brendan halpin

Content warning: fanboy gushing

I saw X at the late, unlamented Landsowne Street Club Axis on the Hey Zeus! tour in 1993. This was the era when Billy Zoom wasn’t with the band, and it was extremely mid, as the kids say. I was like, well, I guess I can check the box that I got to see X. Too bad I never saw them at their best.

Well, last night, thirty years later, I did get to see them at their best.

Billy Zoom is back and once again doing absolutely incredible shit on the guitar while looking like he just needs something to do with his hands while he watches the game or something. DJ Bonebrake is as furious a drummer as ever, and John and Exene…well, it’s pretty magical. Their voices still sound great, and Exene was bopping around the stage all night like….well, unlike the 68-year-old she is.

With most bands that have been around for decades, you’re getting a Ship of Theseus version of the band—such was the case when I saw Blondie and the Damned a few years back—and it’s still fun to hear the songs, but there’s something missing. Not last night, though.

The entire show was suffused with joyful energy, which was very much the missing ingredient at the rather grim show I saw in 93. And though this was the farewell tour, there was nothing maudlin or melancholy about it, and it didn’t feel like a band eulogizing itself so much as a band that kicks all kinds of ass kicking all kinds of ass.

When they opened with “Your Phone’s Off The Hook, But You’re Not,” I thought we might be getting an eras tour, but they did not go through the catalog in chronological order and mostly stuck to the first 2 albums. We got the “hits” from those albums— “Los Angeles,” “White Girl,” “We’re Desperate,” but also some deep cuts like “Nausea” and “In This House That I Call Home,” and “Adult Books.”

They also played “Ruby Church” “Sweet Til The Bitter End” and “The Way it Is” from the new album Smoke and Fiction, and it’s a testament to how good this album is that these songs did not feel out of place in a set comprised mostly of songs from Los Angeles and Wild Gift.

The only sign that the band and its audience have mellowed with age was the drum solo during “The Hungry Wolf.” Man, if you had tried to play a drum solo at a punk show during the first ten years of this band’s existence, your physical safety really would not have been guaranteed. Drum solos were radio rock bullshit. But we’re all older and wiser now, and I think we can admit that Billy and DJ’s virtuosity really helped push X way beyond the level of their first wave punk peers.

The first encore was Exene and John with an acoustic guitar doing “See How We Are.” It was absolutely stunning. It was also the only nod to The Gilkyson Era, which the band seems to regard as a mistake (and vice versa! Tony Gilkyson has a long list of bands he’s played with on his website, and X is not on it!), but which produced some good songs. But I get it—that was when X became an Americana band, and that did not fit the vibe of the evening. Billy Zoom then set up a sax and DJ Bonebrake moved to Marimba for “Come Back To Me,” which is the song about grief that made me fall in love this this band and one I assumed was too painful and personal for Exene to ever perform live. Glad I was wrong! They ended with a loong, loose, and really fun version of “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts.” And that was the show!

Acoustic Americana duo Dead Rock West opened the show and they were excellent too. I think it was a good choice to have an acoustic male-female duo open the show because X’s audience was down with what was happening, and, frankly, I can’t imagine a rock band that could measure up to X at this point. So far better to have people doing something completely different than to put some poor band through being compared to one of the best bands ever in absolutely top form after 45 years.