I went to see X with a friend Saturday night.  I used to listen to them a lot 25-30 years ago but less so since.  I read a comment the other week,  “Still one of the tightest bands out there, and one of the most underrated bands of all time. Their first 4 albums are legendary.”  I couldn’t agree more.  Some music ages well and some doesn’t.  Case in point:  I liked The Damned a lot when I was twenty.  Their music suited me at the time.  I remember the phrase, “Mindless, directionless energy” on one of their album jackets.  For the most part it was.  A 20-year-old needs a few hours of mindless, directionless energy every week.  At 46, two hours of mindless, directionless energy is two hours I’ll never get back.  While I still enjoy the same Damned songs that I did 25+ years ago – although maybe just one or two a sitting now instead of an entire album – the music itself is meant to be played by young people.  I can appreciate it from a distance as an older person but I can’t throw myself into it – nevermind physically, I mean psychologically.  I saw The Damned play on Colin Ferguson’s show a few years ago.  In his intro Ferguson commented – on hearing their music as a youth – that “I loved punk rock because it sounded like a fight.  And that made me feel happy.”  I could relate.  However, while the song they played was great in the original, they looked and sounded like they were playing at a young person’s game.  That was not the case with X last weekend.  They were just as smart and funny and good-natured and serious as I remember their music being thirty years ago.   Did Johnny Cash sound silly singing the same songs at age 65 as he did when he was 35?   (X is more Jerry Lee Lewis than Johnny Cash but I think the “ages well” analogy holds.)   Few musicians can play a song when with the energy and perspective of a 25-year-old then play it thirty years later and have it sound just as good – perhaps with a bit less energy but with perspective which makes it richer not aged.  They do.  I’m really glad I went to their show.

Anyhow, without further ado, they opened their set with “The Phone’s Off the Hook (But You’re Not” (old video):

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Morphine:

Bonus tracks:  I’m Free Now and Do Not Go Quietly Unto Your Grave.

Boston was home to some very good bands in the late 80’s thru mid-90’s.  Tribe was one of my favorites.

I like this song more than the one above but I couldn’t find a video version. 

Heretix played a lot of sets with Tribe.  Liked them too.

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Brad DeLong sends me to Kevin Drum, Conservatives Are Finally Admitting What Voter Suppression Laws Are All About.  It was a crime at the time but the laws we changed them.

[300th post!] After I defended my dissertation I was in a hurry to start my postdoc.  So hurried that I forgot to pack up the CDs that I listened to in the lab.  This is from one of them – L7, Pretend We’re Dead: