Back in the late 1970s I used to see X-Sessive at CBGB's just about every night, he was as much a fixture of the place as the pinball machine . The blonde haired, boyish terror, he looked like Dennis The Menace -a young Dennis the Menace, he may have been 17 but he looked ten.
I was also a fan, of the former Ghost, Voidoid and finally Nitecaps musician.
It is with the Nitecaps, a Lower East Side soul band of tremendous abilities and one great album, Go to The Line that i can't get my hands on, that Mr. Sessive, Jahn Xavier, reached his musical zenith and 30 years later, at the Max's Kansas City reunion at Bowery Electric Saturday night, with original Nitecaps bassist Peter Jordan Charly Roth on hand (and drummer Sammy Brown in the audience), it is the Nitecaps he references, whether he chooses to or not.
It's the voice.
A brilliant bassy bellow of a voice, tailor made for soul and from an Earth moving "Someday We'll be Together" through a handful of astounding and big ballads that make a mockery of the limitations of a two person band, Jahn sang his heart out and was barely more than puddle of sweat by the time he got to a brutal blues number "The Miner Song"
X has always been a real good guy and his niceness radiates off the stage and he has always been a Lower East Side denizen who cried when, at the age of 16,his parents moved from five blocks away from CBGB's, only to discover to his joy that he was 3 blocks away from Peter Crowley's 1975 – 1981 Max's Kansas City. Crowley was playing DJ all night long at Bowery Electric and it is to Crowley that Jahn tells the story of drunkenly tagging the bannisters with his name one night at Max's and being greeted with a brush and a bucket the next day and having to clean it before being 86'd for a week.
A long time ago, and now his daughter Grace works in the area (she lives in Brooklyn!) and is an excellent DJ, vinyl only thanks, and Woody wrote about her here several years ago. X dedicates "Five Years Old", a powerful song about taking care of, and not taking care of, children, to her. With Charly the duo work out on material new and old and have a casually intense rapport with each other and the audience.Charly is a quintessential anchor figure and Jahn has personality to spare and doesn't have to push it. Everything he does is powerful and it is as much the material as the voice. "Walk The Other Way" is a break up baby come backer and it is a full throttle gut busting heart breaker. Terrific stuff.
Jahn gave me his email address and I hope to get him to sit for an interview, till then Jahn is playing with his full band Jan Xavier & the Bowerytones at the Bowery Poetry on June 30h and promise a new album this Autumn. 30 years is too long between visits with the perpetual Dennis the Menace of punk rock.
Grade: B+