Singer John Doe on origins of X, LA punk scene! VIDEO INTERVIEW - Mr. Media Interviews by Bob Andelm

Today's Guest: John Doe, singer, co-founder, X, author, Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk
 

Watch this exclusive Mr. Media interview with John Doe by clicking on the video player above! 

Mr. Media is recorded live before a studio audience full of aging punks who no longer take pride in torn fishnet stockings and who are using safety pins in ways they never dreamed of in 1978 … in the NEW new media capital of the world… St. Petersburg, Florida!

John Doe and Exene Cervenka probably never dreamed, when they met at a Venice, California, poetry workshop in 1976, that one day they would be regarded as the core of a musical movement that shook, stirred and ripped corporate rock.

I didn’t say they ultimately prevented its rise – I wish they had – but as co-founders of the LA punk band X, they built one of the first bulwarks against the tide of homogenized rock ‘n’ roll.
JOHN DOE podcast excerpt: "X — our music — was always accessible. We weren’t trying to piss people off; we just did it naturally. There was no ‘marketing’; the term barely existed. The way you were DIY in those days was you went out, met people, lived your life, did your thing. I have no regrets; that’s the way you get cancer."

You can LISTEN to this interview with X co-founder JOHN DOE, author of UNDER THE BIG BLACK SUN: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF L.A. PUNK, by clicking the audio player above!

And even if youth culture didn’t ultimately heed their warnings of what lay ahead, Doe and Cervenka left us a legacy of Americana, rockabilly and rawness that stands up to whatever today’s generation of next big things might offer.

The LA punk scene – fortified with nutrients that included X, Black Flag, The Germs, The Blasters, Los Lobos, and yes, even The Go-Go’s – was a regional reflection of what was happening all over the world in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Manhattan had its Ramones, Television and the New York Dolls; London produce