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Beck, Death Cab for Cutie to co-headline 91X X-Fest 2018 in San Diego’s Mission Valley

Beck performs during the 5th Annual Light Up The Blues Concert an Evening of Music to Benefit Autism Speaks on April 21, 2018, in Hollywood, California. He will co-headline the 1018 edition of X-Fest in San Diego.
(Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)
By George Varga
San Diego Union-Tribune
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Beck and Death Cab For Cutie will co-headline the 2018 edition of X-Fest on Aug. 11.

The all-ages outdoor music marathon will be held on two outdoor stages in Mission Valley. Its lineup features eight other acts, including The Struts, Joywave, Twin Shadow, Meg Myers, Moon Taxi, Teenage Wrist, Mansionair and The Regrettes. Ticket information appears below.

The location for X-Fest will be the former site of the former practice field of the former San Diego Chargers, adjacent to the site of the former Qualcomm Stadium, now known as SDCCU Stadium.

By coincidence, 2018 X-Fest co-headliner Beck performed here at SDCCU Stadium last September, when he was the opening act for the final 2017 U.S. date on U2’s The Joshua Tree Tour 2017.

The first X-Fest was held in April 1983 at what later became Qualcomm (and then SDCCU) Stadium, but was known at the time as San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. The lineup for the inaugural X-Fest included Tom Petty & The Hearbreakers, the Brian Setzer-led Stray Cats and Bow Wow Wow.

“To celebrate 35 years of 91X, we chose to curate an artist lineup for X-Fest 2018 that honors the past, lives in the present and looks to the future,” said 91X Program Director Garett Michaels, in a statement released Monday morning.

“Beck has been a constant presence on 91X since 1993 and Death Cab for Cutie since 2003, while both continue to create vital and exciting music today. As San Diego’s new-music discovery destination, X-Fest is loaded for with newer artists we are really excited about … .”

Tickets for the 2018 X-Fest go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. at ticketmaster.com and by phone at (800) 745-3000. They are priced at $56 each, plus service charges.

A dollar from each ticket sold will be donated to the Inspired By Music Fund, which supports music education and is a collaborative effort by 91X, the San Diego County Office of Education, The Music Box and the Belly Up.

X-Fest is being produced in affiliation with Goldenvoice Entertainment, the same company that owns a controlling interest in San Diego’s Valley View Casino Center and produces the annual Coachella and Stagecoach festivals in Indio.

george.varga@sduniontribune.com

Twitter @georgevarga

Music
George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 and 2023 San Diego Press Club awards and a double first prize-winner at the 2022 and 2023 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”

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