“She won't get out of bed / Shake her snaky hair / Grab her, throw her in the tub / She says, "Coffee and a piece of pie" / She never wears a dress on Sunday / Or any Monday afternoon / This is no goddamn country to wander alone … People turn their heads / She scares little kids / Eyes narrow; jaw is set / She'll fix you with a stare / She keeps her body hidden / Let's her eyes make her bid / I'd wrap her up in a bullet / And shoot her round the world …”
/ Lyrics to the X song “Devil Doll” from More Fun in the New World (1983) /
“Exene’s personality mixes the bored brattiness of a gum-snapping high school smart ass with a poet’s funereal profundity. Early on she did a definitive rock version of Morticia Addams, with black hair and lipstick and eye shadow, sometimes painted all around her eyes like a raccoon. She was queen of the Visigoths, something imagined by Anne Rice.”
/ From a profile of Los Angeles punk band X by John Homans in Details Magazine, August 1993 /
Happy birthday to high priestess of punk, the fierce and uncompromising Exene Cervenka (née Christene Lee Cervenka on 1 February 1956)! The spooky poetess / twisted bride / voodoo dolly / intense frontwoman of Los Angeles punk band X turns 68 today. Alongside Darby Crash of The Germs, Exene is *the* iconic face (and snarling voice) of first-generation LA punk.