X - X-SPURTS ORIG 1977 PREV UNISS DEMO SESSIONS AUSSIE PUNK QRT UGLY POP SLD LP

$

30

X – X-Spurts:  The 1977 Recordings. Ugly Pop Records UP 053. Canadian release. FACTORY SEALED NEW VINYL RECORD ALBUM. Demo sessions, originally recorded in 1977. First issued on Aztec Music of Australia in 2011. This release issued in 2014 with hype sticker; long out of print.

 

MEMBERS:  Ian Rilen (bass, vocals), Steve Lucas (vocals), Ian Krahe (guitar), and Steve Cafiero (drums)

 

TRACKS, 

 

SIDE A:

 

      01)  You Don’t Like Me

      02)  Infamy

      03)  Runaway

      04)  Losing

      05)  TV Cabaret Roll

 

SIDE B: 

 

      06)  Slash Your Wrist

      07)  Hey You

      08)  Revolution

      09)  Degenerate Boy

      10)  One More Chance

 

DESCRIPTION:  The story of X is as tragic as it is sordid. With more deaths than an Agatha Christie novel, X has been proclaimed “the band they couldn’t kill”. Bass player Ian Rilen had famously left Rose Tattoo after writing arguably the band’s best known song, Bad Boy Love, unimpressed with the Tatts’ evolving pub rock style. Rilen put together his own band, Evil Rumours, eventually recruiting a lanky hippie from Armadale, Steve Lucas, as lead vocalist, Ian Krahe on guitar and the former cop (oh, the irony) Steve Cafeiro on drums. Formed in 1977, by 1978, with X already the scourge of the inner-city Sydney music scene and its attendant venues and booking agents, original guitarist Ian Krahe died from a heroin overdose, thereby setting the scene for X’s history of tragedy and lost opportunities. The tale of the band’s gig earlier that evening (as told by Rilen in an interview some years later) is prescient:  Krahe breaks a string, while Lucas lies on his back on stage, staring at some imagined pattern in the ether. The manager of the venue confronts Rilen, demanding an explanation. Rilen, exhibiting the blunt diplomatic skills commensurate with his position in rock’n’roll folklore, retorts: “He’s broken a string, he’s tripping, and I’m telling you to f*ck off!” Rilen, Lucas, and Cafeiro soldiered on in the aftermath of Krahe’s death, initially with Geoff Holmes as replacement guitarist, and subsequently as a three-piece with Lucas assuming guitar duties. The band’s morbid tale continued with the deaths of other band members, including Cafeiro in 1988 and Rilen in 2006. Lucas has continued to breathe life into the near-dead corpse of X, with the re-incarnated version of the band variously including Cathy Green, Kim Volkman, and former Cosmic Psychos drummer Bill Walsh. Save for the odd obscure vinyl and bootleg release, the potency of the original four-piece X had been largely lost to history, until the recent recovery of the tapes from X’s first recording session in 1977. Now lovingly restored and released on vinyl by Ugly Pop Records, X-Spurts – The 1977 Recordings provides a glimpse into the power of X in its original guise. Originally recorded in the lounge room of “Irish John” on a four-track recorder, X-Spurts is rock’n’roll with attitude in the red. You Don’t Like Me is both a personal and sociological assertion of isolation, while Infamy offers a prophetic observation of the band’s future. Krahe’s guitar attacks are brutal, blending with Rilen’s sociopathic bass attack and Lucas’s emphatic vocals to create a sound that set the sonic scene for a slew of successors, some of them credible, others not. The sheer brutality of Slash Your Wrists condemns the efforts of many of X’s contemporaries (including those in the so-called punk scene) as vacuous and pretentious. On Runaway, Lucas is a man possessed, taking Del Shannon’s original pop classic and injecting it with a nihilistic attitude so sharp it draws blood. While X has occasionally been erroneously lumped in with punk bands of the era, in truth (and in the band’s own opinion) it was simply a rock’n’roll band – warts, excesses and all. It’s an observation borne out by the rugged intensity of Losing and the slick riffage of Hey You. X’s knife-wielding pop sensibility is there for the world to hear on TV Cabaret Role, Revolution, and the original version of Degenerate Boy. On One More Chance, Lucas screams like a wailing banshee, pleading for one more chance to explain his case; the original context may have been emotional, but the message has a wider resonance. X had its chances over the years and – true to its empathy with the ultimate futility of the rock’n’roll cause – pissed them all up against the wall. But that’s what makes X one of the great rock’n’roll bands of history. 

THIS ITEM IS NEW AND UNPLAYED. Used items will include condition details for the cover, disc, inserts, etc.

 

NOTE TO POTENTIAL BUYERS:  If the jacket or disc (unless sealed) is punched, marked, or cut in any manner, denoting a promotional/review copy, I will state that as part of the item description. Also if an issue is a "music club" edition, that will be noted in the item description. (The below information last updated 10/29/24)

 

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TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS:

 

SS or SLD:  Still Sealed or Sealed (or some variation of sealed depending on how many characters I have left in the title line). This item is new and unplayed. Also appears in the listing description as Sealed LP or Factory Sealed LP.

 

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