Published 7/22/2023

Twitter Is Now X

Custom Short Link – sknrd.us/mrtith

Twitter is not Twitter anymore. Or won’t be soon if Elon Musk has his way. And why wouldn’t he, he owns the damn thing. He has re-named, and is re-branding Twitter.

Apparently, he wants to make it part of his “everything app.” Patterned after WeChat, it would be an online app where you could do everything all in one place.

Tweets will now be “X’s”, and we will be re-“X’ing.” Who knows what it will be in a few weeks. It will all evolve and take shape as time goes by.

“[S]oon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” – Elon Musk Tweet

I don’t know about the technical side of the whole thing, but I do know that Elon Musk is pretty dang smart. And something tells me that he’s a few steps ahead of most of the rest of us. I do know that hearing something on the X was a thing when I was a kid.

So let’s take a look and listen to the folks that wrote a song about it in 1975. I’m thinking this should be the song that Elon Musk uses as his theme song for his new endeavor.

ZZ Top – Heard It On The X (1980)

Video from the Granger Smith Youtube channel.

Heard It On The… What?

The ‘X’ in the title “Heard It On The X” is referring to a radio station. For years, from the 1940’s to the 1970’s, there were several massivley powered AM radio stations all along the US-Mexican border.

The Mexican government did not regulate the amount of power that a radio station could use when broadcasting. These “border blasters”, as they were called, could reach a very large portion of the United States.

As a point of reference, the most power that an AM radio station could use in the United States was 50,000 watts. WLS in Chicago could regularly be picked up on radios well into the southern states, hundreds of miles away. Some of the border blaster stations broadcasted a signal with as much as 250,000 watts!!

The Mexican radio station call letters begin with the letter X. (US radio station call leters begin with W for stations east of the Mississippi River, and stations west of the Mississippi begin with K.) These stations were aimed at and catering to the US market, so they played an eclectic variety of music styles.

ZZ Top Figued It Out 40 Years Ago

So, the phrase “I heard it on the X” was pretty popular back in the day. It was a great place to hear some new music and discover unknown artists. The border blaster were very popular for quite a few years. One of the DJs that became world-famous on these radio stations was the legendary, Wolfman Jack.

We’re all going to be hearing it on the “X” from now on, apparently. Do you think that little ol’ band from Texas nailed it 40 years ago?

Sharp Dressed Simple Man Tour

ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd are touring together once again. July October of 2023, they will be touring together on the Sharp Dressed Simple Man Tour. You can find up-to-date show listings on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s website and ZZ Top’s website.