X

In highschool I had an old X "Los Angeles" tape I used to listen to a fair amount, but it wasn't until I saw their movie "X: The Unheard Music" that I really got some insight into the band's brilliance. Here's part of a review of the movie from the Chicago Tribune that came out when the movie was released back in 1986:

As unconventional as the band it portrays, "The Unheard Music" is an impressionistic, subjective semidocumentary. Writer-director W.T. Morgan spent nearly five years making the film, beginning shortly after the release of the group's first album, "Los Angeles," and ending prior to the release of its most recent album, "Ain't Love Grand?"

"This is not a documentary," Morgan said in a recent interview at the offices of Skouras films, the company releasing "The Unheard Music." "For me it's more a punk art film with lots of music. It's an attempt to try to cover the subject from a lot of angles, sort of like (Picasso's) 'Guernica.'

"It would be a disgrace to do this as a typical documentary. This story needs a treatment as radical as the story itself. A lot of punk music is a reaction to boredom, to the musical pollution they play on the radio. I feel the same about films today; it's wallpaper, no danger or adventure."

The band toured the same year. This poster is from their show at The Moore Theater in downtown Seattle, the first time I saw X live. They were excellent! And it's funny the Red Chili Peppers opened... at the time they were most known for the "Real Men Don't Kill Coyotes" song and video and Flea showing up in the movie "Suburbia," who could have known they'd get so big?