The once over twice

X is a band that's so good I had to see them twice in one week. And a week later, they're still in my dreams.

X is the sound of love being so right but going so wrong...songs of love and jealousy and hope and decay...

songs of trying to stick together until it hurts...

of drunken house parties that start out fun and end in fights...

of one of you upset, staying up all night on the couch, chain smoking and watching some bad old movie because you can't sleep...

of starting out happy together at a bar and ending up so mad you throw your jewelry and car keys anything else you have in your hand across the room, and waking up the neighbor and the landlord...

of waiting up for the one you love to come home, but suspecting they're with someone else -- but you make out like crazy when they do show up...

of thinking that it's true love and being so happy, only to slowly realize that you're not right for each other...

of the knowledge that Hell is an eternity of seeing the thousands of ways the Devil can make you fall in love, and knowing that you'd do it all over again...

of crying 96 tears in 24 hours, with sex once every hour...

of dancing with tears in your eyes...

all with a killer guitar riff.

Photo: at least two ecstatic X fans at the Cabooze in Minneapolis, March 22, 2008.

Here's X, playing True Love, Pt. 2, eons ago:

And here they are more recently, performing In This House That I Call Home:



And just because they're so groovy, a couple of performances from Penelope Spheeris' The Decline of Western Civilization: