Artvoice: Buffalo's #1 Newsweekly
Home Blogs Web Features Calendar Listings Artvoice TV Real Estate Classifieds Contact
Previous story: The Nutcracker
Next story: Wintergreen

Exene Cervenka

Click to watch
Exene Cervenka performs "Who's Laughin' Now"

In founding Los Angeles’ primal punk band X in 1977, Exene Cervenka became the West Coast’s de facto punk poetess. Well before that, she’d been crafting poems and stories since her youth. With $80 and little else, she escaped Florida for Southern California and wound up working at a literary arts center, Beyond Baroque, that was becoming a central meeting spot for LA’s arts community. It was there she hooked up with guitarist Billy Zoom, drummer DJ Bonebrake and bassist/singer John Doe to form X. Cervenka and Doe’s perfectly off-kilter clashing harmonies made them stand out among punk’s snarling and screaming. Though X was broken up for years, the band reformed and has sporadically toured in the last decade. Cervenka has never had a moment of downtime as she has continued to write poetry and journals and to construct mixed-media collages, which yielded a one-person exhibition that had shows in Santa Monica and New York City called America the Beautiful. She also hasn’t stopped making music. Her other band, Exene and the Original Sinners, issued their second album, Se7en, this year. It’s a clutch of punked-up jump blues and rockabilly songs largely written by Cervenka and her husband, Original Sinners guitarist Jason Edge.

Monday, December 4 at Mohawk Place, 47 E. Mohawk Street (855-3931, mohawkplace.com). $10.