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MXPX

Let's Rock

Rarities

(Side One Dummy; US: 24 Oct 2006; UK: 13 Nov 2006)

MXPX titles its new CD simply Let’s Rock. But a rocking MXPX is nothing new. After all, this Washington band was pop-punk back before pop-punk was cool. “Last Train” and “Sweet Sweet Thing”, two acoustic tracks, contradict the table of contents. Furthermore, “Don’t Forget Me (When You’re Gone)” is nothing more than a big rock ballad, albeit amplified. Whenever vocalist Mike Herrera gets all soft over unplugged guitars, MXPX sounds like Green Day’s little brother. Lyrically, Herrera is much better at singing his own life, as on “You Walk, I Run”, than getting political, exemplified by a global little number called “1 and 3”. He should leave new world disorder commentary to Billie Joe Armstrong. But when he shouts “Affluenza, affluenza” to protest First World materialism, he absolutely rocks.

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Dan MacIntosh is a freelance writer from Bellflower, California, “The friendly city”. He’s married with two children, two cats, one dog, one bunny, and one bird. He earned his B.A. degree in Communications (emphasis Public Relations) from California State University, Fullerton in 1986. By day, he works for a software company (Ah, but doesn’t everybody these days?), and in the evenings he works at Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts where he is hardly recognizable in a suit and tie. He also dearly loves his church, Calvary Baptist Church, Bellflower, where he is a deacon, a praise choir member, and a small group leader. He also plays guitar, but mainly in the privacy of his home.


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