The crowd screamed louder with anticipation Wednesday night at Harlow's as X took the stage in front of a packed house. For a band that hasn't released a new album with original material in over four years and hasn't performed in Sacramento for over two years, the crowd surprisingly sang along to most songs. For over an hour, including an encore, singer Exene Cervenka, singer-bassist John Doe, guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer B.J. Bonebrake performed over 15 songs from their albums including two Christmas songs, Jingle Bells and Santa Claus. Fans from all over Sacramento came for the X show. Sacramentan Craig Russell has seen X countless times beginning in the early 1980s when he lived i

To call Exene Cervenka a “punk rocker” doesn’t begin to describe her complex and multi-faceted artistic career. It’s true that Cervenka is a vocalist and songwriter for the band X, a pioneering Los Angeles punk group that formed in 1977. But Cervenka is not just “punk” or “rocker”: she’s also a folk musician, poet and visual artist who thinks about what it means to create art as she gets older. Cervenka, who will appear with the original line-up of X at Harlow’s on Dec. 29, talked to The Sacramento Press about plans to make new music with the band and her thoughts and emotions relating to her work. In the interview, she also talked about her recent diagnosis of multiple sclerosis and how