X-tal

X-tal was a San Francisco-based rock band that existed under various incarnations from 1983 until 1996. Greil Marcus of the Village Voice described them as a "small-time San Francisco combo that wears their defeated leftist politics on their sleeves and can open for the Mekons without letting you forget them when the headliners come on."

The original line-up included frontman J. Neo (Marvin), bassist Alan Korn (formerly of SF's The Cat Heads) and drummer Michael "Mick" Freeman. Neo offers this explanation of the band's name: "Still no agreement on a band name until Maati [Stojanovich, Neo's girlfriend] sees a graffiti on a sidewalk in the Tenderloin reading 'XTAL.' No one hates it; it grows on you. Somewhere along the line a hyphen is added to make it easier to pronounce, but for the next 13 years, confusion ensues as to whether the letter 't' is capitalized. (It's not.)"

The trio's first two gigs were at San Francisco's On Broadway in late 1983. The band put out a demo in 1984, then broke up in 1985, with band members moving on to other projects.

When two songs from X-tal's demo were included on the 1987 SF Unscene compilation and attracted some attention, Neo and Freeman reformed the band, eventually settling on a lineup with Mitzi Waltz on bass and Jimmy (Demetrius) Broustis on guitar. (Broustis hails from Libertyville, Illinois, a small town that produced a number of alternative music figures; Broustis was in the same class at Libertyville High School as Adam Jones of Tool.)

This lineup played frequently at San Francisco's Albion, and released X-tal's first album, Reason is 6/7 of Treason, in 1990. The CMJ New Music Report said the record "scoops up the morning-dew innocence of the least embarrassing Haight-Ashbury petal-babies of the `60s with the world-bleary wisdom of all those SF/LA punk-worn people who turned their matured underground gaze upon gentler, more introspective directions."

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