Also this issue: In iPod He Trusts DJ Botany 500 inserts his brain into a little white box and rents it out. -Patrick Rapa Angelo Cho -Peter Burwasser Best to read it every week -Patrick Rapa Ed Harcourt -Andrew Parks Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra -Peter Burwasser Erin McKeown -Nancy Armstrong Electric Six -Paul Burress Tiësto -Sean O’Neal

June 12-18, 2003

musicpicks

X

A punk band more by association than by calling, the only thing that kept X from sounding like the classic American songwriters they were was the fire-engine wail of Exene Cervenka's voice. By the time they got around to re-recording "We're Desperate" for their second album Wild Gift, they'd long since passed the point where they might have passed for the "we" in the song's title; somebody, somewhere was desperate, but Cervenka and co-writer John Doe sounded like they'd seen too much to let L.A.'s seamier side get under their skin. (In "Los Angeles," a middle-class white girl flees the city's filth, but the band stays behind and watches her car's taillights disappear.) Of course, more than 20 years after their first album made them the stars they were ready to be, it's easier to see X as part of an older L.A. tradition, more Raymond Chandler than the Weirdos or the Germs. Original guitarist Billy Zoom, whose Chuck Berry riffs made the wheels turn, is back in the fold. (Memo to openers The Fags: With a name like that, the one thing you can't afford to be is mediocre.)

Sun., June 15, 8 p.m., $25-$28, The TLA, 334 South St., 215-336-2000.

—Sam Adams