Tonight in LA: Exene Cervenka in Long Beach

Exene Cervenka co-founded X in Los Angeles in 1977. The band made records that combined punk velocity with a country and rockabilly foundation, the Los Angeles version of a crossover that was happening in several cities simultaneously at the end of the 1970s.

The country element in X was not decorative. Cervenka's voice carries a twang that is structural rather than stylistic. The chord movements in the X catalog have country roots. The subject matter — Los Angeles, failure, survival, love in difficult circumstances — is country subject matter played at punk speed.

The solo work

Cervenka has pursued a solo career alongside and parallel to X. The solo work tends to pull closer to country and folk roots and further from punk speed. The productions are simpler. The tempo is slower. The emotional content of the material, which was always present in the X recordings, becomes more directly accessible.

The Long Beach show

The show noted here was in April 2010, Long Beach, California. A small venue. A solo or near-solo performance. The format suited the material.

Cervenka in a small room is a different experience from X in a large venue. The dynamics are different. The audience relationship is different. The music itself sounds like it was designed for close listening at a small distance.

The country and folk material she performs in this context has the quality of work that has been lived with for a long time. It does not sound recent. It sounds inherited.

X and Los Angeles

X's Los Angeles is not the Los Angeles of contemporary pop music or of the entertainment industry mythology. It is the Los Angeles that existed in the margins and the flatlands, the city of people who came to make something and found themselves surviving instead.

That version of Los Angeles is the version that produced the best punk, the best country-punk, and the best roots crossover music of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Cervenka has stayed with it.

The full Field Notes index: Field Notes. For more on the country-punk crossover: The Allman Brothers Band Goes Twang.