did in X was making fun of '70s music," says Zoom with a laugh. "I remember watching the Doobie Brothers on this Christmas rock concert. The songs were already boring and pretentious to begin with, and then they did this one where the whole band stopped and the guitar player took this solo-wheedly-wheedly-wheedly-playing lots of notes and making all these faces and shaking his hair. And he wasn't even doing anything. There were a lot of notes, but it was a real easy riff, you know? I noticed that all of these rock groups were always making these faces, trying to make it look hard but not really playing anything. So as a joke, I would play something difficult and just smile and not look at the guitar and act like it was nothing. To me, that was funny. In the beginning, most of the audience got it, but after a while, people looked at it and thought, 'Well, he isn't doing anything hard, or he wouldn't look like he was.'" from www.billyzoom.com/niceguy.html
Iuu
Kyy
I like your channel
John Doe in a sleazy see-thru sleeveless shirt. YUM.
i know wtf
Zoomer opinion: sounds like if B-52's performed a Talking Heads song and I'm down for it
Zoom classes are getting out of hand.
I need to go watch Road House now.
THE FIRST BAND TO LAND ON THE MOON
One of my favorite bands yet a marginally good song...
noo dontha gettit?
If I recall correctly, this was on my Canadian cassette version of More Fun in The New World.
Yes. That's the one have. Thanks I had forgotten all that except the cassette part remembered that.
My favourite band of all time. Shut up all you naysayers. It's quite obvious that you weren't there. They (and Slash Records) created a scene that has had few rivals, even 30 years later. Go back to your Foreigner and Boston vids. Wait, weren't they the same band?
Slash was an amazing label.
I WAS there and you are 100% correct, they were even better than before this came out......these guys helped shape the music of the next 40 years....true originals and just effing awesome!
This proves the 80's could make anyone look silly...
+Matt As opposed to the 2010s, where just about everyone routinely looks either inherently silly, or silly in selecting ridiculous crossover tracks that don't meld their style with another but simply reduce them to a bit player in a video for insert_name_of_this_month's_new_hotness_singer_or_"band"-in-the-barest-sense-of-the-term.
Skating Polly brought me here
Got some "Go Black Betty" in the outdo
Excene at this time was sexy a go go!
i agree
Best band of the eighties-criminally ignored by shitty music business and tasteless fans fed on radio pap selected by corporations (like now)..After the end of the 1960's, all the great bands were forced underground. Zero radio play ("..we're the last American band, to get played on the radio..."(from "True Love" Part2, from album "More Fun In The New World", one of the top 50 American albums of all time (never mind rag-mag "Rolling Stone"-"RS, stick to political and biographical essays). Billy Zoom makes his playing look so effortless. A hybrid of garage rock/punk, country western, rockabilly, rock N roll..(PS; "Gun Club" and "Pixies" were worthy contemporaries).🎸🎫🍺🍔🍕💋👩🏻🎤
im from the uk and i was buying x lps while you were all into boy george HAHA! [LOL]
funk rock n'roll 'x' style.
This has Billy Zoom written all over it.
Chris D. as Satan. Typecasting , you say? (No , I met him once , he was a very cool , nice guy in general.). 3:13 - Billy as his former boss , Gene Vincent.
3:21- Exene as Tammy Wynette . 4:20 - The Blasters !!
I'm envious. Chris D. is a genius in my opinion. I especially like his Divine Horsemen stuff. Most underappreciated artist ever. Wish I could see him in concert. There isn't much hope when you live in the southeastern United States.
WELL , NEVER SAY NEVER. BUT , I DON'T THINK HE PERFORMS MUCH , ANYMORE. I KNOW HE PUT TOGETHER A NEW VERSION OF THE FLESHEATERS THAT PLAYED OUT A BIT. THIS WAS YEARS AGO.....I saw John Bazz from The Blasters once , and he said Chris was fine , doing music again. This was around the time of "Miss Muerte". YEARS AGO.... Excuse my caps.
@@pfordsq I just saw Flesh Eaters three weeks ago in DC. They reunited for a tour. They were great.
Really? i never remember it ever being on MTV. I only caught the New World(which is on youtube also) vid once, and Breathless vid 2 times. band didnt appear on that."The Hungry Wold" got a lot of airplay on MTV though.
For some reason I imagined Will Ferrell as the devil and started laughing.
Anyone notice Los Lobos and Dave Alvin in the audience?
+Jeffrey Hicken Well, concerning the audience, all I'm really currious to know is who the gorgeous chick at 3:02 and the fat ugly dude at 4:28 are ?
Good call.....
I thought that was them, but wasn't confident I was right. Thanks for confirming.
@MovieMusicFun1 No, I don't remember MTV playing ANYTHING by this group much at all ( if ever at all). Though legendary today, this groupe really weren't THAT big and popular back during the 80's. That was when most people were still too busy paying attention to Micheal Jackson, Duran Duran, Madona, Sting, Def Lepard, Phill Collins, Huey Lewis, Kenny Loggins and Bon Jovi to really notice THIS group .
Nice ...but isn't this the riff from The Doobies Long Train Running?
How I feel when the acid hits
Nanana nanananana aaaawww
rusted root?
1980 SF
Exene and I looked like twins, but she was about six feet tall.
dorothy turner Exene is maybe 5’2”
bill Paxton would've nailed it. if given a chance to do a X los angeles flick
True love? Exene, JUST SEE YOUR EX RIGHT NOW!
When did this come out? Was this before wako? If this was this had to be what gave them the idea for the poison punch.
+alex c
Umm, Jonestown was the poison punch thing, not Waco.
+Jim Walsh That's correct - and THAT had preceded THIS music video.
That medley at the end was the shit...
Music is amazing. Image (I think) is what Geffen and company wanted the masses to see. You know what? Now that I'm approaching 50, who gives a fuck? If amazing got out to the masses, in a day when DeadTV was all that we had, so what? I guess what I'm saying is now that I'm older (and hopefully wiser) as long as X got out to the peoples of Earth, those that should connect did, and bought lots of vinyl.
..which Doobie u b?
Is it just me or is there a similarity between Exene and Julie Brown (she of "Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun" and "Earth Girls Are Easy" fame) ?? Their faces and stature seems more than a little alike to me...
Yes, Julie is copying Exene.
Your right, there is something of a physical resemblance between them, .. . or WAS at the time of THIS video ( they have aged differently ).
Ian Finlay *You’re
This is such an awful video- LOVE X!!
I thought this video was somekinda joke. X sounds like they are trying to play funk or something ( maybe they had been hanging out with Anthony and Flea too much)
Ha Ha I remember seeing this video at Numbers. :)
+Luis Black This came out YEARS the Chili Peppers even formed.
Flea & Anthony were still in high school when X played the Greek Theatre in L.A. and Mudd Club in NYC. Flea was in Was Not Was then joined Fear briefly. Anthony had barely thought about being in a band at that point. He was a driver at a place called Computer Camera and delivered coffee and film to the labs. Those two teenagers worshiped X.
ELO Licks? Come on!
WTF X???? LOL. One of those notorious miscalculations that even great bands make.
This was their funky album.
+Shawn Hill No, actually, NOTHING ELSE on this album 9 More Fun In the New World ) sounds anything like THIS song.
I love this song, but probably the worst video ever made!
Horrible - hope to never see it again.
I LOVE X the band but this is just sooo awful.
Exene is the worst lead singer...ever. John Doe would have been far better by himself.... She's like some fan who gets up onstage at a gig to kinda whine into the mic and blandly jerk back and forth....Doe should have done leads...or get a real lead singer..
+!mrdunn brucvald Well, maybe she's no Pavarotti, but I DO like the way she says "zip gun" "Brutus" and "catbox" here. She also had a hand in the songwriting don't forget.
+Ian Finlay you're right. I sound harsh in my comment...sorry Exene.
She seems more a writer than a performer.
You are a complete and total douche bag....
.....Harsh, but the truth. I forget that Americans like fantasy, and shy away from it......
Exene makes Johnny Rotten sound like Luciano Pavarotti!! Her stage 'charisma'
makes Joan Baez look like Lady Gaga.....
Going out on a limb here. Going to presume you are still very young. You really had to be there. Of course Exene is tone deaf. However, for some reason when people saw X live the "atonal harmonies" were quite magical. Against the backdrop of a steady back beat by DJ Bonebreak, Billy Zoom's rockabilly influenced guitar work & John's clean bass & singing, Exene's "whining" was quite beautiful as it wove against the rest of the band. Of course the lyrics were always phenomenal as John & Exene were very serious about their poetry. There is a reason they were popular in L.A. and had a big following. Why did Ray Manzarek relish his time producing them? He was a very wealthy world famous musician from a truly legendary band who was paid a mere pittance by Slash Records to produce X. Manzarek got involved because he dug the music. There was something there. I can understand why some people don't get it. Exene could never control her pitch or tone. That's not what it was all about though. X was great live back in the day. I totally understand why some people don't get it from listening to recordings or watching old videos. To be fair, lots of standard session type musicians were absolutely baffled by the popularity of X. Also the LA Times chief music critic Robert Hilburn loved X & consistently gave them rave reviews & featured them on the Sunday magazine color covers of the special entertainment supplements. Hilburn's support truly helped X. Electrifying live act & fun to watch. Peace :)