LA Pioneers of sound pack the Pacific Ampitheatre leaving OC breathless…

Sunday, August 1 at the Pacific Ampitheatre a most iconic set was billed with The Blasters playing support for Los Lobos and X. Legendary Phil Alvin took the stage with The Blasters and began the evening with “American Music.” They did a Little Willie John cover “I’m Shakin,” and featured Steve Berlin on saxophone throughout songs. Their full set gracefully honored Gene Taylor on the keys with a rose and color portrait of their late bandmate. To say they performed a great set would be an understatement and an insult, as they were one of the greatest supporting acts I’ve ever seen. All eyes were on The Blasters with fans dancing to their music, and ended with “One Bad Stud.”

A beyond phenomenal band with over 45 years of touring with original band members, Los Lobos, a near institution formed straight out of East Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. These Latino punk rock pioneers played a key role in expanding the boundaries of music influenced by rock and roll, and it was evident this evening, everything from Tex-Mex, country, folk, R&B, blues, soul too and including traditional sounds, Los Lobos opened their 16-song set with “Will the Wolf Survive?” and went into “Chuco’s Cumbria,” followed by “Angel Dance.” Need I even say the audience was diggin’ it all and on their feet and moving to the beats!

The energy was alive and jumping, while packed to maximum capacity at the sold-out Pacific Ampitheatre. For all the hippies in the audience, they set off a classic Little Bob & The Lollipops cover “I Got Loaded,” and clouds of white marijuana smoke floated by. They closed with their version of Ritchie Valens “La Bamba,” which went into “Good Loving” and back to “La Bamba,” but not before performing a Grateful Dead cover “Bertha” with the Alvin brothers onstage joining. The crowd went nuts, as you could imagine with over 8,000 music lovers standing shoulder to shoulder, enjoying a night of intense energy and great music sounds.

Yet, that’s not all…Formed in ’77 and one of the first innovative punk bands with all original members Exene Cervenka, John Doe, Billy Zoom, and DJ Bonebrake, X headlined the night maintaining that ever-glorious thrashing PUNK rock sound that their fans have grown accustomed to, harboring the unique ability to keep it new and invigorating, album after album and concert after concert. Their latest release Alphabetland is packed with 11 solid tracks of raw intense energy and exciting chemistry, which was a much-needed surprise at a time when live concerts were but dreamlike memories relived from the insides of our homes. They opened with “In This House That I Call Home,” and cut right into “We’re Desperate,” and then “Los Angeles.”

I got an exclusive interview with the female rock deity herself, lead vocalist Exene Cervenka after the release, and here is a cut of what she shared in that interview while we were discussing the differences between Alphabetland and other X releases…

“I think the difference between this record and the early record is that we never got to play these songs live before we recorded them, so they’re all without input. Usually, you play a song live for a year or two and then you record it, so by then you’ve perfected it. You’ve seen what people react to. You’ve come up with a vocal part that’s different from the way you first wrote it. So after two years of playing a song live it’s a completely different song than it would have been if you rehearsed it and then recorded it, but we didn’t have the luxury of doing that, unfortunately. We didn’t have that luxury of playing them over and over with people, pretty strange.”

-Exene

After a well-deserved and much-expected encore, X returned to the stage to thank the crowd and closed the night with “Nausea.”

The evening proved the pioneers of sound have still got it, and are here to stay!