Rhino / Wea
2004
X
The Best: Make The Music Go Bang
About This Album
There are generally two schools of thought on assembling a career-spanning anthology of a musician of consequence -- you can compile a fan-oriented set that loads up all manner of rare and unreleased tracks alongside the act's better-known material, or go for an album designed for newcomers and dabblers that presents an efficient one-stop overview of their best work. Since X, arguably the best band to emerge from L.A.'s punk scene (no small statement given how good many of their contemporaries were), have already spawned a truly inspired fan-friendly double-disc compilation, Beyond & Back: The X Anthology, The Best: Make the Music Go Bang reasonably goes in the opposite direction. Boasting no unreleased material (though a few cuts are hard to come by these days), this two-disc package instead offers a healthy representation of X's seven studio albums and their 1988 live set (though oddly, the 1995 semi-acoustic disc Unclogged doesn't make the cut). Compiled by bassist, vocalist, and songwriter John Doe, The Best: Make the Music Go Bang just skims the high points from X's catalog, but oh what high points they are -- disc one culls the gems from the band's first four albums (Los Angeles, Wild Gift, Under the Big Black Sun, and More Fun in the New World), and it's a stunning reminder of why this band was so important, with Billy Zoom's roots-thrash guitar lines, John Doe and D.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 9,15 and 25)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 11,18,20 and 21)

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