The Riverboat Gamblers opened, and they tried very, very hard. They’re a young band, and their hearts were in the right place. But there’s such a thing as trying too hard, especially with your stage business when you’re just coming out of the gate. You gotta ramp up the theatrics: start at a high-mid-level rumble and turn things up from there. Mister Husband, ever the technical writer, identified the issues more succinctly: Wading out into the audience is something you do in the third song, not the first. Likewise, scaling the balcony to steal drinks from the upstairs folks and fling them down to the crowd below is a classic move, but that’s finale material. But points for trying and for expending great energy. One runs the risk of being compared to 1983 Bono, even if one really meant to be Iggy, but that’s OK. Still, trying too hard can get tedious. I took my hearing-aid out to save my ears and went to the bathroom about 3/4 of the way through the set. Mister Husband says that the lead sang from on top of my stool while I was gone.

This tour, As The World Burns, marks the first time this particular version of Rollins Band has played together since 1997. Nothing has been lost in the intervening near-decade. Of course, much of the material they played was what they did then — most of the set came from The End of Silence and Weight. It was loud and intense and pristinely modulated, in all senses of the term. (Half the fun of the show for Mister Husband was watching Theo Van Rock work the boards.) The crowd was enthusiastic, but I’m not sure how much they really got Rollins’ characteristically severe irony. When he launched into a rant about the beauty of America as demonstrated in the fact that you can get everything you need to build your own meth lab at your local Home Depot, the young male contingent down front cheered and the Young Constructed Girl Punks in the back got so appalled they left. Anyone who knows much at all about Rollins knows about his attitude toward substances. Too bad, because the second half was as strong as the first. They played for exactly precisely one hour, and then left as suddenly as they had begun.

X were just as tight and undescribable as I’ve always heard they were. John Doe is still strangely hot and hugely talented. Exene is still strangely compelling in ten ways all at once. Billy Zoom is still just strange, and the '50's crooner smile pasted on his face all night was maniacal and magical. And DJ Bonebrake is just one of the best drummers I’ve ever heard (and easily the best of the night). I hadn’t paced myself very well during the middle set, and so my ankle and I sat out most of X. No more standing atop a bar stool for me for awhile.

Is it heretical to wonder if this is a nostalgia tour? I’m torn. Rollins, obviously, remains quite busy. But that version of the band playing songs from those albums did take me back to 1994, when the video for “Liar” was first in heavy rotation on MTV and my best friend and I would cruise North Little Rock in his 1978 Corolla, blasting Weight. X haven’t produced anything except anthologies in a decade, but everyone has their own side projects — The Knitters, The Original Sinners, Auntie Christ, Orchestra Superstring, solo projects, amplifier businesses, indie publications. Regardless, it felt relevant and intense and loud, and my head has been back in Rollins’s set all day. And while Billy Zoom is frank about being in it for the money, all the shows certainly seemed more authentic than the impending The Who tour, which really should just be retitled The Pete and Roger Are Feeling Poor Show.