Digging in the Underground
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With newer alt-rock entries stiffing left and right despite the industry’s best efforts, capitalizing on nostalgia for the progenitors is a logical move. But it’s certainly not as easy as slapping together another Billy Joel collection: fans of X and the ‘Mats tended to be obsessive about them–they bought all their records. So the compilers of each two-CD retrospective had to dig deep into the vaults to find stuff those listeners might be missing. X’s Beyond and Back (Elektra) pulls it off, including some genuinely relevant rarities in the context of a vivid portrait of the band’s history. But almost all the previously unreleased material on the Replacements’ All for Nothing/Nothing for All (Reprise) should have stayed that way, and the set brushes over some of the band’s best work as if it never happened.
In the late 70s and early 80s, Black Flag, the Germs, the Weirdos, Black Randy & the Metrosquad, the Minutemen, and many others were following their own highly personal visions of punk rock. X was the least hardcore of the bunch–songwriting couple John Doe and Exene Cervenkova (then Cervenka) were more into trash culture and poetry than self-destruction, while smiling, golden-maned Billy Zoom was a rockabilly guitarist lost in time. The band’s urgent, uncommercial mix of raw energy, hijacked roots, nonchalant combativeness, and poetic ruminations on alienation made friends of the punks, but X was ultimately bigger than the LA scene. In 1982, after releasing two superb records (Los Angeles and Wild Gift) for the independent Slash label, the band began a futile quest for mainstream success by signing with Elektra.
Let’s give Sire the benefit of the doubt and say Twin/Tone wouldn’t license the early material. But still, those years are barely even mentioned in the booklet. Founding guitarist Bob Stinson got the boot (reportedly for the substance abuse that eventually killed him) just before the band’s fourth album, Pleased to Meet Me, yet from the liner notes and photos you’d think his bland replacement Slim Dunlap was the principal guitarist. Actually, the set does include an outtake of “Can’t Hardly Wait,” a song ruined by the Memphis Horns on Pleased to Meet Me, that was recorded with Stinson during the Tim sessions, but it’s the only worthwhile rarity here.
