Okay, so well I went and saw X last night. I'd tell you all about it but the truth of it is I'm kind of wore out today. So instead, I'll just cut and paste my impressions of the last time I went and saw X- from my Top Secret Personal Files. I'm sure X will forgive me the repetition; after all, it's not like they bothered to come up with anything new for their act this time, either. Oh and by the way, the opening act was different this time so feel free to disregard most of the following.

13 Aug. 2006

Back in the day, I had a little lizard, Larry- Larry the Lizard, actually he was an anole (genus anolis), who lived in one of them big ol' jugs that cheap wine comes in. At least I think he was a he, it's kind of hard to tell with lizards. Anyways, he'd perch there on his stick, all lizardy and leathery, and glare balefully at the world outside his bottle through his malevolent, unblinking eyes- graceless posture, abrupt and jerkily spastic movement, a fondness for eating flies. I'm telling you this because for all the world Larry was exactly what Henry Rollins reminded me of Friday night, when I saw Henry and his band, the accurately (if somewhat unimaginitively) named Henry Rollins Band at the House of Blues in Cleveland. The shaven-headed and inexcusably shirtless Mr. Rollins scowled and snarled his way through what, just possibly, was the lamest and least rockingest hard-core show in the history of ever. The singer, who must be pushing fifty or so, bellowed out his songs of teen-age angst and alienation while striking of variety of lizardesque poses and grimaces which I imagine were intended to be "intense" or whatever, but really just came across as comical and somewhat pathetic. Doofus! The band apparently never got the memo that in hard-core shows, you really ought to shoot for a tempo a little faster than that of, say, a Lynrd Skynerd cover band on cough syrup. They even had a drum solo (I know!) which kind of threw me for a loop. I mean, it not being 1978 anymore, I didn't even dream that people still did drum solos. I was thinking it was just yet another bad song. All in all I just bout crapped myself laughing at them, especially seeing as how every time I saw the (air-quote) singer (air-unquote)I pictured my lizard up there on stage. So if you're a big fan of the Henry Rollins Band, well, I'm sorry to have be the one to break the news to you but really they pretty much just suck.

Needless to say, I didn't swing by Cleveberg merely in order to catch H. Rollins and crew. Granted, I hadn't known that they would be so freakin' HILARIOUS, but even so I probably wouldn't have crossed the street to see them. The plan was to see the headlining act, X, who I haven't seen in forever for the perfectly good reason that they broke up a forever ago. So I took me a detour on the way to Lorain and swung through Cleve-o-pork-chop-o-lis. Billy Zoom just sort of stood there, and beamed benevolently- if somewhat simplemindedly- at the crowd, like the retarded uncle who shows up at family reunions and doesn't really have anything much to say. DJ Bonebreak is getting far too bald and far too grey to still go by a name like "DJ Bonebreak". Exene looks like she's led a hard life of dissipation and intemperance (which, to be fair, she probably has). John Doe looked sharp. Anyways, they tore through all the old hits just like you'd expect but they really sounded pretty good.